This is a live mirror of the Perl 5 development currently hosted at https://github.com/perl/perl5
fd closes for failure paths.
[perl5.git] / pod / perldiag.pod
... / ...
CommitLineData
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 (enabled by default).
12 (S) A severe warning (enabled by default).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
17
18The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
19(W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
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. E.g. C<(W closed)> means a warning in the C<closed> category.
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
30Severe warnings are always enabled, unless they are explicitly disabled
31with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
32
33Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
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>.
37
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.
44
45=over 4
46
47=item accept() on closed socket %s
48
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>.
52
53=item Allocation too large: %x
54
55(X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
56
57=item '%c' allowed only after types %s in %s
58
59(F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only
60after certain types. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
61
62=item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
63
64(W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
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.
68
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).
73
74To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
76to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
77L<attributes>).
78
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
86=item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
87
88(S ambiguous) 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.
91
92=item Ambiguous use of -%s resolved as -&%s()
93
94(S ambiguous) You wrote something like C<-foo>, which might be the
95string C<"-foo">, or a call to the function C<foo>, negated. If you meant
96the string, just write C<"-foo">. If you meant the function call,
97write C<-foo()>.
98
99=item Ambiguous use of %c resolved as operator %c
100
101(S ambiguous) C<%>, C<&>, and C<*> are both infix operators (modulus,
102bitwise and, and multiplication) I<and> initial special characters
103(denoting hashes, subroutines and typeglobs), and you said something
104like C<*foo * foo> that might be interpreted as either of them. We
105assumed you meant the infix operator, but please try to make it more
106clear -- in the example given, you might write C<*foo * foo()> if you
107really meant to multiply a glob by the result of calling a function.
108
109=item Ambiguous use of %c{%s} resolved to %c%s
110
111(W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<@{foo}>, which might be
112asking for the variable C<@foo>, or it might be calling a function
113named foo, and dereferencing it as an array reference. If you wanted
114the variable, you can just write C<@foo>. If you wanted to call the
115function, write C<@{foo()}> ... or you could just not have a variable
116and a function with the same name, and save yourself a lot of trouble.
117
118=item Ambiguous use of %c{%s[...]} resolved to %c%s[...]
119
120=item Ambiguous use of %c{%s{...}} resolved to %c%s{...}
121
122(W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<${foo[2]}> (where foo represents
123the name of a Perl keyword), which might be looking for element number
1242 of the array named C<@foo>, in which case please write C<$foo[2]>, or you
125might have meant to pass an anonymous arrayref to the function named
126foo, and then do a scalar deref on the value it returns. If you meant
127that, write C<${foo([2])}>.
128
129In regular expressions, the C<${foo[2]}> syntax is sometimes necessary
130to disambiguate between array subscripts and character classes.
131C</$length[2345]/>, for instance, will be interpreted as C<$length> followed
132by the character class C<[2345]>. If an array subscript is what you
133want, you can avoid the warning by changing C</${length[2345]}/> to the
134unsightly C</${\$length[2345]}/>, by renaming your array to something
135that does not coincide with a built-in keyword, or by simply turning
136off warnings with C<no warnings 'ambiguous';>.
137
138=item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
139
140(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
141redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
142redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
143
144=item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
145
146(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
147redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
148into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
149though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
150which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
151
152 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
153 while (<STDIN>) {
154 print;
155 print OUT;
156 }
157 close OUT;
158
159=item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
160
161(W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
162transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
163one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
164a scalar value (the length of an array, or the population info of a
165hash) and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
166you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
167alternatives.
168
169=item Arg too short for msgsnd
170
171(F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
172
173=item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
174
175(W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
176that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
177will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
178
179=item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
180
181(W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O
182system you forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers
183take care of transforming data between external and internal
184representations.) Perl stopped parsing the layer list at this
185point and did not attempt to push this layer. If your program
186didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the
187result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
188
189=item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
190
191(D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
192spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
193
194=item A sequence of multiple spaces in a charnames alias definition is deprecated
195
196(D deprecated) You defined a character name which had multiple space
197characters in a row. Change them to single spaces. Usually these
198names are defined in the C<:alias> import argument to C<use charnames>, but
199they could be defined by a translator installed into C<$^H{charnames}>.
200See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
201
202=item assertion botched: %s
203
204(X) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
205
206=item Assertion %s failed: file "%s", line %d
207
208(X) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
209
210=item Assigning non-zero to $[ is no longer possible
211
212(F) When the "array_base" feature is disabled (e.g., under C<use v5.16;>)
213the special variable C<$[>, which is deprecated, is now a fixed zero value.
214
215=item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
216
217(F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
218must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
219know which context to supply to the right side.
220
221=item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
222
223(F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
224the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
225
226=item Attempt to bless into a freed package
227
228(F) You wrote C<bless $foo> with one argument after somehow causing
229the current package to be freed. Perl cannot figure out what to
230do, so it throws up in hands in despair.
231
232=item Attempt to bless into a reference
233
234(F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
235the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
236supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
237
238 bless $self, $proto;
239
240when you intended
241
242 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
243
244If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
245of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
246example by:
247
248 bless $self, "$proto";
249
250=item Attempt to clear deleted array
251
252(S debugging) An array was assigned to when it was being freed.
253Freed values are not supposed to be visible to Perl code. This
254can also happen if XS code calls C<av_clear> from a custom magic
255callback on the array.
256
257=item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
258
259(F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
260which is not in its key set.
261
262=item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
263
264(F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
265declared readonly from a restricted hash.
266
267=item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%x
268
269(S internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
270that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
271outside any of those arenas.
272
273=item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string '%s'%s
274
275(S internal) Perl maintains a reference-counted internal table of
276strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
277strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
278of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
279
280=item Attempt to free temp prematurely: SV 0x%x
281
282(S debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
283free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
284SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
285free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
286try to free it.
287
288=item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
289
290(S internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
291
292=item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar: SV 0x%x
293
294(S internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
295see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
296earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
297This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
298that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
299mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
300corrupted.
301
302=item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
303
304(W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
305function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
306means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
307invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
308literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
309avoid this warning.
310
311=item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
312
313(F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
314compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
315unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
316L<perlvar/%INC>.
317
318=item Attempt to set length of freed array
319
320(W misc) You tried to set the length of an array which has
321been freed. You can do this by storing a reference to the
322scalar representing the last index of an array and later
323assigning through that reference. For example
324
325 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
326 $$r = 503
327
328=item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
329
330(W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
331used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
332dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
333
334=item Attribute "locked" is deprecated
335
336(D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the
337"locked" attribute on a code reference. The :locked attribute is
338obsolete, has had no effect since 5005 threads were removed, and
339will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
340
341=item Attribute prototype(%s) discards earlier prototype attribute in same sub
342
343(W misc) A sub was declared as sub foo : prototype(A) : prototype(B) {}, for
344example. Since each sub can only have one prototype, the earlier
345declaration(s) are discarded while the last one is applied.
346
347=item Attribute "unique" is deprecated
348
349(D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify
350the "unique" attribute on an array, hash or scalar reference.
351The :unique attribute has had no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and
352will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
353
354=item av_reify called on tied array
355
356(S debugging) This indicates that something went wrong and Perl got I<very>
357confused about C<@_> or C<@DB::args> being tied.
358
359=item Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
360
361(F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
362or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
363S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
364S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
365
366=item Bad evalled substitution pattern
367
368(F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
369substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
370most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
371
372=item Bad filehandle: %s
373
374(F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
375symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
376open(), or did it in another package.
377
378=item Bad free() ignored
379
380(S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
381been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
382setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
383
384This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
385dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
386which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
387
388=item Bad hash
389
390(P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
391
392=item Badly placed ()'s
393
394(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
395of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
396Perl yourself.
397
398=item Bad name after %s
399
400(F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
401didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
402of quotes, so
403
404 $var = 'myvar';
405 $sym = mypack::$var;
406
407is not the same as
408
409 $var = 'myvar';
410 $sym = "mypack::$var";
411
412=item Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
413
414(F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the
415plugin API.
416
417=item Bad realloc() ignored
418
419(S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that
420had never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can
421be disabled by setting the environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
422
423=item Bad symbol for array
424
425(P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
426wasn't a symbol table entry.
427
428=item Bad symbol for dirhandle
429
430(P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
431that wasn't a symbol table entry.
432
433=item Bad symbol for filehandle
434
435(P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
436that wasn't a symbol table entry.
437
438=item Bad symbol for hash
439
440(P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
441wasn't a symbol table entry.
442
443=item Bareword found in conditional
444
445(W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
446conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
447of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
448
449 open FOO || die;
450
451It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
452a bareword:
453
454 use constant TYPO => 1;
455 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
456
457The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
458
459=item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
460
461(F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
462subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
463symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
464
465=item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
466
467(W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
468compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
469you need to predeclare a package?
470
471=item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
472
473(F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
474subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
475exited.
476
477=item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
478
479(F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
480implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
481occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
482be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
483depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
484
485=item \%d better written as $%d
486
487(W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
488The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
489substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
490because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
491there are more than 9 backreferences.
492
493=item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
494
495(W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
496(4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
497L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
498
499=item bind() on closed socket %s
500
501(W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
502check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
503
504=item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
505
506(W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
507Check your control flow and number of arguments.
508
509=item "\b{" is deprecated; use "\b\{" or "\b[{]" instead in regex; marked
510by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
511
512=item "\B{" is deprecated; use "\B\{" or "\B[{]" instead in regex; marked
513by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
514
515(D deprecated) Use of an unescaped "{" immediately following
516a C<\b> or C<\B> is now deprecated so as to reserve its use for Perl
517itself in a future release. You can either precede the brace
518with a backslash, or enclose it in square brackets; the latter
519is the way to go if the pattern delimiters are C<{}>.
520
521=item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
522
523(W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
524
525=item Bizarre copy of %s
526
527(P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
528copiable.
529
530=item Bizarre SvTYPE [%d]
531
532(P) When starting a new thread or returning values from a thread, Perl
533encountered an invalid data type.
534
535=item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
536
537(W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
538iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
539which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
540
541=item Callback called exit
542
543(F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
544exited by calling exit.
545
546=item %s() called too early to check prototype
547
548(W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
549parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
550that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
551early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
552subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
553checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
554function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
555the warning. See L<perlsub>.
556
557=item Calling POSIX::%s() is deprecated
558
559(D deprecated) You called a function whose use is deprecated. See
560the function's name in L<POSIX> for details.
561
562=item Cannot compress integer in pack
563
564(F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
565compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
566attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
567See L<perlfunc/pack>.
568
569=item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
570
571(F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
572format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
573
574=item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
575
576(F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference
577in it, then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax.
578The access triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is
579no legal conversion from that type of reference to a typeglob.
580
581=item Cannot copy to %s
582
583(P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
584be directly assigned to.
585
586=item Cannot find encoding "%s"
587
588(S io) You tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to a filehandle,
589either with open() or binmode().
590
591=item Cannot set tied @DB::args
592
593(F) C<caller> tried to set C<@DB::args>, but found it tied. Tying C<@DB::args>
594is not supported. (Before this error was added, it used to crash.)
595
596=item Cannot tie unreifiable array
597
598(P) You somehow managed to call C<tie> on an array that does not
599keep a reference count on its arguments and cannot be made to
600do so. Such arrays are not even supposed to be accessible to
601Perl code, but are only used internally.
602
603=item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
604
605(F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
606integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
607to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
608
609=item Can't bless non-reference value
610
611(F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
612encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
613
614=item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
615
616(F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
617a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
618
619=item Can't "break" outside a given block
620
621(F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
622
623=item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
624
625(F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
626object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
627like this will reproduce the error:
628
629 $BADREF = undef;
630 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
631 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
632
633=item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
634
635(F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
636ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
637didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
638object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
639
640=item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
641
642(F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
643object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
644defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
645Something like this will reproduce the error:
646
647 $BADREF = 42;
648 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
649 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
650
651=item Can't call mro_isa_changed_in() on anonymous symbol table
652
653(P) Perl got confused as to whether a hash was a plain hash or a
654symbol table hash when trying to update @ISA caches.
655
656=item Can't call mro_method_changed_in() on anonymous symbol table
657
658(F) An XS module tried to call C<mro_method_changed_in> on a hash that was
659not attached to the symbol table.
660
661=item Can't chdir to %s
662
663(F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but F</foo/bar> is not a directory
664that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
665
666=item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
667
668(P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
669nosuid.
670
671=item Can't coerce %s to %s in %s
672
673(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
674(typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
675say things like:
676
677 *foo += 1;
678
679You CAN say
680
681 $foo = *foo;
682 $foo += 1;
683
684but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
685
686=item Can't "continue" outside a when block
687
688(F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
689or C<default> block.
690
691=item Can't create pipe mailbox
692
693(P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
694quotas or other plumbing problems.
695
696=item Can't declare %s in "%s"
697
698(F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
699"state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
700
701=item Can't "default" outside a topicalizer
702
703(F) You have used a C<default> block that is neither inside a
704C<foreach> loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is
705issued on exit from the C<default> block, so you won't get the
706error if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
707
708=item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
709
710(S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
711a file in /dev, a FIFO or an uneditable directory. The file was ignored.
712
713=item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
714
715(S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
716reason.
717
718=item Can't do inplace edit without backup
719
720(F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
721reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
722C<-i.bak>, or some such.
723
724=item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
725
726(S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
727characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
728inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
729
730=item Can't do waitpid with flags
731
732(F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
733waitpid() without flags is emulated.
734
735=item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
736
737(F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
738point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
739line.
740
741=item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
742
743(F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
744or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
745little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
746See L<perlfunc/pack>.
747
748=item Can't exec "%s": %s
749
750(W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
751named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
752permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
753C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
754architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
755can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
756#! at all.)
757
758=item Can't exec %s
759
760(F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
761that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
762need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
763
764=item Can't execute %s
765
766(F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
767found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
768
769=item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
770
771(F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
772is no builtin with the name C<word>.
773
774=item Can't find %s character property "%s"
775
776(F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
777could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property?
778See L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
779for a complete list of available official properties.
780
781=item Can't find label %s
782
783(F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
784possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
785
786=item Can't find %s on PATH
787
788(F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
789found in the PATH.
790
791=item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
792
793(F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
794found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
795script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
796
797=item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
798
799(F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
800that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
801nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
802
803 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
804
805If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
806included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag or there
807may not be a linebreak after it. A good programmer's editor will have
808a way to help you find these characters (or lack of characters). See
809L<perlop> for the full details on here-documents.
810
811=item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
812
813(F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode
814property (for example C<\p{Lu}> matches all uppercase
815letters). If you did mean to use a Unicode property, see
816L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
817for a complete list of available properties. If you didn't
818mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either by
819C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, or
820until C<\E>).
821
822=item Can't fork: %s
823
824(F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
825pipeline.
826
827=item Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
828
829(W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be retried
830after five seconds.
831
832=item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
833
834(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
835between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
836Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
837the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
838account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
839the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
840the access-checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
841the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
842if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
843because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
844appears, the name lookup failed, and the access-checking routine gave up
845and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access-checking
846routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
847shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
848only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
849
850=item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
851
852(P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
853pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
854
855=item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
856
857(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
858mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
859
860=item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
861
862(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
863loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
864
865=item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
866
867(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
868a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
869you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
870See L<perlfunc/goto>.
871
872=item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
873
874(F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
875"string" or block.
876
877=item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
878
879(F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
880comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
881as the reduce() function in List::Util).
882
883=item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
884
885(F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
886subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
887cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
888routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
889
890=item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
891
892(W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
893signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
894signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
895processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
896situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
897may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
898
899=item Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
900
901(F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a fatal error to
902attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise non-numeric
903process identifier.
904
905=item Can't "last" outside a loop block
906
907(F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
908except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
909block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
910block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
911usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
912inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
913L<perlfunc/last>.
914
915=item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
916
917(F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
918package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
919
920=item Can't load '%s' for module %s
921
922(F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension.
923This may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one
924that is incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known
925to happen between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your
926dynamic extension was built against an older version of the library
927that is installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old
928dynamic extensions.
929
930=item Can't localize lexical variable %s
931
932(F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
933lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you
934want to localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with
935the package name.
936
937=item Can't localize through a reference
938
939(F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
940handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
941pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
942that $ref will still be a reference.
943
944=item Can't locate %s
945
946(F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be found.
947Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC, unless
948the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
949to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the
950extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
951to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
952L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
953
954=item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
955
956(F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
957autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
958are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
959the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
960
961=item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
962
963(F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
964for example, F<foo.so> or F<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
965unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
966
967=item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
968
969(F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
970functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
971method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
972
973=item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
974
975(W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
976doesn't seem to exist.
977
978=item Can't locate PerlIO%s
979
980(F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
981e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
982
983=item Can't make list assignment to %ENV on this system
984
985(F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
986VMS.
987
988=item Can't make loaded symbols global on this platform while loading %s
989
990(S) A module passed the flag 0x01 to DynaLoader::dl_load_file() to request
991that symbols from the stated file are made available globally within the
992process, but that functionality is not available on this platform. Whilst
993the module likely will still work, this may prevent the perl interpreter
994from loading other XS-based extensions which need to link directly to
995functions defined in the C or XS code in the stated file.
996
997=item Can't modify %s in %s
998
999(F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
1000to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
1001
1002=item Can't modify nonexistent substring
1003
1004(P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
1005a NULL.
1006
1007=item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
1008
1009(F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
1010such. See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1011
1012=item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
1013
1014(F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
1015buffer.
1016
1017=item Can't "next" outside a loop block
1018
1019(F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
1020there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1021count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
1022grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1023though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
1024once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
1025
1026=item Can't open %s
1027
1028(F) You tried to run a perl built with MAD support with
1029the PERL_XMLDUMP environment variable set, but the file
1030named by that variable could not be opened.
1031
1032=item Can't open %s: %s
1033
1034(S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
1035filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
1036switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually
1037this is because you don't have read permission for a file which
1038you named on the command line.
1039
1040(F) You tried to call perl with the B<-e> switch, but F</dev/null> (or
1041your operating system's equivalent) could not be opened.
1042
1043=item Can't open a reference
1044
1045(W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
1046using the 3-arg open() syntax:
1047
1048 open FH, '>', $ref;
1049
1050but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
1051open is not supported.
1052
1053=item Can't open bidirectional pipe
1054
1055(W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
1056You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
1057as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
1058">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
1059
1060=item Can't open error file %s as stderr
1061
1062(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1063redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
1064the command line for writing.
1065
1066=item Can't open input file %s as stdin
1067
1068(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1069redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
1070command line for reading.
1071
1072=item Can't open output file %s as stdout
1073
1074(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1075redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
1076the command line for writing.
1077
1078=item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
1079
1080(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1081redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
1082for stdout.
1083
1084=item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
1085
1086(F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
1087
1088If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
1089shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1090you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1091
1092=item Can't read CRTL environ
1093
1094(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1095from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1096missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1097or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1098searched.
1099
1100=item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1101
1102(F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1103there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1104count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1105or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1106though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1107loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1108
1109=item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1110
1111(S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1112file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1113the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1114
1115=item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1116
1117(S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1118probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1119
1120=item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1121
1122(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1123to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1124
1125=item Can't reset %ENV on this system
1126
1127(F) You called C<reset('E')> or similar, which tried to reset
1128all variables in the current package beginning with "E". In
1129the main package, that includes %ENV. Resetting %ENV is not
1130supported on some systems, notably VMS.
1131
1132=item Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
1133
1134(F)(P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1135opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1136package. If the method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1137
1138=item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1139
1140(F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1141temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1142is not allowed.
1143
1144=item Can't return outside a subroutine
1145
1146(F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1147there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1148
1149=item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1150
1151(F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue
1152subroutine, but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl
1153think you meant to return only one value. You probably meant to
1154write parentheses around the call to the subroutine, which tell
1155Perl that the call should be in list context.
1156
1157=item Can't stat script "%s"
1158
1159(P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1160open already. Bizarre.
1161
1162=item Can't take log of %g
1163
1164(F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1165negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1166standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1167negative numbers.
1168
1169=item Can't take sqrt of %g
1170
1171(F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1172negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1173with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1174
1175=item Can't undef active subroutine
1176
1177(F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1178however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1179redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1180
1181=item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1182
1183(P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1184into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1185specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1186indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1187
1188=item Can't use '%c' after -mname
1189
1190(F) You tried to call perl with the B<-m> switch, but you put something
1191other than "=" after the module name.
1192
1193=item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1194
1195(F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1196table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1197for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1198
1199=item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1200
1201(F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1202be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1203
1204=item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1205
1206(F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1207references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1208
1209=item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1210
1211(F) The first time the C<%!> hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1212Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1213provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1214
1215=item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1216
1217(F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1218byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1219allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1220
1221=item Can't use %s for loop variable
1222
1223(F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1224foreach.
1225
1226=item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1227
1228(F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1229is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1230(namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1231have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1232weren't.
1233
1234=item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1235
1236(F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1237that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1238For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1239is inside a big-endian group.
1240
1241=item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1242
1243(F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1244You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1245and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1246Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1247lexical variable.
1248
1249=item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1250
1251(F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1252reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1253test the type of the reference, if need be.
1254
1255=item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1256
1257=item Can't use string ("%s"...) as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1258
1259(F) You've told Perl to dereference a string, something which
1260C<use strict> blocks to prevent it happening accidentally. See
1261L<perlref/"Symbolic references">. This can be triggered by an C<@> or C<$>
1262in a double-quoted string immediately before interpolating a variable,
1263for example in C<"user @$twitter_id">, which says to treat the contents
1264of C<$twitter_id> as an array reference; use a C<\> to have a literal C<@>
1265symbol followed by the contents of C<$twitter_id>: C<"user \@$twitter_id">.
1266
1267=item Can't use subscript on %s
1268
1269(F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1270subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1271didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1272
1273=item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1274
1275(W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1276creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1277backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1278expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1279value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1280instead.
1281
1282=item Can't weaken a nonreference
1283
1284(F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1285references can be weakened.
1286
1287=item Can't "when" outside a topicalizer
1288
1289(F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1290loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1291from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1292or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1293
1294=item Can't x= to read-only value
1295
1296(F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1297with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1298Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1299
1300=item Character following "\c" must be printable ASCII
1301
1302(F)(D deprecated, syntax) In C<\cI<X>>, I<X> must be a printable
1303(non-control) ASCII character. This is fatal starting in v5.20 for
1304non-ASCII characters, and it is planned to make this fatal in all
1305instances in Perl v5.22. In
1306the cases where it isn't fatal, the character this evaluates to is
1307derived by exclusive or'ing the code point of this character with 0x40.
1308
1309Note that ASCII characters that don't map to control characters are
1310discouraged here as well, and will generate the warning (when enabled)
1311L</""\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"">.
1312
1313=item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1314
1315(W pack) You said
1316
1317 pack("C", $x)
1318
1319where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1320only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1321and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1322
1323 pack("C", $x & 255)
1324
1325If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1326instead.
1327
1328=item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1329
1330(W pack) You said
1331
1332 pack("c", $x)
1333
1334where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1335is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1336and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1337
1338 pack("c", $x & 255);
1339
1340If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1341instead.
1342
1343=item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1344
1345(W unpack) You tried something like
1346
1347 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1348
1349where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1350below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the
1351value modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1352
1353 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1354
1355=item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1356
1357(W pack) You said
1358
1359 pack("U0W", $x)
1360
1361where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode
1362expects all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved
1363as if you meant:
1364
1365 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1366
1367=item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1368
1369(W pack) You tried something like
1370
1371 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1372
1373where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1374value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1375uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1376
1377 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1378
1379=item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1380
1381(W unpack) You tried something like
1382
1383 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1384
1385where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1386value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1387uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1388
1389 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1390
1391=item "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"
1392
1393(W syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way to specify
1394non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which is better
1395written as simply itself, perhaps preceded by a backslash for non-word
1396characters.
1397
1398=item Cloning substitution context is unimplemented
1399
1400(F) Creating a new thread inside the C<s///> operator is not supported.
1401
1402=item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1403
1404(W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1405a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1406
1407=item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1408
1409(W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1410
1411=item Closure prototype called
1412
1413(F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to an attribute
1414handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure is created.
1415This subroutine cannot be called.
1416
1417=item Code missing after '/'
1418
1419(F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be
1420another template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1421
1422=item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
1423
1424(S non_unicode) You had a code point above the Unicode maximum
1425of U+10FFFF.
1426
1427Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code points, up
1428to the limit of what is storable in an unsigned integer on your system,
1429but these may not be accepted by other languages/systems. At one time,
1430it was legal in some standards to have code points up to 0x7FFF_FFFF,
1431but not higher. Code points above 0xFFFF_FFFF require larger than a
143232 bit word.
1433
1434=item %s: Command not found
1435
1436(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> or another shell
1437instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
1438into Perl yourself. The #! line at the top of your file could look like
1439
1440 #!/usr/bin/perl -w
1441
1442=item Compilation failed in require
1443
1444(F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1445Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1446encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1447
1448=item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1449
1450(W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1451situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1452to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1453arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1454recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1455under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1456in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1457that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1458on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1459
1460=item connect() on closed socket %s
1461
1462(W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1463to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1464L<perlfunc/connect>.
1465
1466=item Constant(%s): Call to &{$^H{%s}} did not return a defined value
1467
1468(F) The subroutine registered to handle constant overloading
1469(see L<overload>) or a custom charnames handler (see
1470L<charnames/CUSTOM TRANSLATORS>) returned an undefined value.
1471
1472=item Constant(%s): $^H{%s} is not defined
1473
1474(F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to define an
1475overloaded constant. Perhaps you forgot to load the corresponding
1476L<overload> pragma?
1477
1478=item Constant is not %s reference
1479
1480(F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1481is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1482The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1483usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1484See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1485
1486=item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1487
1488(W redefine)(S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously
1489been eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions">
1490for commentary and workarounds.
1491
1492=item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1493
1494(W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1495for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1496workarounds.
1497
1498=item Constant(%s) unknown
1499
1500(F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting
1501to define an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the
1502character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you
1503forgot to load the corresponding L<overload> pragma?.
1504
1505=item Copy method did not return a reference
1506
1507(F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1508L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1509
1510=item &CORE::%s cannot be called directly
1511
1512(F) You tried to call a subroutine in the C<CORE::> namespace
1513with C<&foo> syntax or through a reference. Some subroutines
1514in this package cannot yet be called that way, but must be
1515called as barewords. Something like this will work:
1516
1517 BEGIN { *shove = \&CORE::push; }
1518 shove @array, 1,2,3; # pushes on to @array
1519
1520=item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1521
1522(F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1523
1524=item Corrupted regexp opcode %d > %d
1525
1526(P) This is either an error in Perl, or, if you're using
1527one, your L<custom regular expression engine|perlreapi>. If not the
1528latter, report the problem through the L<perlbug> utility.
1529
1530=item corrupted regexp pointers
1531
1532(P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1533expression compiler gave it.
1534
1535=item corrupted regexp program
1536
1537(P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1538valid magic number.
1539
1540=item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
1541
1542(P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1543
1544=item Count after length/code in unpack
1545
1546(F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1547you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1548L<perlfunc/pack>.
1549
1550=for comment
1551The following are used in lib/diagnostics.t for testing two =items that
1552share the same description. Changes here need to be propagated to there
1553
1554=item Deep recursion on anonymous subroutine
1555
1556=item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1557
1558(W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1559100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1560infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1561which case it indicates something else.
1562
1563This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the F<perl> binary,
1564setting the C pre-processor macro C<PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN> to the desired value.
1565
1566=item defined(@array) is deprecated
1567
1568(D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1569checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1570array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1571
1572=item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1573
1574(D deprecated) C<defined()> is not usually right on hashes and has been
1575discouraged since 5.004.
1576
1577Although C<defined %hash> is false on a plain not-yet-used hash, it
1578becomes true in several non-obvious circumstances, including iterators,
1579weak references, stash names, even remaining true after C<undef %hash>.
1580These things make C<defined %hash> fairly useless in practice.
1581
1582If a check for non-empty is what you wanted then just put it in boolean
1583context (see L<perldata/Scalar values>):
1584
1585 if (%hash) {
1586 # not empty
1587 }
1588
1589If you had C<defined %Foo::Bar::QUUX> to check whether such a package
1590variable exists then that's never really been reliable, and isn't
1591a good way to enquire about the features of a package, or whether
1592it's loaded, etc.
1593
1594
1595=item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by
1596S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
1597
1598(F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
1599most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
1600of the C<....> part.
1601
1602The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
1603discovered.
1604
1605=item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1606
1607(F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1608there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1609
1610=item delete argument is index/value array slice, use array slice
1611
1612(F) You used index/value array slice syntax (C<%array[...]>) as
1613the argument to C<delete>. You probably meant C<@array[...]> with
1614an @ symbol instead.
1615
1616=item delete argument is key/value hash slice, use hash slice
1617
1618(F) You used key/value hash slice syntax (C<%hash{...}>) as the argument to
1619C<delete>. You probably meant C<@hash{...}> with an @ symbol instead.
1620
1621=item delete argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
1622
1623(F) The argument to C<delete> must be either a hash or array element,
1624such as:
1625
1626 $foo{$bar}
1627 $ref->{"susie"}[12]
1628
1629or a hash or array slice, such as:
1630
1631 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
1632 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
1633
1634=item Delimiter for here document is too long
1635
1636(F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1637long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1638that triggers this error.
1639
1640=item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1641
1642(D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>. There
1643has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1644not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1645conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1646static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1647relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1648declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1649
1650 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1651
1652becomes
1653
1654 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1655
1656Beginning with perl 5.10.0, you can also use C<state> variables to have
1657lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1658
1659 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1660
1661=item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1662
1663(F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1664just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather
1665than to create a dangling reference.
1666
1667=item Did not produce a valid header
1668
1669See Server error.
1670
1671=item %s did not return a true value
1672
1673(F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1674it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1675traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1676do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1677
1678=item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1679
1680(W misc) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or
1681some such.
1682
1683=item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1684
1685(W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1686variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1687seems superfluous.
1688
1689=item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1690
1691(W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1692@hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1693carried away.
1694
1695=item Died
1696
1697(F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1698you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
1699
1700=item Document contains no data
1701
1702See Server error.
1703
1704=item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1705
1706(F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1707define a C<$VERSION>.
1708
1709=item '/' does not take a repeat count
1710
1711(F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1712See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1713
1714=item Don't know how to get file name
1715
1716(P) C<PerlIO_getname>, a perl internal I/O function specific to VMS, was
1717somehow called on another platform. This should not happen.
1718
1719=item Don't know how to handle magic of type \%o
1720
1721(P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1722
1723=item do_study: out of memory
1724
1725(P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1726
1727=item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1728
1729(S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1730"%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1731name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1732because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1733"sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1734something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1735subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1736"sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1737
1738=item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1739
1740(W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1741qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1742
1743=item dump is not supported
1744
1745(F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1746
1747=item Duplicate free() ignored
1748
1749(S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1750already been freed.
1751
1752=item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1753
1754(W unpack) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a
1755type in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1756
1757=item each on reference is experimental
1758
1759(S experimental::autoderef) C<each> with a scalar argument is experimental
1760and may change or be removed in a future Perl version. If you want to
1761take the risk of using this feature, simply disable this warning:
1762
1763 no warnings "experimental::autoderef";
1764
1765=item elseif should be elsif
1766
1767(S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks
1768it's ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1769named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1770unlikely to be what you want.
1771
1772=item Empty \%c{} in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
1773
1774(F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1775described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1776a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1777
1778=item entering effective %s failed
1779
1780(F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1781effective uids or gids failed.
1782
1783=item %ENV is aliased to %s
1784
1785(F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1786aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1787program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1788
1789=item Error converting file specification %s
1790
1791(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1792specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1793single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1794an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1795conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1796
1797=item Escape literal pattern white space under /x
1798
1799(D deprecated) You compiled a regular expression pattern with C</x> to
1800ignore white space, and you used, as a literal, one of the characters
1801that Perl plans to eventually treat as white space. The character must
1802be escaped somehow, or it will work differently on a future Perl that
1803does treat it as white space. The easiest way is to insert a backslash
1804immediately before it, or to enclose it with square brackets. This
1805change is to bring Perl into conformance with Unicode recommendations.
1806Here are the five characters that generate this warning:
1807U+0085 NEXT LINE,
1808U+200E LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK,
1809U+200F RIGHT-TO-LEFT MARK,
1810U+2028 LINE SEPARATOR,
1811and
1812U+2029 PARAGRAPH SEPARATOR.
1813
1814=item Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1815
1816(F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1817expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1818is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1819
1820=item Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
1821
1822(F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1823C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1824pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk,
1825it is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by using the
1826C<re 'eval'> pragma or by explicitly building the pattern from an
1827interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval(). See
1828L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1829
1830=item Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
1831
1832(F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1833assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1834pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1835
1836=item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by
1837S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
1838
1839(F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
1840any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
1841
1842The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
1843discovered.
1844
1845=item Excessively long <> operator
1846
1847(F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1848Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1849filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1850variable and glob that.
1851
1852=item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1853
1854(F) The C<exec> function is not implemented on some systems, e.g., Symbian
1855OS. See L<perlport>.
1856
1857=item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
1858
1859(F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1860
1861=item exists argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
1862
1863(F) The argument to C<exists> must be a hash or array element or a
1864subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
1865
1866 $foo{$bar}
1867 $ref->{"susie"}[12]
1868 &do_something
1869
1870=item exists argument is not a subroutine name
1871
1872(F) The argument to C<exists> for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine name,
1873and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this error.
1874
1875=item Exiting eval via %s
1876
1877(W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1878goto, or a loop control statement.
1879
1880=item Exiting format via %s
1881
1882(W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1883goto, or a loop control statement.
1884
1885=item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1886
1887(W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1888sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1889loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1890
1891=item Exiting subroutine via %s
1892
1893(W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1894as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1895
1896=item Exiting substitution via %s
1897
1898(W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1899as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1900
1901=item Expecting close bracket in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
1902
1903(F) You wrote something like
1904
1905 (?13
1906
1907to denote a capturing group of the form
1908L<C<(?I<PARNO>)>|perlre/(?PARNO) (?-PARNO) (?+PARNO) (?R) (?0)>,
1909but omitted the C<")">.
1910
1911=item Expecting '(?flags:(?[...' in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
1912
1913(F) The C<(?[...])> extended character class regular expression construct
1914only allows character classes (including character class escapes like
1915C<\d>), operators, and parentheses. The one exception is C<(?flags:...)>
1916containing at least one flag and exactly one C<(?[...])> construct.
1917This allows a regular expression containing just C<(?[...])> to be
1918interpolated. If you see this error message, then you probably
1919have some other C<(?...)> construct inside your character class. See
1920L<perlrecharclass/Extended Bracketed Character Classes>.
1921
1922=item Experimental subroutine signatures not enabled
1923
1924(F) To use subroutine signatures, you must first enable them:
1925
1926 no warnings "experimental::signatures";
1927 use feature "signatures";
1928 sub foo ($left, $right) { ... }
1929
1930=item Experimental "%s" subs not enabled
1931
1932(F) To use lexical subs, you must first enable them:
1933
1934 no warnings 'experimental::lexical_subs';
1935 use feature 'lexical_subs';
1936 my sub foo { ... }
1937
1938=item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1939
1940(W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1941the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1942usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1943e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1944
1945=item %s: Expression syntax
1946
1947(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1948Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1949
1950=item %s failed--call queue aborted
1951
1952(F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
1953CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
1954queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
1955
1956=item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
1957
1958(W regexp)(F) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1959character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1960in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". In a C<(?[...])>
1961construct, this is an error, rather than a warning. Consider quoting
1962the "-", "\-". The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression
1963the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1964
1965=item Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
1966
1967(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1968system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1969details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1970you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1971
1972=item fcntl is not implemented
1973
1974(F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1975PDP-11 or something?
1976
1977=item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
1978
1979(F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
1980is not possible.
1981
1982=item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1983
1984(W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string starts with a length indicator
1985which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1986a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1987C<u63> as the format.
1988
1989=item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1990
1991(W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1992it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1993"+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1994write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1995
1996=item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1997
1998(W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1999you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
2000with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with ">". If you intended only to
2001read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>. Another possibility
2002is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0 (also known as STDIN) for
2003output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
2004
2005=item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
2006
2007(W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
2008as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
2009previously.
2010
2011=item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
2012
2013(W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
2014as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
2015
2016=item Final $ should be \$ or $name
2017
2018(F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
2019a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
2020happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
2021name.
2022
2023=item flock() on closed filehandle %s
2024
2025(W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
2026some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
2027filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
2028same name?
2029
2030=item Format not terminated
2031
2032(F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
2033to the end of your file without finding such a line.
2034
2035=item Format %s redefined
2036
2037(W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
2038
2039 {
2040 no warnings 'redefine';
2041 eval "format NAME =...";
2042 }
2043
2044=item Found = in conditional, should be ==
2045
2046(W syntax) You said
2047
2048 if ($foo = 123)
2049
2050when you meant
2051
2052 if ($foo == 123)
2053
2054(or something like that).
2055
2056=item %s found where operator expected
2057
2058(S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
2059If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
2060operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
2061operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
2062
2063=item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
2064
2065(S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
2066
2067=item gethostent not implemented
2068
2069(F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
2070because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
2071on the Internet.
2072
2073=item get%sname() on closed socket %s
2074
2075(W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
2076socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
2077
2078=item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
2079
2080(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
2081C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
2082
2083=item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
2084
2085(W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
2086forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2087L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
2088
2089=item given is experimental
2090
2091(S experimental::smartmatch) C<given> depends on smartmatch, which
2092is experimental, so its behavior may change or even be removed
2093in any future release of perl. See the explanation under
2094L<perlsyn/Experimental Details on given and when>.
2095
2096=item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
2097
2098(F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
2099that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
2100declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
2101which package the global variable is in (using "::").
2102
2103=item glob failed (%s)
2104
2105(S glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used
2106for C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
2107pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
2108nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
2109resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell)
2110is broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables
2111in config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as
2112if it were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them
2113all empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
2114think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
2115C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
2116
2117=item Glob not terminated
2118
2119(F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
2120a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
2121not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
2122earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
2123
2124=item gmtime(%f) too large
2125
2126(W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was larger than
2127it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
2128date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2129not-a-number value).
2130
2131=item gmtime(%f) too small
2132
2133(W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was smaller than
2134it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong date.
2135
2136=item Got an error from DosAllocMem
2137
2138(P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
2139version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
2140
2141=item goto must have label
2142
2143(F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
2144unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
2145
2146=item Goto undefined subroutine%s
2147
2148(F) You tried to call a subroutine with C<goto &sub> syntax, but
2149the indicated subroutine hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2150has since been undefined.
2151
2152=item Group name must start with a non-digit word character in regex; marked by
2153S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2154
2155(F) Group names must follow the rules for perl identifiers, meaning
2156they must start with a non-digit word character. A common cause of
2157this error is using (?&0) instead of (?0). See L<perlre>.
2158
2159=item ()-group starts with a count
2160
2161(F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is supposed to follow
2162something: a template character or a ()-group. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2163
2164=item %s had compilation errors.
2165
2166(F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
2167
2168=item Had to create %s unexpectedly
2169
2170(S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
2171to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
2172created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
2173
2174=item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
2175
2176(D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
2177spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
2178
2179=item %s has too many errors
2180
2181(F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
2182Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
2183
2184=item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
2185
2186(W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2187(4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2188L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2189
2190=item Identifier too long
2191
2192(F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
2193about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
2194names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
2195of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
2196
2197=item Ignoring zero length \N{} in character class in regex; marked by
2198S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2199
2200(W regexp) Named Unicode character escapes C<(\N{...})> may return a
2201zero-length sequence. When such an escape is used in a character class
2202its behaviour is not well defined. Check that the correct escape has
2203been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
2204
2205=item Illegal binary digit %s
2206
2207(F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
2208
2209=item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
2210
2211(W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
2212binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
2213offending digit.
2214
2215=item Illegal character after '_' in prototype for %s : %s
2216
2217(W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype
2218declaration. The '_' in a prototype must be followed by a ';',
2219indicating the rest of the parameters are optional, or one of '@'
2220or '%', since those two will accept 0 or more final parameters.
2221
2222=item Illegal character \%o (carriage return)
2223
2224(F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
2225would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
2226when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
2227version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
2228to your Perl administrator.
2229
2230=item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
2231
2232(W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2233Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2234Perhaps you were trying to write a subroutine signature but didn't enable
2235that feature first (C<use feature 'signatures'>), so your signature was
2236instead interpreted as a bad prototype.
2237
2238=item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
2239
2240(F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
2241you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
2242
2243=item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
2244
2245(F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
2246
2247=item Illegal division by zero
2248
2249(F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
2250your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
2251meaningless input.
2252
2253=item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
2254
2255(W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
2256A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
2257number stopped before the illegal character.
2258
2259=item Illegal modulus zero
2260
2261(F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
2262numbers don't take to this kindly.
2263
2264=item Illegal number of bits in vec
2265
2266(F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
2267two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
2268
2269=item Illegal octal digit %s
2270
2271(F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2272
2273=item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
2274
2275(W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2276Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
2277
2278=item Illegal pattern in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2279
2280(F) You wrote something like
2281
2282 (?+foo)
2283
2284The C<"+"> is valid only when followed by digits, indicating a
2285capturing group. See
2286L<C<(?I<PARNO>)>|perlre/(?PARNO) (?-PARNO) (?+PARNO) (?R) (?0)>.
2287
2288=item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: -%c
2289
2290(X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
2291following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtw]>.
2292
2293=item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
2294
2295(W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
2296internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
2297delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
2298
2299=item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
2300
2301(W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
2302name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
2303didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
2304ignored.
2305
2306=item (in cleanup) %s
2307
2308(W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
2309the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
2310system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
2311times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
2312would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
2313
2314Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
2315also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
2316
2317=item Incomplete expression within '(?[ ])' in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE>
2318in m/%s/
2319
2320(F) There was a syntax error within the C<(?[ ])>. This can happen if the
2321expression inside the construct was completely empty, or if there are
2322too many or few operands for the number of operators. Perl is not smart
2323enough to give you a more precise indication as to what is wrong.
2324
2325=item Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on
2326parent '%s'
2327
2328(F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not
2329C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See the C3
2330documentation in L<mro> for more information.
2331
2332=item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
2333
2334(F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
2335Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
2336encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
2337
2338=item Infinite recursion in regex
2339
2340(F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input
2341text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive patterns
2342either consume text or fail.
2343
2344=item Initialization of state variables in list context currently forbidden
2345
2346(F) Currently the implementation of "state" only permits the
2347initialization of scalar variables in scalar context. Re-write
2348C<state ($a) = 42> as C<state $a = 42> to change from list to scalar
2349context. Constructions such as C<state (@a) = foo()> will be
2350supported in a future perl release.
2351
2352=item %%s[%s] in scalar context better written as $%s[%s]
2353
2354(W syntax) In scalar context, you've used an array index/value slice
2355(indicated by %) to select a single element of an array. Generally
2356it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $). The difference
2357is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a scalar, both in the value it
2358returns and when evaluating its argument, while C<%foo[&bar]> provides
2359a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things if you're
2360expecting only one subscript. When called in list context, it also
2361returns the index (what C<&bar> returns) in addition to the value.
2362
2363=item %%s{%s} in scalar context better written as $%s{%s}
2364
2365(W syntax) In scalar context, you've used a hash key/value slice
2366(indicated by %) to select a single element of a hash. Generally it's
2367better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $). The difference
2368is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both in the value
2369it returns and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> and
2370provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
2371if you're expecting only one subscript. When called in list context,
2372it also returns the key in addition to the value.
2373
2374=item Insecure dependency in %s
2375
2376(F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
2377The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
2378setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
2379tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
2380from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
2381such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
2382L<perlsec> for more information.
2383
2384=item Insecure directory in %s
2385
2386(F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2387setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
2388the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
2389See L<perlsec>.
2390
2391=item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
2392
2393(F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2394setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
2395C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
2396supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
2397the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
2398
2399=item Insecure user-defined property %s
2400
2401(F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
2402expression that contains a call to a user-defined character property
2403function, i.e. C<\p{IsFoo}> or C<\p{InFoo}>.
2404See L<perlunicode/User-Defined Character Properties> and L<perlsec>.
2405
2406=item In '(?...)', splitting the initial '(?' is deprecated in regex;
2407marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2408
2409(D regexp, deprecated) The two-character sequence C<"(?"> in
2410this context in a regular expression pattern should be an
2411indivisible token, with nothing intervening between the C<"(">
2412and the C<"?">, but you separated them. Due to an accident of
2413implementation, this prohibition was not enforced, but we do
2414plan to forbid it in a future Perl version. This message
2415serves as giving you fair warning of this pending change.
2416
2417=item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2418
2419(F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2420or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2421integers for your architecture.
2422
2423=item Integer overflow in %s number
2424
2425(S overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2426either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2427your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2428On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2429representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
24300b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2431transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2432internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2433operations.
2434
2435=item Integer overflow in srand
2436
2437(S overflow) The number you have passed to srand is too big to fit
2438in your architecture's integer representation. The number has been
2439replaced with the largest integer supported (0xFFFFFFFF on 32-bit
2440architectures). This means you may be getting less randomness than
2441you expect, because different random seeds above the maximum will
2442return the same sequence of random numbers.
2443
2444=item Integer overflow in version
2445
2446=item Integer overflow in version %d
2447
2448(W overflow) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for
2449the size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
2450because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use an
2451element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by trying
2452to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like 100/9.
2453
2454=item Internal disaster in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2455
2456(P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
2457The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
2458discovered.
2459
2460=item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2461
2462(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2463you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2464to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2465L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2466Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2467terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
2468
2469=item internal %<num>p might conflict with future printf extensions
2470
2471(S internal) Perl's internal routine that handles C<printf> and C<sprintf>
2472formatting follows a slightly different set of rules when called from
2473C or XS code. Specifically, formats consisting of digits followed
2474by "p" (e.g., "%7p") are reserved for future use. If you see this
2475message, then an XS module tried to call that routine with one such
2476reserved format.
2477
2478=item Internal urp in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2479
2480(P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2481S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
2482discovered.
2483
2484=item %s (...) interpreted as function
2485
2486(W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
2487followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
2488operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
2489L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
2490
2491=item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2492
2493(F) The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2494by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2495
2496=item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2497
2498(F) The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2499recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2500
2501=item Invalid character in charnames alias definition; marked by
2502S<<-- HERE> in '%s
2503
2504(F) You tried to create a custom alias for a character name, with
2505the C<:alias> option to C<use charnames> and the specified character in
2506the indicated name isn't valid. See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
2507
2508=item Invalid \0 character in %s for %s: %s\0%s
2509
2510(W syscalls) Embedded \0 characters in pathnames or other system call
2511arguments produce a warning as of 5.20. The parts after the \0 were
2512formerly ignored by system calls.
2513
2514=item Invalid character in \N{...}; marked by S<<-- HERE> in \N{%s}
2515
2516(F) Only certain characters are valid for character names. The
2517indicated one isn't. See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
2518
2519=item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2520
2521(W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2522L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
2523
2524=item Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by
2525S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2526
2527(W regexp)(F) The numeric escape (for example C<\xHH>) of value < 256
2528didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion
2529from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma.
2530The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD)
2531instead, except within S<C<(?[ ])>>, where it is a fatal error.
2532The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
2533escape was discovered.
2534
2535=item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
2536
2537=item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...} in regex; marked by
2538S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2539
2540(F) The character constant represented by C<...> is not a valid hexadecimal
2541number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use a character other than
25420 - 9 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
2543
2544=item Invalid module name %s with -%c option: contains single ':'
2545
2546(F) The module argument to perl's B<-m> and B<-M> command-line options
2547cannot contain single colons in the module name, but only in the
2548arguments after "=". In other words, B<-MFoo::Bar=:baz> is ok, but
2549B<-MFoo:Bar=baz> is not.
2550
2551=item Invalid mro name: '%s'
2552
2553(F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")> or C<use mro 'foo'>,
2554where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO). Currently,
2555the only valid ones supported are C<dfs> and C<c3>, unless you have loaded
2556a module that is a MRO plugin. See L<mro> and L<perlmroapi>.
2557
2558=item Invalid negative number (%s) in chr
2559
2560(W utf8) You passed a negative number to C<chr>. Negative numbers are
2561not valid characters numbers, so it return the Unicode replacement
2562character (U+FFFD).
2563
2564=item invalid option -D%c, use -D'' to see choices
2565
2566(S debugging) Perl was called with invalid debugger flags. Call perl
2567with the B<-D> option with no flags to see the list of acceptable values.
2568See also L<perlrun/-Dletters>.
2569
2570=item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2571
2572(F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2573greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2574C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2575up to C<ff>. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
2576problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2577
2578=item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2579
2580(F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2581character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2582
2583=item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2584
2585(F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2586elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2587parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2588See L<attributes>.
2589
2590=item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2591
2592(W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other
2593than a colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2594If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2595list was terminated too soon.
2596
2597=item Invalid strict version format (%s)
2598
2599(F) A version number did not meet the "strict" criteria for versions.
2600A "strict" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2601decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2602v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least three components.
2603The parenthesized text indicates which criteria were not met.
2604See the L<version> module for more details on allowed version formats.
2605
2606=item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2607
2608(F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2609See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2610
2611(W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2612silently ignored.
2613
2614=item Invalid version format (%s)
2615
2616(F) A version number did not meet the "lax" criteria for versions.
2617A "lax" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2618decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2619v-string. If the v-string has fewer than three components, it
2620must have a leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading 'v' is
2621optional. Both decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a
2622trailing "alpha" component separated by an underscore character
2623after a fractional or dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized
2624text indicates which criteria were not met. See the L<version> module
2625for more details on allowed version formats.
2626
2627=item Invalid version object
2628
2629(F) The internal structure of the version object was invalid.
2630Perhaps the internals were modified directly in some way or
2631an arbitrary reference was blessed into the "version" class.
2632
2633=item In '(*VERB...)', splitting the initial '(*' is deprecated in regex;
2634marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2635
2636(D regexp, deprecated) The two-character sequence C<"(*"> in
2637this context in a regular expression pattern should be an
2638indivisible token, with nothing intervening between the C<"(">
2639and the C<"*">, but you separated them. Due to an accident of
2640implementation, this prohibition was not enforced, but we do
2641plan to forbid it in a future Perl version. This message
2642serves as giving you fair warning of this pending change.
2643
2644=item ioctl is not implemented
2645
2646(F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2647strange for a machine that supports C.
2648
2649=item ioctl() on unopened %s
2650
2651(W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2652Check your control flow and number of arguments.
2653
2654=item IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
2655
2656(F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2657you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO, Perl must be configured
2658with 'useperlio'.
2659
2660=item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2661
2662(F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2663neither as a system call nor an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2664
2665=item $* is no longer supported
2666
2667(D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older
2668perls, has been removed as of 5.10.0 and is no longer supported. In
2669previous versions of perl the use of C<$*> enabled or disabled multi-line
2670matching within a string.
2671
2672Instead of using C<$*> you should use the C</m> (and maybe C</s>) regexp
2673modifiers. You can enable C</m> for a lexical scope (even a whole file)
2674with C<use re '/m'>. (In older versions: when C<$*> was set to a true value
2675then all regular expressions behaved as if they were written using C</m>.)
2676
2677=item $# is no longer supported
2678
2679(D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older
2680perls, has been removed as of 5.10.0 and is no longer supported. You
2681should use the printf/sprintf functions instead.
2682
2683=item '%s' is not a code reference
2684
2685(W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of
2686overload::constant needs to be a code reference. Either
2687an anonymous subroutine, or a reference to a subroutine.
2688
2689=item '%s' is not an overloadable type
2690
2691(W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2692unaware of.
2693
2694=item -i used with no filenames on the command line, reading from STDIN
2695
2696(S inplace) The C<-i> option was passed on the command line, indicating
2697that the script is intended to edit files in place, but no files were
2698given. This is usually a mistake, since editing STDIN in place doesn't
2699make sense, and can be confusing because it can make perl look like
2700it is hanging when it is really just trying to read from STDIN. You
2701should either pass a filename to edit, or remove C<-i> from the command
2702line. See L<perlrun> for more details.
2703
2704=item Junk on end of regexp in regex m/%s/
2705
2706(P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2707
2708=item keys on reference is experimental
2709
2710(S experimental::autoderef) C<keys> with a scalar argument is experimental
2711and may change or be removed in a future Perl version. If you want to
2712take the risk of using this feature, simply disable this warning:
2713
2714 no warnings "experimental::autoderef";
2715
2716=item Label not found for "last %s"
2717
2718(F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2719of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2720L<perlfunc/last>.
2721
2722=item Label not found for "next %s"
2723
2724(F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2725that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2726L<perlfunc/last>.
2727
2728=item Label not found for "redo %s"
2729
2730(F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2731that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2732L<perlfunc/last>.
2733
2734=item leaving effective %s failed
2735
2736(F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2737effective uids or gids failed.
2738
2739=item length/code after end of string in unpack
2740
2741(F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2742length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2743an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2744
2745=item length() used on %s (did you mean "scalar(%s)"?)
2746
2747(W syntax) You used length() on either an array or a hash when you
2748probably wanted a count of the items.
2749
2750Array size can be obtained by doing:
2751
2752 scalar(@array);
2753
2754The number of items in a hash can be obtained by doing:
2755
2756 scalar(keys %hash);
2757
2758=item Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
2759
2760(F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse
2761(using L<lex_stuff_pvn|perlapi/lex_stuff_pvn> or similar), but tried to insert a character that
2762couldn't be part of the current input. This is an inherent pitfall
2763of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the reasons to avoid it. Where
2764it is necessary to stuff, stuffing only plain ASCII is recommended.
2765
2766=item Lexing code internal error (%s)
2767
2768(F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a
2769detectable way.
2770
2771=item listen() on closed socket %s
2772
2773(W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2774to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2775L<perlfunc/listen>.
2776
2777=item List form of piped open not implemented
2778
2779(F) On some platforms, notably Windows, the three-or-more-arguments
2780form of C<open> does not support pipes, such as C<open($pipe, '|-', @args)>.
2781Use the two-argument C<open($pipe, '|prog arg1 arg2...')> form instead.
2782
2783=item localtime(%f) too large
2784
2785(W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was larger
2786than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2787wrong date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2788not-a-number value).
2789
2790=item localtime(%f) too small
2791
2792(W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was smaller
2793than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2794wrong date.
2795
2796=item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
2797
2798(F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2799handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2800
2801=item Lost precision when %s %f by 1
2802
2803(W imprecision) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by one
2804is too large for the underlying floating point representation to store
2805accurately, hence the target of C<++> or C<--> is unchanged. Perl issues this
2806warning because it has already switched from integers to floating point
2807when values are too large for integers, and now even floating point is
2808insufficient. You may wish to switch to using L<Math::BigInt> explicitly.
2809
2810=item lstat() on filehandle%s
2811
2812(W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2813by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2814instead on the filehandle.)
2815
2816=item lvalue attribute %s already-defined subroutine
2817
2818(W misc) Although L<attributes.pm|attributes> allows this, turning the lvalue
2819attribute on or off on a Perl subroutine that is already defined
2820does not always work properly. It may or may not do what you
2821want, depending on what code is inside the subroutine, with exact
2822details subject to change between Perl versions. Only do this
2823if you really know what you are doing.
2824
2825=item lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined
2826
2827(W misc) Using the C<:lvalue> declarative syntax to make a Perl
2828subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it has been defined is
2829not permitted. To make the subroutine an lvalue subroutine,
2830add the lvalue attribute to the definition, or put the C<sub
2831foo :lvalue;> declaration before the definition.
2832
2833See also L<attributes.pm|attributes>.
2834
2835=item Magical list constants are not supported
2836
2837(F) You assigned a magical array to a stash element, and then tried
2838to use the subroutine from the same slot. You are asking Perl to do
2839something it cannot do, details subject to change between Perl versions.
2840
2841=item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2842
2843(F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2844are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2845
2846=item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2847
2848(F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2849are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2850
2851=item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2852
2853(F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2854
2855 prefix1;prefix2
2856
2857or
2858 prefix1 prefix2
2859
2860with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2861a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2862appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2863"PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2864
2865=item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2866
2867(F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2868syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2869obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2870when the function is called.
2871Perhaps the function's author was trying to write a subroutine signature
2872but didn't enable that feature first (C<use feature 'signatures'>),
2873so the signature was instead interpreted as a bad prototype.
2874
2875=item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2876
2877(S utf8)(F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2878encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
2879
2880One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2881you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
28828-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2883
2884If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2885sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2886set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2887message.
2888
2889See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
2890
2891=item Malformed UTF-8 character immediately after '%s'
2892
2893(F) You said C<use utf8>, but the program file doesn't comply with UTF-8
2894encoding rules. The message prints out the properly encoded characters
2895just before the first bad one. If C<utf8> warnings are enabled, a
2896warning is generated that gives more details about the type of
2897malformation.
2898
2899=item Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N{%s} immediately after '%s'
2900
2901(F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
2902
2903=item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2904
2905(F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2906rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2907
2908=item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2909
2910(F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2911rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2912
2913=item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2914
2915(F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2916rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2917
2918=item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2919
2920(F) Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2921doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2922
2923=item Mandatory parameter follows optional parameter
2924
2925(F) In a subroutine signature, you wrote something like "$a = undef,
2926$b", making an earlier parameter optional and a later one mandatory.
2927Parameters are filled from left to right, so it's impossible for the
2928caller to omit an earlier one and pass a later one. If you want to act
2929as if the parameters are filled from right to left, declare the rightmost
2930optional and then shuffle the parameters around in the subroutine's body.
2931
2932=item Matched non-Unicode code point 0x%X against Unicode property; may
2933not be portable
2934
2935(S non_unicode) Perl allows strings to contain a superset of
2936Unicode code points; each code point may be as large as what is storable
2937in an unsigned integer on your system, but these may not be accepted by
2938other languages/systems. This message occurs when you matched a string
2939containing such a code point against a regular expression pattern, and
2940the code point was matched against a Unicode property, C<\p{...}> or
2941C<\P{...}>. Unicode properties are only defined on Unicode code points,
2942so the result of this match is undefined by Unicode, but Perl (starting
2943in v5.20) treats non-Unicode code points as if they were typical
2944unassigned Unicode ones, and matched this one accordingly. Whether a
2945given property matches these code points or not is specified in
2946L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>.
2947
2948This message is suppressed (unless it has been made fatal) if it is
2949immaterial to the results of the match if the code point is Unicode or
2950not. For example, the property C<\p{ASCII_Hex_Digit}> only can match
2951the 22 characters C<[0-9A-Fa-f]>, so obviously all other code points,
2952Unicode or not, won't match it. (And C<\P{ASCII_Hex_Digit}> will match
2953every code point except these 22.)
2954
2955Getting this message indicates that the outcome of the match arguably
2956should have been the opposite of what actually happened. If you think
2957that is the case, you may wish to make the C<non_unicode> warnings
2958category fatal; if you agree with Perl's decision, you may wish to turn
2959off this category.
2960
2961See L<perlunicode/Beyond Unicode code points> for more information.
2962
2963=item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
2964m/%s/
2965
2966(W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2967regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The S<<-- HERE>
2968shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
2969See L<perlre>.
2970
2971=item Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded
2972
2973(F) Perl aborted due to too high a number of signals pending. This
2974usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
2975too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
2976resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
2977safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
2978
2979=item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2980
2981(W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2982interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2983"use" or "my".
2984
2985=item '%' may not be used in pack
2986
2987(F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2988checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2989See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2990
2991=item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2992
2993(F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2994doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2995
2996=item Method %s not permitted
2997
2998See Server error.
2999
3000=item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
3001
3002(S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
3003by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
3004ended earlier on the current line.
3005
3006=item Misplaced _ in number
3007
3008(W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
3009separate two digits.
3010
3011=item Missing argument in %s
3012
3013(W uninitialized) A printf-type format required more arguments than were
3014supplied.
3015
3016=item Missing argument to -%c
3017
3018(F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
3019immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
3020
3021=item Missing braces on \N{}
3022
3023=item Missing braces on \N{} in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3024
3025(F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
3026double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space
3027(or comment) between the C<\N> and the C<{> in a regex with the C</x> modifier.
3028This modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately
3029follow the C<\N>.
3030
3031=item Missing braces on \o{}
3032
3033(F) A C<\o> must be followed immediately by a C<{> in double-quotish context.
3034
3035=item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
3036
3037(F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
3038"indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
3039
3040=item Missing command in piped open
3041
3042(W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
3043C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
3044blank.
3045
3046=item Missing control char name in \c
3047
3048(F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
3049character name.
3050
3051=item Missing ']' in prototype for %s : %s
3052
3053(W illegalproto) A grouping was started with C<[> but never closed with C<]>.
3054
3055=item Missing name in "%s sub"
3056
3057(F) The syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
3058they have a name with which they can be found.
3059
3060=item Missing $ on loop variable
3061
3062(F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
3063are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
3064can vary from one line to the next.
3065
3066=item (Missing operator before %s?)
3067
3068(S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3069"%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
3070
3071=item Missing right brace on \%c{} in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3072
3073(F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}>, C<\P{...}>, or C<\N{...}>.
3074
3075=item Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N
3076
3077(F) C<\N> has two meanings.
3078
3079The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed in braces,
3080meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that
3081name. Thus C<\N{ASTERISK}> is another way of writing C<*>, valid in both
3082double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns,
3083it doesn't have the meaning an unescaped C<*> does.
3084
3085Starting in Perl 5.12.0, C<\N> also can have an additional meaning (only)
3086in patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short
3087for C<[^\n]>, and like C<.> but is not affected by the C</s> regex modifier.)
3088
3089This can lead to some ambiguities. When C<\N> is not followed immediately
3090by a left brace, Perl assumes the C<[^\n]> meaning. Also, if the braces
3091form a valid quantifier such as C<\N{3}> or C<\N{5,}>, Perl assumes that this
3092means to match the given quantity of non-newlines (in these examples,
30933; and 5 or more, respectively). In all other case, where there is a
3094C<\N{> and a matching C<}>, Perl assumes that a character name is desired.
3095
3096However, if there is no matching C<}>, Perl doesn't know if it was
3097mistakenly omitted, or if C<[^\n]{> was desired, and raises this error.
3098If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant the latter,
3099escape the brace with a backslash, like so: C<\N\{>
3100
3101=item Missing right curly or square bracket
3102
3103(F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
3104ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
3105were last editing.
3106
3107=item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
3108
3109(S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3110"%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
3111the previous line just because you saw this message.
3112
3113=item Modification of a read-only value attempted
3114
3115(F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
3116constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
3117catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
3118
3119 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
3120 mod(2);
3121
3122Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
3123
3124Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
3125is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
3126
3127 $x = 1;
3128 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
3129 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to
3130 } # modify the 2
3131
3132=item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
3133
3134(F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
3135subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
3136backwards.
3137
3138=item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
3139
3140(P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
3141couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
3142
3143=item Module name must be constant
3144
3145(F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
3146
3147=item Module name required with -%c option
3148
3149(F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
3150you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
3151about C<-M> and C<-m>.
3152
3153=item More than one argument to '%s' open
3154
3155(F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
3156can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
3157list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
3158See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
3159
3160=item mprotect for COW string %p %u failed with %d
3161
3162(S) You compiled perl with B<-D>PERL_DEBUG_READONLY_COW (see
3163L<perlguts/"Copy on Write">), but a shared string buffer
3164could not be made read-only.
3165
3166=item mprotect for %p %u failed with %d
3167
3168(S) You compiled perl with B<-D>PERL_DEBUG_READONLY_OPS (see L<perlhacktips>),
3169but an op tree could not be made read-only.
3170
3171=item mprotect RW for COW string %p %u failed with %d
3172
3173(S) You compiled perl with B<-D>PERL_DEBUG_READONLY_COW (see
3174L<perlguts/"Copy on Write">), but a read-only shared string
3175buffer could not be made mutable.
3176
3177=item mprotect RW for %p %u failed with %d
3178
3179(S) You compiled perl with B<-D>PERL_DEBUG_READONLY_OPS (see
3180L<perlhacktips>), but a read-only op tree could not be made
3181mutable before freeing the ops.
3182
3183=item msg%s not implemented
3184
3185(F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
3186
3187=item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
3188
3189(W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
3190They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
3191
3192=item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
3193
3194(F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
3195follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
3196See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3197
3198=item "my sub" not yet implemented
3199
3200(F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
3201that yet.
3202
3203=item "my %s" used in sort comparison
3204
3205(W syntax) The package variables $a and $b are used for sort comparisons.
3206You used $a or $b in as an operand to the C<< <=> >> or C<cmp> operator inside a
3207sort comparison block, and the variable had earlier been declared as a
3208lexical variable. Either qualify the sort variable with the package
3209name, or rename the lexical variable.
3210
3211=item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
3212
3213(F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
3214sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
3215local() if you want to localize a package variable.
3216
3217=item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
3218
3219(W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable
3220names. If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then
3221just mention it again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our>
3222declaration is also provided for this purpose.
3223
3224NOTE: This warning detects package symbols that have been used only
3225once. This means lexical variables will never trigger this warning.
3226It also means that all of the package variables $c, @c, %c, as well
3227as *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or
3228format) are considered the same; if a program uses $c only once
3229but also uses any of the others it will not trigger this warning.
3230Symbols beginning with an underscore and symbols using special
3231identifiers (q.v. L<perldata>) are exempt from this warning.
3232
3233=item Need exactly 3 octal digits in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3234
3235(F) Within S<C<(?[ ])>>, all constants interpreted as octal need to be
3236exactly 3 digits long. This helps catch some ambiguities. If your
3237constant is too short, add leading zeros, like
3238
3239 (?[ [ \078 ] ]) # Syntax error!
3240 (?[ [ \0078 ] ]) # Works
3241 (?[ [ \007 8 ] ]) # Clearer
3242
3243The maximum number this construct can express is C<\777>. If you
3244need a larger one, you need to use L<\o{}|perlrebackslash/Octal escapes> instead. If you meant
3245two separate things, you need to separate them:
3246
3247 (?[ [ \7776 ] ]) # Syntax error!
3248 (?[ [ \o{7776} ] ]) # One meaning
3249 (?[ [ \777 6 ] ]) # Another meaning
3250 (?[ [ \777 \006 ] ]) # Still another
3251
3252=item Negative '/' count in unpack
3253
3254(F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
3255negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3256
3257=item Negative length
3258
3259(F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
3260length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
3261
3262=item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
3263
3264(F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
3265greater than or equal to zero.
3266
3267=item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3268
3269(F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses.
3270So things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The S<<-- HERE> shows
3271whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
3272
3273Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
3274C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
3275
3276=item %s never introduced
3277
3278(S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
3279scope before it could possibly have been used.
3280
3281=item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
3282
3283(F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
3284real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
3285See L<mro>.
3286
3287=item \N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...} in regex;
3288marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3289
3290(F) The new (as of Perl 5.12) meaning of C<\N> as C<[^\n]> is not valid in a
3291bracketed character class, for the same reason that C<.> in a character
3292class loses its specialness: it matches almost everything, which is
3293probably not what you want.
3294
3295=item \N{} in character class restricted to one character in regex; marked
3296by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3297
3298(F) Named Unicode character escapes C<(\N{...})> may return a
3299multi-character sequence. Such an escape may not be used in
3300a character class, because character classes always match one
3301character of input. Check that the correct escape has been used,
3302and the correct charname handler is in scope. The S<<-- HERE> shows
3303whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
3304
3305=item \N{NAME} must be resolved by the lexer in regex; marked by
3306S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3307
3308(F) When compiling a regex pattern, an unresolved named character or
3309sequence was encountered. This can happen in any of several ways that
3310bypass the lexer, such as using single-quotish context, or an extra
3311backslash in double-quotish:
3312
3313 $re = '\N{SPACE}'; # Wrong!
3314 $re = "\\N{SPACE}"; # Wrong!
3315 /$re/;
3316
3317Instead, use double-quotes with a single backslash:
3318
3319 $re = "\N{SPACE}"; # ok
3320 /$re/;
3321
3322The lexer can be bypassed as well by creating the pattern from smaller
3323components:
3324
3325 $re = '\N';
3326 /${re}{SPACE}/; # Wrong!
3327
3328It's not a good idea to split a construct in the middle like this, and
3329it doesn't work here. Instead use the solution above.
3330
3331Finally, the message also can happen under the C</x> regex modifier when the
3332C<\N> is separated by spaces from the C<{>, in which case, remove the spaces.
3333
3334 /\N {SPACE}/x; # Wrong!
3335 /\N{SPACE}/x; # ok
3336
3337=item No %s allowed while running setuid
3338
3339(F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
3340setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
3341will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
3342securable. See L<perlsec>.
3343
3344=item No code specified for -%c
3345
3346(F) Perl's B<-e> and B<-E> command-line options require an argument. If
3347you want to run an empty program, pass the empty string as a separate
3348argument or run a program consisting of a single 0 or 1:
3349
3350 perl -e ""
3351 perl -e0
3352 perl -e1
3353
3354=item No comma allowed after %s
3355
3356(F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is
3357not allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
3358Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
3359
3360One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported
3361a constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
3362importing took place, it may for example be that your operating
3363system does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did
3364use an explicit import list for the constants you expect to see;
3365please see L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an
3366explicit import list would probably have caught this error earlier
3367it naturally does not remedy the fact that your operating system
3368still does not support that constant. Maybe you have a typo in
3369the constants of the symbol import list of B<use> or B<import> or in the
3370constant name at the line where this error was triggered?
3371
3372=item No command into which to pipe on command line
3373
3374(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3375redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
3376doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
3377
3378=item No DB::DB routine defined
3379
3380(F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3381for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3382module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
3383statement.
3384
3385=item No dbm on this machine
3386
3387(P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
3388supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
3389
3390=item No DB::sub routine defined
3391
3392(F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3393for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3394module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
3395of each ordinary subroutine call.
3396
3397=item No directory specified for -I
3398
3399(F) The B<-I> command-line switch requires a directory name as part of the
3400I<same> argument. Use B<-Ilib>, for instance. B<-I lib> won't work.
3401
3402=item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
3403
3404(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3405redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
3406find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
3407
3408=item No group ending character '%c' found in template
3409
3410(F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
3411matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3412
3413=item No input file after < on command line
3414
3415(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3416redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
3417name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
3418
3419=item No next::method '%s' found for %s
3420
3421(F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
3422in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
3423it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
3424or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
3425
3426=item Non-hex character in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3427
3428(F) In a regular expression, there was a non-hexadecimal character where
3429a hex one was expected, like
3430
3431 (?[ [ \xDG ] ])
3432 (?[ [ \x{DEKA} ] ])
3433
3434=item Non-octal character in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3435
3436(F) In a regular expression, there was a non-octal character where
3437an octal one was expected, like
3438
3439 (?[ [ \o{1278} ] ])
3440
3441=item Non-octal character '%c'. Resolved as "%s"
3442
3443(W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character was
3444unexpectedly encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value
3445is as indicated.
3446
3447=item "no" not allowed in expression
3448
3449(F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
3450returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
3451
3452=item Non-string passed as bitmask
3453
3454(W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
3455Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
3456select. See L<perlfunc/select>.
3457
3458=item No output file after > on command line
3459
3460(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3461redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
3462doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
3463
3464=item No output file after > or >> on command line
3465
3466(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3467redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
3468find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
3469
3470=item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
3471
3472(F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
3473declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
3474semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
3475
3476=item No Perl script found in input
3477
3478(F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
3479with #! and containing the word "perl".
3480
3481=item No setregid available
3482
3483(F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
3484your system.
3485
3486=item No setreuid available
3487
3488(F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
3489your system.
3490
3491=item No such class %s
3492
3493(F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state"
3494declaration, but this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
3495
3496=item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
3497
3498(F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed
3499variable but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type.
3500The indicated package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the
3501L<fields> pragma.
3502
3503=item No such hook: %s
3504
3505(F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl.
3506Currently, Perl accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks.
3507
3508=item No such pipe open
3509
3510(P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
3511close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
3512earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
3513
3514=item No such signal: SIG%s
3515
3516(W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
3517not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
3518names on your system.
3519
3520=item Not a CODE reference
3521
3522(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3523subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3524use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3525also L<perlref>.
3526
3527=item Not a GLOB reference
3528
3529(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
3530symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
3531something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
3532kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3533
3534=item Not a HASH reference
3535
3536(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
3537reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
3538find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3539
3540=item Not an ARRAY reference
3541
3542(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
3543a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3544to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3545
3546=item Not an unblessed ARRAY reference
3547
3548(F) You passed a reference to a blessed array to C<push>, C<shift> or
3549another array function. These only accept unblessed array references
3550or arrays beginning explicitly with C<@>.
3551
3552=item Not a SCALAR reference
3553
3554(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
3555a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3556to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3557
3558=item Not a subroutine reference
3559
3560(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3561subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3562use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3563also L<perlref>.
3564
3565=item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
3566
3567(F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
3568doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
3569
3570=item Not enough arguments for %s
3571
3572(F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
3573
3574=item Not enough format arguments
3575
3576(W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
3577supplied. See L<perlform>.
3578
3579=item %s: not found
3580
3581(A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3582of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3583yourself.
3584
3585=item (?[...]) not valid in locale in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3586
3587(F) C<(?[...])> cannot be used within the scope of a C<S<use locale>> or with
3588an C</l> regular expression modifier, as that would require deferring
3589to run-time the calculation of what it should evaluate to, and it is
3590regex compile-time only.
3591
3592=item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
3593
3594(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
3595timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
3596to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
3597F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
3598need to be added to UTC to get local time.
3599
3600=item Null filename used
3601
3602(F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
3603machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
3604
3605=item NULL OP IN RUN
3606
3607(S debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
3608pointer.
3609
3610=item Null picture in formline
3611
3612(F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
3613specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
3614supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
3615
3616=item Null realloc
3617
3618(P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
3619
3620=item NULL regexp argument
3621
3622(P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
3623
3624=item NULL regexp parameter
3625
3626(P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
3627
3628=item Number too long
3629
3630(F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
3631about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
3632versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
3633the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
3634"1_000_000").
3635
3636=item Number with no digits
3637
3638(F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like
3639a number. This happens, for example with C<\o{}>, with no number between
3640the braces.
3641
3642=item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
3643
3644(W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
3645(4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
3646L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
3647
3648=item Odd name/value argument for subroutine
3649
3650(F) A subroutine using a slurpy hash parameter in its signature
3651received an odd number of arguments to populate the hash. It requires
3652the arguments to be paired, with the same number of keys as values.
3653The caller of the subroutine is presumably at fault. Inconveniently,
3654this error will be reported at the location of the subroutine, not that
3655of the caller.
3656
3657=item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
3658
3659(W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
3660arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
3661
3662=item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
3663
3664(W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3665which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3666
3667=item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
3668
3669(W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3670which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3671
3672=item Offset outside string
3673
3674(F)(W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
3675with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
3676imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
3677take place when going past the end of the string when either
3678C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
3679for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
3680with real files).
3681
3682=item %s() on unopened %s
3683
3684(W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
3685never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
3686call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
3687
3688=item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
3689
3690(W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
3691that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3692
3693=item oops: oopsAV
3694
3695(S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3696
3697=item oops: oopsHV
3698
3699(S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3700
3701=item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
3702
3703(D io, deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
3704a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
3705Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3706and is deprecated.
3707
3708=item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
3709
3710(D io, deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
3711a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
3712Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3713and is deprecated.
3714
3715=item Operand with no preceding operator in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
3716m/%s/
3717
3718(F) You wrote something like
3719
3720 (?[ \p{Digit} \p{Thai} ])
3721
3722There are two operands, but no operator giving how you want to combine
3723them.
3724
3725=item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
3726
3727(F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
3728handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
3729of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
3730the C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
3731
3732=item Operation "%s" returns its argument for non-Unicode code point 0x%X
3733
3734(S non_unicode) You performed an operation requiring Unicode semantics
3735on a code point that is not in Unicode, so what it should do is not
3736defined. Perl has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn you.
3737
3738If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3739matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3740
3741If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3742C<no warnings 'non_unicode';>.
3743
3744=item Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
3745
3746(S surrogate) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3747semantics on a Unicode surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use
3748of surrogates for anything but storing strings in UTF-16, but
3749semantics are (reluctantly) defined for the surrogates, and
3750they are to do nothing for this operation. Because the use of
3751surrogates can be dangerous, Perl warns.
3752
3753If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3754matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3755
3756If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3757C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
3758
3759=item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
3760
3761(S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
3762was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
3763use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
3764example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
3765"*foo * 'foo'".
3766
3767=item Optional parameter lacks default expression
3768
3769(F) In a subroutine signature, you wrote something like "$a =", making a
3770named optional parameter without a default value. A nameless optional
3771parameter is permitted to have no default value, but a named one must
3772have a specific default. You probably want "$a = undef".
3773
3774=item "our" variable %s redeclared
3775
3776(W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
3777in the current lexical scope.
3778
3779=item Out of memory!
3780
3781(X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3782remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
3783no option but to exit immediately.
3784
3785At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
3786process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
3787C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
3788the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
3789and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
3790
3791=item Out of memory during %s extend
3792
3793(X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
3794the largest possible memory allocation.
3795
3796=item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
3797
3798(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3799remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
3800the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
3801possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
3802
3803=item Out of memory during request for %s
3804
3805(X)(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
3806insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
3807request.
3808
3809The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
3810depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
3811However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
3812emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
3813is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
3814where the failed request happened.
3815
3816=item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
3817
3818(F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
3819is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
3820C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
3821
3822=item Out of memory for yacc stack
3823
3824(F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
3825parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
3826otherwise.
3827
3828=item '.' outside of string in pack
3829
3830(F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
3831position to before the start of the packed string being built.
3832
3833=item '@' outside of string in unpack
3834
3835(F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3836the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3837
3838=item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
3839
3840(F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3841the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
3842UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3843
3844=item overload arg '%s' is invalid
3845
3846(W overload) The L<overload> pragma was passed an argument it did not
3847recognize. Did you mistype an operator?
3848
3849=item Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
3850
3851(F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was dereferenced,
3852but the overloaded operation did not return a reference. See
3853L<overload>.
3854
3855=item Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
3856
3857(F) An object with a C<qr> overload was used as part of a match, but the
3858overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See L<overload>.
3859
3860=item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
3861
3862(W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
3863package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
3864some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
3865mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
3866
3867=item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
3868
3869(F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3870signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3871
3872=item page overflow
3873
3874(W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
3875page. See L<perlform>.
3876
3877=item panic: %s
3878
3879(P) An internal error.
3880
3881=item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
3882
3883(P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
3884an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
3885platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
3886enter this branch on this platform.
3887
3888=item panic: child pseudo-process was never scheduled
3889
3890(P) A child pseudo-process in the ithreads implementation on Windows
3891was not scheduled within the time period allowed and therefore was not
3892able to initialize properly.
3893
3894=item panic: ck_grep, type=%u
3895
3896(P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
3897
3898=item panic: ck_split, type=%u
3899
3900(P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
3901
3902=item panic: corrupt saved stack index %ld
3903
3904(P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
3905there are in the savestack.
3906
3907=item panic: del_backref
3908
3909(P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
3910reference.
3911
3912=item panic: die %s
3913
3914(P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
3915it wasn't an eval context.
3916
3917=item panic: do_subst
3918
3919(P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
3920data.
3921
3922=item panic: do_trans_%s
3923
3924(P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
3925data.
3926
3927=item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
3928
3929(P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
3930failure was caught.
3931
3932=item panic: frexp
3933
3934(P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
3935
3936=item panic: goto, type=%u, ix=%ld
3937
3938(P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
3939and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
3940
3941=item panic: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
3942
3943(P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries tried
3944repeatedly, but each time something re-created entries in the glob.
3945Most likely the glob contains an object with a reference back to
3946the glob and a destructor that adds a new object to the glob.
3947
3948=item panic: INTERPCASEMOD, %s
3949
3950(P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
3951
3952=item panic: INTERPCONCAT, %s
3953
3954(P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
3955
3956=item panic: kid popen errno read
3957
3958(F) A forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
3959
3960=item panic: last, type=%u
3961
3962(P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
3963it wasn't a block context.
3964
3965=item panic: leave_scope clearsv
3966
3967(P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
3968scope.
3969
3970=item panic: leave_scope inconsistency %u
3971
3972(P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
3973invalid enum on the top of it.
3974
3975=item panic: magic_killbackrefs
3976
3977(P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
3978references to an object.
3979
3980=item panic: malloc, %s
3981
3982(P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
3983
3984=item panic: memory wrap
3985
3986(P) Something tried to allocate either more memory than possible or a
3987negative amount.
3988
3989=item panic: pad_alloc, %p!=%p
3990
3991(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3992and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3993
3994=item panic: pad_free curpad, %p!=%p
3995
3996(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3997and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3998
3999=item panic: pad_free po
4000
4001(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
4002
4003=item panic: pad_reset curpad, %p!=%p
4004
4005(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
4006and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
4007
4008=item panic: pad_sv po
4009
4010(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
4011
4012=item panic: pad_swipe curpad, %p!=%p
4013
4014(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
4015and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
4016
4017=item panic: pad_swipe po
4018
4019(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
4020
4021=item panic: pp_iter, type=%u
4022
4023(P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
4024
4025=item panic: pp_match%s
4026
4027(P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
4028data.
4029
4030=item panic: pp_split, pm=%p, s=%p
4031
4032(P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
4033
4034=item panic: realloc, %s
4035
4036(P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
4037
4038=item panic: reference miscount on nsv in sv_replace() (%d != 1)
4039
4040(P) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
4041reference count other than 1.
4042
4043=item panic: restartop in %s
4044
4045(P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
4046didn't supply the destination.
4047
4048=item panic: return, type=%u
4049
4050(P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
4051then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
4052
4053=item panic: scan_num, %s
4054
4055(P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
4056
4057=item panic: Sequence (?{...}): no code block found in regex m/%s/
4058
4059(P) While compiling a pattern that has embedded (?{}) or (??{}) code
4060blocks, perl couldn't locate the code block that should have already been
4061seen and compiled by perl before control passed to the regex compiler.
4062
4063=item panic: strxfrm() gets absurd - a => %u, ab => %u
4064
4065(P) The interpreter's sanity check of the C function strxfrm() failed.
4066In your current locale the returned transformation of the string "ab"
4067is shorter than that of the string "a", which makes no sense.
4068
4069=item panic: sv_chop %s
4070
4071(P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the
4072scalar's string buffer.
4073
4074=item panic: sv_insert, midend=%p, bigend=%p
4075
4076(P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
4077was string.
4078
4079=item panic: top_env
4080
4081(P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
4082
4083=item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
4084
4085(P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't
4086permitted at run time.
4087
4088=item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
4089
4090(P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
4091to even) byte length.
4092
4093=item panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
4094
4095(P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an odd (as opposed
4096to even) byte length.
4097
4098=item panic: yylex, %s
4099
4100(P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
4101
4102=item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
4103
4104(W parenthesis) You said something like
4105
4106 my $foo, $bar = @_;
4107
4108when you meant
4109
4110 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
4111
4112Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
4113
4114=item Parsing code internal error (%s)
4115
4116(F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API in
4117a detectable way.
4118
4119=item Passing malformed UTF-8 to "%s" is deprecated
4120
4121(D deprecated, utf8) This message indicates a bug either in the Perl
4122core or in XS code. Such code was trying to find out if a character,
4123allegedly stored internally encoded as UTF-8, was of a given type, such
4124as being punctuation or a digit. But the character was not encoded in
4125legal UTF-8. The C<%s> is replaced by a string that can be used by
4126knowledgeable people to determine what the type being checked against
4127was. If C<utf8> warnings are enabled, a further message is raised,
4128giving details of the malformation.
4129
4130=item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex
4131
4132(F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
4133consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before
4134the nesting limit is exceeded.
4135
4136=item C<-p> destination: %s
4137
4138(F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
4139command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
4140redirected it with select().)
4141
4142=item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
4143
4144(F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
4145"Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
4146that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
4147
4148=item Perl folding rules are not up-to-date for 0x%X; please use the perlbug
4149utility to report; in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4150
4151(S regexp) You used a regular expression with case-insensitive matching,
4152and there is a bug in Perl in which the built-in regular expression
4153folding rules are not accurate. This may lead to incorrect results.
4154Please report this as a bug using the L<perlbug> utility.
4155
4156=item Perl_my_%s() not available
4157
4158(F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
4159so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
4160conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
4161'<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4162
4163=item Perl %s required (did you mean %s?)--this is only %s, stopped
4164
4165(F) The code you are trying to run has asked for a newer version of
4166Perl than you are running. Perhaps C<use 5.10> was written instead
4167of C<use 5.010> or C<use v5.10>. Without the leading C<v>, the number is
4168interpreted as a decimal, with every three digits after the
4169decimal point representing a part of the version number. So 5.10
4170is equivalent to v5.100.
4171
4172=item Perl %s required--this is only %s, stopped
4173
4174(F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
4175recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
4176you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
4177
4178=item PERL_SH_DIR too long
4179
4180(F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
4181C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
4182
4183=item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
4184
4185(X) See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
4186
4187=item Perls since %s too modern--this is %s, stopped
4188
4189(F) The code you are trying to run claims it will not run
4190on the version of Perl you are using because it is too new.
4191Maybe the code needs to be updated, or maybe it is simply
4192wrong and the version check should just be removed.
4193
4194=item perl: warning: Non hex character in '$ENV{PERL_HASH_SEED}', seed only partially set
4195
4196(S) PERL_HASH_SEED should match /^\s*(?:0x)?[0-9a-fA-F]+\s*\z/ but it
4197contained a non hex character. This could mean you are not using the
4198hash seed you think you are.
4199
4200=item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
4201
4202(S) The whole warning message will look something like:
4203
4204 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
4205 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
4206 LC_ALL = "En_US",
4207 LANG = (unset)
4208 are supported and installed on your system.
4209 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
4210
4211Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
4212settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
4213This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
4214system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
4215locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
4216dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
4217Perl can and will use, and the script will be run. Before you really
4218fix the problem, however, you will get the same error message each
4219time you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
4220L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
4221
4222=item perl: warning: strange setting in '$ENV{PERL_PERTURB_KEYS}': '%s'
4223
4224(S) Perl was run with the environment variable PERL_PERTURB_KEYS defined
4225but containing an unexpected value. The legal values of this setting
4226are as follows.
4227
4228 Numeric | String | Result
4229 --------+---------------+-----------------------------------------
4230 0 | NO | Disables key traversal randomization
4231 1 | RANDOM | Enables full key traversal randomization
4232 2 | DETERMINISTIC | Enables repeatable key traversal
4233 | | randomization
4234
4235Both numeric and string values are accepted, but note that string values are
4236case sensitive. The default for this setting is "RANDOM" or 1.
4237
4238=item pid %x not a child
4239
4240(W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
4241process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
4242fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
4243
4244=item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
4245
4246(F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
4247
4248=item pop on reference is experimental
4249
4250(S experimental::autoderef) C<pop> with a scalar argument is experimental
4251and may change or be removed in a future Perl version. If you want to
4252take the risk of using this feature, simply disable this warning:
4253
4254 no warnings "experimental::autoderef";
4255
4256=item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by S<< <-- HERE in m/%s/ >>
4257
4258(F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The S<<-- HERE>
4259shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
4260Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
4261the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
4262not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
4263
4264=item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
4265
4266(F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
4267the BSD version, which takes a pid.
4268
4269=item POSIX syntax [%c %c] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by
4270S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4271
4272(W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
4273I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
4274/[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
4275implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and
4276will cause fatal errors. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular
4277expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4278
4279=item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by
4280S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4281
4282(F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
4283with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
4284need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
4285character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[."
4286and ".\]". The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
4287problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4288
4289=item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by
4290S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4291
4292(F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
4293with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
4294need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
4295character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
4296and "=\]". The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
4297problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4298
4299=item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
4300
4301(W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
4302strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
4303literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
4304parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
4305
4306You probably wrote something like this:
4307
4308 @list = qw(
4309 a # a comment
4310 b # another comment
4311 );
4312
4313when you should have written this:
4314
4315 @list = qw(
4316 a
4317 b
4318 );
4319
4320If you really want comments, build your list the
4321old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
4322
4323 @list = (
4324 'a', # a comment
4325 'b', # another comment
4326 );
4327
4328=item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
4329
4330(W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
4331commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
4332different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
4333frequently used.)
4334
4335You probably wrote something like this:
4336
4337 qw! a, b, c !;
4338
4339which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
4340commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
4341
4342 qw! a b c !;
4343
4344=item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
4345
4346(F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
4347Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
4348end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
4349Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
4350
4351=item Possible precedence issue with control flow operator
4352
4353(W syntax) There is a possible problem with the mixing of a control
4354flow operator (e.g. C<return>) and a low-precedence operator like
4355C<or>. Consider:
4356
4357 sub { return $a or $b; }
4358
4359This is parsed as:
4360
4361 sub { (return $a) or $b; }
4362
4363Which is effectively just:
4364
4365 sub { return $a; }
4366
4367Either use parentheses or the high-precedence variant of the operator.
4368
4369Note this may be also triggered for constructs like:
4370
4371 sub { 1 if die; }
4372
4373=item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
4374
4375(W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
4376with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
4377
4378 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
4379
4380This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
4381higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
4382really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
4383parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
4384
4385=item Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
4386
4387(W ambiguous) You said something like C<m/$\/> in a regex.
4388The regex C<m/foo$\s+bar/m> translates to: match the word 'foo', the output
4389record separator (see L<perlvar/$\>) and the letter 's' (one time or more)
4390followed by the word 'bar'.
4391
4392If this is what you intended then you can silence the warning by using
4393C<m/${\}/> (for example: C<m/foo${\}s+bar/>).
4394
4395If instead you intended to match the word 'foo' at the end of the line
4396followed by whitespace and the word 'bar' on the next line then you can use
4397C<m/$(?)\/> (for example: C<m/foo$(?)\s+bar/>).
4398
4399=item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
4400
4401(W ambiguous) You said something like '@foo' in a double-quoted string
4402but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
4403literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
4404to the array you apparently lost track of.
4405
4406=item Postfix dereference is experimental
4407
4408(S experimental::postderef) This warning is emitted if you use
4409the experimental postfix dereference syntax. Simply suppress the
4410warning if you want to use the feature, but know that in doing
4411so you are taking the risk of using an experimental feature which
4412may change or be removed in a future Perl version:
4413
4414 no warnings "experimental::postderef";
4415 use feature "postderef", "postderef_qq";
4416 $ref->$*;
4417 $aref->@*;
4418 $aref->@[@indices];
4419 ... etc ...
4420
4421=item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
4422
4423(S precedence) The old irregular construct
4424
4425 open FOO || die;
4426
4427is now misinterpreted as
4428
4429 open(FOO || die);
4430
4431because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
4432list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
4433parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
4434of "||".
4435
4436=item Premature end of script headers
4437
4438See Server error.
4439
4440=item printf() on closed filehandle %s
4441
4442(W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4443before now. Check your control flow.
4444
4445=item print() on closed filehandle %s
4446
4447(W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
4448before now. Check your control flow.
4449
4450=item Process terminated by SIG%s
4451
4452(W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
4453applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
4454port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
4455L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
4456in L<perlos2>.
4457
4458=item Property '%s' is unknown in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4459
4460(F) The named property which you specified via C<\p> or C<\P> is not one
4461known to Perl. Perhaps you misspelled the name? See
4462L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
4463for a complete list of available official
4464properties. If it is a L<user-defined property|perlunicode/User-Defined Character Properties>
4465it must have been defined by the time the regular expression is
4466compiled.
4467
4468=item Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
4469
4470(W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is
4471useless, since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments.
4472
4473=item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
4474
4475(S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
4476declared or defined with a different function prototype.
4477
4478=item Prototype not terminated
4479
4480(F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
4481definition.
4482
4483=item Prototype '%s' overridden by attribute 'prototype(%s)' in %s
4484
4485(W prototype) A prototype was declared in both the parentheses after
4486the sub name and via the prototype attribute. The prototype in
4487parentheses is useless, since it will be replaced by the prototype
4488from the attribute before it's ever used.
4489
4490=item \p{} uses Unicode rules, not locale rules
4491
4492(W) You compiled a regular expression that contained a Unicode property
4493match (C<\p> or C<\P>), but the regular expression is also being told to
4494use the run-time locale, not Unicode. Instead, use a POSIX character
4495class, which should know about the locale's rules.
4496(See L<perlrecharclass/POSIX Character Classes>.)
4497
4498Even if the run-time locale is ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), which is a subset of
4499Unicode, some properties will give results that are not valid for that
4500subset.
4501
4502Here are a couple of examples to help you see what's going on. If the
4503locale is ISO 8859-7, the character at code point 0xD7 is the "GREEK
4504CAPITAL LETTER CHI". But in Unicode that code point means the
4505"MULTIPLICATION SIGN" instead, and C<\p> always uses the Unicode
4506meaning. That means that C<\p{Alpha}> won't match, but C<[[:alpha:]]>
4507should. Only in the Latin1 locale are all the characters in the same
4508positions as they are in Unicode. But, even here, some properties give
4509incorrect results. An example is C<\p{Changes_When_Uppercased}> which
4510is true for "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS", but since the upper
4511case of that character is not in Latin1, in that locale it doesn't
4512change when upper cased.
4513
4514=item push on reference is experimental
4515
4516(S experimental::autoderef) C<push> with a scalar argument is experimental
4517and may change or be removed in a future Perl version. If you want to
4518take the risk of using this feature, simply disable this warning:
4519
4520 no warnings "experimental::autoderef";
4521
4522=item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by S<< <-- HERE in m/%s/ >>
4523
4524(F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if
4525you meant it literally. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular
4526expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4527
4528=item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
4529m/%s/
4530
4531(F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of
4532the {min,max} construct. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular
4533expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4534
4535=item Quantifier {n,m} with n > m can't match in regex
4536
4537=item Quantifier {n,m} with n > m can't match in regex; marked by
4538S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4539
4540(W regexp) Minima should be less than or equal to maxima. If you really
4541want your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}.
4542
4543=item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression in regex; marked by <--
4544HERE in m/%s/
4545
4546(W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
4547it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
4548quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
4549"abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
4550C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
4551
4552The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4553discovered.
4554
4555=item Range iterator outside integer range
4556
4557(F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
4558are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
4559One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
4560by prepending "0" to your numbers.
4561
4562=item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4563
4564(W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
4565a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4566
4567=item readline() on closed filehandle %s
4568
4569(W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
4570before now. Check your control flow.
4571
4572=item read() on closed filehandle %s
4573
4574(W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4575
4576=item read() on unopened filehandle %s
4577
4578(W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4579
4580=item Reallocation too large: %x
4581
4582(F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
4583
4584=item realloc() of freed memory ignored
4585
4586(S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
4587already been freed.
4588
4589=item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
4590
4591(S debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
4592the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
4593which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
4594
4595=item Recursive call to Perl_load_module in PerlIO_find_layer
4596
4597(P) It is currently not permitted to load modules when creating
4598a filehandle inside an %INC hook. This can happen with C<open my
4599$fh, '<', \$scalar>, which implicitly loads PerlIO::scalar. Try
4600loading PerlIO::scalar explicitly first.
4601
4602=item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
4603
4604(F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, Perl
4605believes it found an infinite loop in the C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a
4606crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth.
4607
4608=item refcnt_dec: fd %d%s
4609
4610=item refcnt: fd %d%s
4611
4612=item refcnt_inc: fd %d%s
4613
4614(P) Perl's I/O implementation failed an internal consistency check. If
4615you see this message, something is very wrong.
4616
4617=item Reference found where even-sized list expected
4618
4619(W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
4620with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
4621usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
4622to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
4623
4624 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
4625 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
4626 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
4627 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
4628
4629=item Reference is already weak
4630
4631(W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
4632Doing so has no effect.
4633
4634=item Reference to invalid group 0 in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4635
4636(F) You used C<\g0> or similar in a regular expression. You may refer
4637to capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers
4638(normal backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
4639backreferences). Using 0 does not make sense.
4640
4641=item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
4642m/%s/
4643
4644(F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
4645not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If
4646you wanted to have the character with ordinal 7 inserted into the regular
4647expression, prepend zeroes to make it three digits long: C<\007>
4648
4649The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4650discovered.
4651
4652=item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE>
4653in m/%s/
4654
4655(F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k<NAME> >> in your regular
4656expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses
4657such as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<< (?<NAME>...) >>. Check if the name has been
4658spelled correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
4659
4660The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4661discovered.
4662
4663=item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by
4664S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4665
4666(F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there
4667are not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the
4668expression before where the C<\g{-7}> was located.
4669
4670The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4671discovered.
4672
4673=item regexp memory corruption
4674
4675(P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
4676expression compiler gave it.
4677
4678=item Regexp modifier "/%c" may appear a maximum of twice
4679
4680=item Regexp modifier "%c" may appear a maximum of twice in regex; marked
4681by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4682
4683(F) The regular expression pattern had too many occurrences
4684of the specified modifier. Remove the extraneous ones.
4685
4686=item Regexp modifier "%c" may not appear after the "-" in regex; marked by <--
4687HERE in m/%s/
4688
4689(F) Turning off the given modifier has the side effect of turning on
4690another one. Perl currently doesn't allow this. Reword the regular
4691expression to use the modifier you want to turn on (and place it before
4692the minus), instead of the one you want to turn off.
4693
4694=item Regexp modifier "/%c" may not appear twice
4695
4696=item Regexp modifier "%c" may not appear twice in regex; marked by <--
4697HERE in m/%s/
4698
4699(F) The regular expression pattern had too many occurrences
4700of the specified modifier. Remove the extraneous ones.
4701
4702=item Regexp modifiers "/%c" and "/%c" are mutually exclusive
4703
4704=item Regexp modifiers "%c" and "%c" are mutually exclusive in regex;
4705marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4706
4707(F) The regular expression pattern had more than one of these
4708mutually exclusive modifiers. Retain only the modifier that is
4709supposed to be there.
4710
4711=item Regexp out of space in regex m/%s/
4712
4713(P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
4714earlier.
4715
4716=item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @#)
4717
4718(F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
4719numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
4720terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
4721
4722=item Replacement list is longer than search list
4723
4724(W misc) You have used a replacement list that is longer than the
4725search list. So the additional elements in the replacement list
4726are meaningless.
4727
4728=item '%s' resolved to '\o{%s}%d'
4729
4730(W misc, regexp) You wrote something like C<\08>, or C<\179> in a
4731double-quotish string. All but the last digit is treated as a single
4732character, specified in octal. The last digit is the next character in
4733the string. To tell Perl that this is indeed what you want, you can use
4734the C<\o{ }> syntax, or use exactly three digits to specify the octal
4735for the character.
4736
4737=item Reversed %s= operator
4738
4739(W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
4740always come last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
4741
4742=item rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4743
4744(W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either closed
4745or not really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4746
4747=item Scalars leaked: %d
4748
4749(S internal) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping
4750of scalars: not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time
4751Perl exited. What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which
4752is of course bad, especially if the Perl program is intended to be
4753long-running.
4754
4755=item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
4756
4757(W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
4758single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
4759value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
4760behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4761argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4762and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4763if you're expecting only one subscript.
4764
4765On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
4766element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
4767Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4768L<perlref>.
4769
4770=item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
4771
4772(W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
4773element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
4774(indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
4775like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4776argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4777and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4778if you're expecting only one subscript.
4779
4780On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
4781as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
4782not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4783L<perlref>.
4784
4785=item Search pattern not terminated
4786
4787(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
4788construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4789Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
4790
4791Note that since Perl 5.10.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
4792construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
4793in Perl 5.10.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
4794misparsed by pre-5.10.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
4795
4796=item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
4797
4798(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
4799construct.
4800
4801The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
4802C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
4803parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
4804the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
4805
4806=item seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4807
4808(W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed or not
4809really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4810
4811=item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
4812
4813(W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
4814filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
4815
4816=item select not implemented
4817
4818(F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
4819
4820=item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
4821
4822(F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
4823the current implementation.
4824
4825=item Semicolon seems to be missing
4826
4827(W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
4828semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
4829
4830=item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
4831
4832(S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
4833scalar that had previously been marked as free.
4834
4835=item sem%s not implemented
4836
4837(F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
4838
4839=item send() on closed socket %s
4840
4841(W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
4842before now. Check your control flow.
4843
4844=item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4845
4846(F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The
4847S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4848discovered. See L<perlre>.
4849
4850=item Sequence (?%c...) not implemented in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
4851m/%s/
4852
4853(F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
4854but has not yet been written. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the
4855regular expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4856
4857=item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
4858m/%s/
4859
4860(F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense.
4861The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4862discovered. This may happen when using the C<(?^...)> construct to tell
4863Perl to use the default regular expression modifiers, and you
4864redundantly specify a default modifier. For other
4865causes, see L<perlre>.
4866
4867=item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex m/%s/
4868
4869(F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
4870parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See
4871L<perlre>.
4872
4873=item Sequence (?&... not terminated in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
4874m/%s/
4875
4876(F) A named reference of the form C<(?&...)> was missing the final
4877closing parenthesis after the name. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts
4878in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
4879
4880=item Sequence (?%c... not terminated in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE>
4881in m/%s/
4882
4883(F) A named group of the form C<(?'...')> or C<< (?<...>) >> was missing the final
4884closing quote or angle bracket. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the
4885regular expression the problem was discovered.
4886
4887=item Sequence (?(%c... not terminated in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE>
4888in m/%s/
4889
4890(F) A named reference of the form C<(?('...')...)> or C<< (?(<...>)...) >> was
4891missing the final closing quote or angle bracket after the name. The
4892S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4893discovered.
4894
4895=item Sequence \%s... not terminated in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
4896m/%s/
4897
4898(F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument following the escape
4899sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly written.
4900
4901=item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated with ')'
4902
4903(F) The end of the perl code contained within the {...} must be
4904followed immediately by a ')'.
4905
4906=item Sequence ?P=... not terminated in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
4907m/%s/
4908
4909(F) A named reference of the form C<(?P=...)> was missing the final
4910closing parenthesis after the name. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts
4911in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
4912
4913=item Sequence (?R) not terminated in regex m/%s/
4914
4915(F) An C<(?R)> or C<(?0)> sequence in a regular expression was missing the
4916final parenthesis.
4917
4918=item Server error (a.k.a. "500 Server error")
4919
4920(A) This is the error message generally seen in a browser window
4921when trying to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The
4922actual error text varies widely from server to server. The most
4923frequently-seen variants are "500 Server error", "Method (something)
4924not permitted", "Document contains no data", "Premature end of script
4925headers", and "Did not produce a valid header".
4926
4927B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
4928
4929You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by
4930the user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the
4931user account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment
4932variables (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't
4933in a location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or
4934less. Please see the following for more information:
4935
4936 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
4937 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
4938 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
4939
4940You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
4941
4942=item setegid() not implemented
4943
4944(F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
4945support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4946didn't think so.
4947
4948=item seteuid() not implemented
4949
4950(F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
4951support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4952didn't think so.
4953
4954=item setpgrp can't take arguments
4955
4956(F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
4957arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
4958group ID.
4959
4960=item setrgid() not implemented
4961
4962(F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
4963support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4964didn't think so.
4965
4966=item setruid() not implemented
4967
4968(F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
4969support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4970didn't think so.
4971
4972=item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
4973
4974(W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
4975forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
4976L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
4977
4978=item Setting $/ to a reference to %s as a form of slurp is deprecated, treating as undef
4979
4980(W deprecated) You assigned a reference to a scalar to C<$/> where the
4981referenced item is not a positive integer. In older perls this B<appeared>
4982to work the same as setting it to C<undef> but was in fact internally
4983different, less efficient and with very bad luck could have resulted in
4984your file being split by a stringified form of the reference.
4985
4986In Perl 5.20.0 this was changed so that it would be B<exactly> the same as
4987setting C<$/> to undef, with the exception that this warning would be
4988thrown.
4989
4990You are recommended to change your code to set C<$/> to C<undef> explicitly
4991if you wish to slurp the file. In future versions of Perl assigning
4992a reference to will throw a fatal error.
4993
4994=item Setting $/ to %s reference is forbidden
4995
4996(F) You tried to assign a reference to a non integer to C<$/>. In older
4997Perls this would have behaved similarly to setting it to a reference to
4998a positive integer, where the integer was the address of the reference.
4999As of Perl 5.20.0 this is a fatal error, to allow future versions of Perl
5000to use non-integer refs for more interesting purposes.
5001
5002=item shift on reference is experimental
5003
5004(S experimental::autoderef) C<shift> with a scalar argument is experimental
5005and may change or be removed in a future Perl version. If you want to
5006take the risk of using this feature, simply disable this warning:
5007
5008 no warnings "experimental::autoderef";
5009
5010=item shm%s not implemented
5011
5012(F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
5013
5014=item !=~ should be !~
5015
5016(W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
5017interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
5018operators: probably not what you intended.
5019
5020=item <> should be quotes
5021
5022(F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
5023C<require 'file'>.
5024
5025=item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
5026
5027(W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
5028as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
5029result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
5030probably not what you had in mind.
5031
5032=item shutdown() on closed socket %s
5033
5034(W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
5035superfluous.
5036
5037=item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
5038
5039(W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
5040Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
5041
5042=item Slab leaked from cv %p
5043
5044(S) If you see this message, then something is seriously wrong with the
5045internal bookkeeping of op trees. An op tree needed to be freed after
5046a compilation error, but could not be found, so it was leaked instead.
5047
5048=item sleep(%u) too large
5049
5050(W overflow) You called C<sleep> with a number that was larger than
5051it can reliably handle and C<sleep> probably slept for less time than
5052requested.
5053
5054=item Slurpy parameter not last
5055
5056(F) In a subroutine signature, you put something after a slurpy (array or
5057hash) parameter. The slurpy parameter takes all the available arguments,
5058so there can't be any left to fill later parameters.
5059
5060=item Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks encapsulation
5061
5062(F) You should not use the C<~~> operator on an object that does not
5063overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's underlying structure
5064for the smart match.
5065
5066=item Smartmatch is experimental
5067
5068(S experimental::smartmatch) This warning is emitted if you
5069use the smartmatch (C<~~>) operator. This is currently an experimental
5070feature, and its details are subject to change in future releases of
5071Perl. Particularly, its current behavior is noticed for being
5072unnecessarily complex and unintuitive, and is very likely to be
5073overhauled.
5074
5075=item sort is now a reserved word
5076
5077(F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
5078But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
5079
5080=item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
5081
5082(F) A sort comparison subroutine written in XS must return exactly one
5083item. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
5084
5085=item Source filters apply only to byte streams
5086
5087(F) You tried to activate a source filter (usually by loading a
5088source filter module) within a string passed to C<eval>. This is
5089not permitted under the C<unicode_eval> feature. Consider using
5090C<evalbytes> instead. See L<feature>.
5091
5092=item splice() offset past end of array
5093
5094(W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
5095the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the
5096end of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want,
5097try explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset.
5098See L<perlfunc/splice>.
5099
5100=item splice on reference is experimental
5101
5102(S experimental::autoderef) C<splice> with a scalar argument
5103is experimental and may change or be removed in a future
5104Perl version. If you want to take the risk of using this
5105feature, simply disable this warning:
5106
5107 no warnings "experimental::autoderef";
5108
5109=item Split loop
5110
5111(P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
5112iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
5113happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
5114
5115=item Statement unlikely to be reached
5116
5117(W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
5118die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
5119unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
5120instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
5121a block by itself.
5122
5123=item "state %s" used in sort comparison
5124
5125(W syntax) The package variables $a and $b are used for sort comparisons.
5126You used $a or $b in as an operand to the C<< <=> >> or C<cmp> operator inside a
5127sort comparison block, and the variable had earlier been declared as a
5128lexical variable. Either qualify the sort variable with the package
5129name, or rename the lexical variable.
5130
5131=item "state" variable %s can't be in a package
5132
5133(F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
5134sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
5135local() if you want to localize a package variable.
5136
5137=item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
5138
5139(W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
5140was either never opened or has since been closed.
5141
5142=item Strings with code points over 0xFF may not be mapped into in-memory file handles
5143
5144(W utf8) You tried to open a reference to a scalar for read or append
5145where the scalar contained code points over 0xFF. In-memory files
5146model on-disk files and can only contain bytes.
5147
5148=item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
5149
5150(P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
5151stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
5152C<can> may break this.
5153
5154=item Subroutine "&%s" is not available
5155
5156(W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is
5157attempting to capture an outer lexical subroutine that is not currently
5158available. This can happen for one of two reasons. First, the lexical
5159subroutine may be declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that has
5160not yet been created. (Remember that named subs are created at compile
5161time, while anonymous subs are created at run-time.) For example,
5162
5163 sub { my sub a {...} sub f { \&a } }
5164
5165At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current "a" sub,
5166since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely, the
5167following won't give a warning since the anonymous subroutine has by now
5168been created and is live:
5169
5170 sub { my sub a {...} eval 'sub f { \&a }' }->();
5171
5172The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a lexical subroutine
5173that has gone out of scope, for example,
5174
5175 sub f {
5176 my sub a {...}
5177 sub { eval '\&a' }
5178 }
5179 f()->();
5180
5181Here, when the '\&a' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not currently
5182being executed, so its &a is not available for capture.
5183
5184=item "%s" subroutine &%s masks earlier declaration in same %s
5185
5186(W misc) A "my" or "state" subroutine has been redeclared in the
5187current scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to
5188the previous instance. This is almost always a typographical error.
5189Note that the earlier subroutine will still exist until the end of
5190the scope or until all closure references to it are destroyed.
5191
5192=item Subroutine %s redefined
5193
5194(W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
5195
5196 {
5197 no warnings 'redefine';
5198 eval "sub name { ... }";
5199 }
5200
5201=item Substitution loop
5202
5203(P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
5204shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
5205is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
5206L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
5207
5208=item Substitution pattern not terminated
5209
5210(F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
5211construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
5212Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
5213
5214=item Substitution replacement not terminated
5215
5216(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
5217construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
5218Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
5219
5220=item substr outside of string
5221
5222(W substr)(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
5223a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
5224length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
5225substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
5226assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
5227
5228=item sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
5229
5230(P) Perl tried to force the upgrade of an SV to a type which was actually
5231inferior to its current type.
5232
5233=item SWASHNEW didn't return an HV ref
5234
5235(P) Something went wrong internally when Perl was trying to look up
5236Unicode characters.
5237
5238=item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by
5239S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
5240
5241(F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most
5242two branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or
5243both to contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose
5244it in clustering parentheses:
5245
5246 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
5247
5248The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem
5249was discovered. See L<perlre>.
5250
5251=item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
5252m/%s/
5253
5254(F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
5255is not known. The condition must be one of the following:
5256
5257 (1) (2) ... true if 1st, 2nd, etc., capture matched
5258 (<NAME>) ('NAME') true if named capture matched
5259 (?=...) (?<=...) true if subpattern matches
5260 (?!...) (?<!...) true if subpattern fails to match
5261 (?{ CODE }) true if code returns a true value
5262 (R) true if evaluating inside recursion
5263 (R1) (R2) ... true if directly inside capture group 1, 2, etc.
5264 (R&NAME) true if directly inside named capture
5265 (DEFINE) always false; for defining named subpatterns
5266
5267The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
5268discovered. See L<perlre>.
5269
5270=item switching effective %s is not implemented
5271
5272(F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
5273and effective uids or gids.
5274
5275=item syntax error
5276
5277(F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
5278
5279 A keyword is misspelled.
5280 A semicolon is missing.
5281 A comma is missing.
5282 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
5283 An opening or closing brace is missing.
5284 A closing quote is missing.
5285
5286Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
5287error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
5288The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
5289it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
5290before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
5291Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
5292the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
5293C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
5294if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
5295
5296=item syntax error at line %d: '%s' unexpected
5297
5298(A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
5299of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
5300yourself.
5301
5302=item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
5303
5304(F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
5305a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
5306or "my $var" or "our $var".
5307
5308=item Syntax error in (?[...]) in regex m/%s/
5309
5310(F) Perl could not figure out what you meant inside this construct; this
5311notifies you that it is giving up trying.
5312
5313=item %s syntax OK
5314
5315(F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
5316
5317=item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
5318
5319(W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
5320
5321=item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
5322
5323(W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
5324
5325=item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
5326
5327(F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
5328"shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
5329machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
5330unconfigured. Consult your system support.
5331
5332=item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
5333
5334(W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
5335before now. Check your control flow.
5336
5337=item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
5338
5339(F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
5340know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
5341
5342=item Target of goto is too deeply nested
5343
5344(F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
5345for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
5346
5347=item telldir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
5348
5349(W io) The dirhandle you tried to telldir() is either closed or not really
5350a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
5351
5352=item tell() on unopened filehandle
5353
5354(W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
5355was either never opened or has since been closed.
5356
5357=item That use of $[ is unsupported
5358
5359(F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
5360as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
5361
5362 $[ = 0;
5363 $[ = 1;
5364 ...
5365 local $[ = 0;
5366 local $[ = 1;
5367 ...
5368
5369This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
5370from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[> and L<arybase>.
5371
5372=item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia.
5373
5374(F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
5375probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
5376think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
5377will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
5378will deny it.
5379
5380=item The %s function is unimplemented
5381
5382(F) The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture,
5383according to the probings of Configure.
5384
5385=item The lexical_subs feature is experimental
5386
5387(S experimental::lexical_subs) This warning is emitted if you
5388declare a sub with C<my> or C<state>. Simply suppress the warning
5389if you want to use the feature, but know that in doing so you
5390are taking the risk of using an experimental feature which may
5391change or be removed in a future Perl version:
5392
5393 no warnings "experimental::lexical_subs";
5394 use feature "lexical_subs";
5395 my sub foo { ... }
5396
5397=item The regex_sets feature is experimental
5398
5399(S experimental::regex_sets) This warning is emitted if you
5400use the syntax S<C<(?[ ])>> in a regular expression.
5401The details of this feature are subject to change.
5402if you want to use it, but know that in doing so you
5403are taking the risk of using an experimental feature which may
5404change in a future Perl version, you can do this to silence the
5405warning:
5406
5407 no warnings "experimental::regex_sets";
5408
5409=item The signatures feature is experimental
5410
5411(S experimental::signatures) This warning is emitted if you unwrap a
5412subroutine's arguments using a signature. Simply suppress the warning
5413if you want to use the feature, but know that in doing so you are taking
5414the risk of using an experimental feature which may change or be removed
5415in a future Perl version:
5416
5417 no warnings "experimental::signatures";
5418 use feature "signatures";
5419 sub foo ($left, $right) { ... }
5420
5421=item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
5422
5423(F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
5424linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
5425past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
5426instead.
5427
5428=item The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
5429
5430(F) This attribute was never supported on C<my> or C<sub> declarations.
5431
5432=item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
5433
5434=item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
5435
5436(W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
5437element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
5438wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
5439need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
5440F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
5441target of the change to
5442%ENV which produced the warning.
5443
5444=item This Perl has not been built with support for randomized hash key traversal but something called Perl_hv_rand_set().
5445
5446(F) Something has attempted to use an internal API call which
5447depends on Perl being compiled with the default support for randomized hash
5448key traversal, but this Perl has been compiled without it. You should
5449report this warning to the relevant upstream party, or recompile perl
5450with default options.
5451
5452=item times not implemented
5453
5454(F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
5455suspect you're not running on Unix.
5456
5457=item "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
5458
5459(X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains
5460the B<-T> option (or the B<-t> option), but Perl was not invoked with
5461B<-T> in its command line. This is an error because, by the time
5462Perl discovers a B<-T> in a script, it's too late to properly taint
5463everything from the environment. So Perl gives up.
5464
5465If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
5466mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be
5467fixed by editing the #! line so that the B<-%c> option is a part of
5468Perl's first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -%c> to C<perl -%c -n>.
5469
5470If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
5471B<-%c> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -%c scriptname>.
5472
5473=item To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
5474
5475(F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
5476uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
5477specified an illegal mapping.
5478See L<perlunicode/"User-Defined Character Properties">.
5479
5480=item Too deeply nested ()-groups
5481
5482(F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level.
5483
5484=item Too few args to syscall
5485
5486(F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
5487system call to call, silly dilly.
5488
5489=item Too few arguments for subroutine
5490
5491(F) A subroutine using a signature received fewer arguments than required
5492by the signature. The caller of the subroutine is presumably at fault.
5493Inconveniently, this error will be reported at the location of the
5494subroutine, not that of the caller.
5495
5496=item Too late for "-%s" option
5497
5498(X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
5499B<-M>, B<-m> or B<-C> option.
5500
5501In the case of B<-M> and B<-m>, this is an error because those options
5502are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
5503
5504The B<-C> option only works if it is specified on the command line as
5505well (with the same sequence of letters or numbers following). Either
5506specify this option on the command line, or, if your system supports
5507it, make your script executable and run it directly instead of passing
5508it to perl.
5509
5510=item Too late to run %s block
5511
5512(W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
5513when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
5514loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
5515instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
5516BEGIN block.
5517
5518=item Too many args to syscall
5519
5520(F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
5521
5522=item Too many arguments for %s
5523
5524(F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
5525
5526=item Too many arguments for subroutine
5527
5528(F) A subroutine using a signature received more arguments than required
5529by the signature. The caller of the subroutine is presumably at fault.
5530Inconveniently, this error will be reported at the location of the
5531subroutine, not that of the caller.
5532
5533=item Too many )'s
5534
5535(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
5536Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
5537
5538=item Too many ('s
5539
5540(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
5541Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
5542
5543=item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
5544
5545(F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
5546Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
5547
5548=item Trailing white-space in a charnames alias definition is deprecated
5549
5550(D deprecated) You defined a character name which ended in a space
5551character. Remove the trailing space(s). Usually these names are
5552defined in the C<:alias> import argument to C<use charnames>, but they
5553could be defined by a translator installed into C<$^H{charnames}>.
5554See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
5555
5556=item Transliteration pattern not terminated
5557
5558(F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
5559or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
5560C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
5561
5562=item Transliteration replacement not terminated
5563
5564(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][],
5565y/// or y[][] construct.
5566
5567=item '%s' trapped by operation mask
5568
5569(F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's
5570disallowed. See L<Safe>.
5571
5572=item truncate not implemented
5573
5574(F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
5575Configure knows about.
5576
5577=item Type of arg %d to &CORE::%s must be %s
5578
5579(F) The subroutine in question in the CORE package requires its argument
5580to be a hard reference to data of the specified type. Overloading is
5581ignored, so a reference to an object that is not the specified type, but
5582nonetheless has overloading to handle it, will still not be accepted.
5583
5584=item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
5585
5586(F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
5587certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
5588%NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
5589{EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
5590
5591=item Type of argument to %s must be unblessed hashref or arrayref
5592
5593(F) You called C<keys>, C<values> or C<each> with a scalar argument that
5594was not a reference to an unblessed hash or array.
5595
5596=item umask not implemented
5597
5598(F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
5599use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
5600
5601=item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
5602
5603(S internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
5604many execution contexts were entered and left.
5605
5606=item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
5607
5608(S internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
5609many values were temporarily localized.
5610
5611=item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
5612
5613(S internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
5614many blocks were entered and left.
5615
5616=item Unbalanced string table refcount: (%d) for "%s"
5617
5618(S internal) On exit, Perl found some strings remaining in the shared
5619string table used for copy on write and for hash keys. The entries
5620should have been freed, so this indicates a bug somewhere.
5621
5622=item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
5623
5624(S internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
5625many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
5626
5627=item Undefined format "%s" called
5628
5629(F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
5630another package? See L<perlform>.
5631
5632=item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
5633
5634(F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
5635Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
5636
5637=item Undefined subroutine &%s called
5638
5639(F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
5640since been undefined.
5641
5642=item Undefined subroutine called
5643
5644(F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
5645or if it was, it has since been undefined.
5646
5647=item Undefined subroutine in sort
5648
5649(F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
5650to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
5651
5652=item Undefined top format "%s" called
5653
5654(F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
5655another package? See L<perlform>.
5656
5657=item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
5658
5659(W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
5660C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
5661C<undef *foo>.
5662
5663=item %s: Undefined variable
5664
5665(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
5666Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
5667
5668=item unexec of %s into %s failed!
5669
5670(F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
5671representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
5672
5673=item Unexpected binary operator '%c' with no preceding operand in regex;
5674marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
5675
5676(F) You had something like this:
5677
5678 (?[ | \p{Digit} ])
5679
5680where the C<"|"> is a binary operator with an operand on the right, but
5681no operand on the left.
5682
5683=item Unexpected character in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
5684
5685(F) You had something like this:
5686
5687 (?[ z ])
5688
5689Within C<(?[ ])>, no literal characters are allowed unless they are
5690within an inner pair of square brackets, like
5691
5692 (?[ [ z ] ])
5693
5694Another possibility is that you forgot a backslash. Perl isn't smart
5695enough to figure out what you really meant.
5696
5697=item Unexpected constant lvalue entersub entry via type/targ %d:%d
5698
5699(P) When compiling a subroutine call in lvalue context, Perl failed an
5700internal consistency check. It encountered a malformed op tree.
5701
5702=item Unexpected exit %u
5703
5704(S) exit() was called or the script otherwise finished gracefully when
5705C<PERL_EXIT_WARN> was set in C<PL_exit_flags>.
5706
5707=item Unexpected exit failure %d
5708
5709(S) An uncaught die() was called when C<PERL_EXIT_WARN> was set in
5710C<PL_exit_flags>.
5711
5712=item Unexpected ')' in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
5713
5714(F) You had something like this:
5715
5716 (?[ ( \p{Digit} + ) ])
5717
5718The C<")"> is out-of-place. Something apparently was supposed to
5719be combined with the digits, or the C<"+"> shouldn't be there, or
5720something like that. Perl can't figure out what was intended.
5721
5722=item Unexpected '(' with no preceding operator in regex; marked by
5723S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
5724
5725(F) You had something like this:
5726
5727 (?[ \p{Digit} ( \p{Lao} + \p{Thai} ) ])
5728
5729There should be an operator before the C<"(">, as there's
5730no indication as to how the digits are to be combined
5731with the characters in the Lao and Thai scripts.
5732
5733=item Unicode non-character U+%X is illegal for open interchange
5734
5735(S nonchar) Certain codepoints, such as U+FFFE and U+FFFF, are
5736defined by the Unicode standard to be non-characters. Those are
5737legal codepoints, but are reserved for internal use; so, applications
5738shouldn't attempt to exchange them. An application may not be
5739expecting any of these characters at all, and receiving them
5740may lead to bugs. If you know what you are doing
5741you can turn off this warning by C<no warnings 'nonchar';>.
5742
5743This is not really a "serious" error, but it is supposed to be raised
5744by default even if warnings are not enabled, and currently the only
5745way to do that in Perl is to mark it as serious.
5746
5747=item Unicode surrogate U+%X is illegal in UTF-8
5748
5749(S surrogate) You had a UTF-16 surrogate in a context where they are
5750not considered acceptable. These code points, between U+D800 and
5751U+DFFF (inclusive), are used by Unicode only for UTF-16. However, Perl
5752internally allows all unsigned integer code points (up to the size limit
5753available on your platform), including surrogates. But these can cause
5754problems when being input or output, which is likely where this message
5755came from. If you really really know what you are doing you can turn
5756off this warning by C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
5757
5758=item Unknown charname '%s'
5759
5760(F) The name you used inside C<\N{}> is unknown to Perl. Check the
5761spelling. You can say C<use charnames ":loose"> to not have to be
5762so precise about spaces, hyphens, and capitalization on standard Unicode
5763names. (Any custom aliases that have been created must be specified
5764exactly, regardless of whether C<:loose> is used or not.) This error may
5765also happen if the C<\N{}> is not in the scope of the corresponding
5766C<S<use charnames>>.
5767
5768=item Unknown error
5769
5770(P) Perl was about to print an error message in C<$@>, but the C<$@> variable
5771did not exist, even after an attempt to create it.
5772
5773=item Unknown open() mode '%s'
5774
5775(F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
5776of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
5777C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->, C<< <& >>, C<< >& >>.
5778
5779=item Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
5780
5781(W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
5782system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
5783internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
5784are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
5785explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
5786value of the environment variable PERLIO.
5787
5788=item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
5789
5790(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
5791iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
5792data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
5793subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
5794
5795=item Unknown regex modifier "%s"
5796
5797(F) Alphanumerics immediately following the closing delimiter
5798of a regular expression pattern are interpreted by Perl as modifier
5799flags for the regex. One of the ones you specified is invalid. One way
5800this can happen is if you didn't put in white space between the end of
5801the regex and a following alphanumeric operator:
5802
5803 if ($a =~ /foo/and $bar == 3) { ... }
5804
5805The C<"a"> is a valid modifier flag, but the C<"n"> is not, and raises
5806this error. Likely what was meant instead was:
5807
5808 if ($a =~ /foo/ and $bar == 3) { ... }
5809
5810=item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
5811
5812(W) You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
5813
5814=item Unknown switch condition (?(...)) in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
5815m/%s/
5816
5817(F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
5818is not known. The condition must be one of the following:
5819
5820 (1) (2) ... true if 1st, 2nd, etc., capture matched
5821 (<NAME>) ('NAME') true if named capture matched
5822 (?=...) (?<=...) true if subpattern matches
5823 (?!...) (?<!...) true if subpattern fails to match
5824 (?{ CODE }) true if code returns a true value
5825 (R) true if evaluating inside recursion
5826 (R1) (R2) ... true if directly inside capture group 1, 2, etc.
5827 (R&NAME) true if directly inside named capture
5828 (DEFINE) always false; for defining named subpatterns
5829
5830The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
5831discovered. See L<perlre>.
5832
5833=item Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
5834
5835(F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
5836of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
5837
5838=item Unknown Unicode option value %d
5839
5840(F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
5841of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
5842
5843=item Unknown verb pattern '%s' in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
5844
5845(F) You either made a typo or have incorrectly put a C<*> quantifier
5846after an open brace in your pattern. Check the pattern and review
5847L<perlre> for details on legal verb patterns.
5848
5849=item Unknown warnings category '%s'
5850
5851(F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
5852category that is unknown to perl at this point.
5853
5854Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a
5855module (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have loaded this
5856module first.
5857
5858=item Unmatched '[' in POSIX class in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
5859
5860(F) You had something like this:
5861
5862 (?[ [:digit: ])
5863
5864That should be written:
5865
5866 (?[ [:digit:] ])
5867
5868=item Unmatched '%c' in POSIX class in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
5869m/%s/
5870
5871(F) You had something like this:
5872
5873 (?[ [:alnum] ])
5874
5875There should be a second C<":">, like this:
5876
5877 (?[ [:alnum:] ])
5878
5879=item Unmatched [ in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
5880
5881(F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
5882include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
5883first. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
5884problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
5885
5886=item Unmatched ( in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
5887
5888=item Unmatched ) in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
5889
5890(F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
5891expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
5892the matching parenthesis. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the
5893regular expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
5894
5895=item Unmatched right %s bracket
5896
5897(F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
5898ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
5899general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
5900you were last editing.
5901
5902=item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
5903
5904(W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
5905reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
5906somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
5907subroutine.
5908
5909=item Unrecognized character %s; marked by S<<-- HERE> after %s near column
5910%d
5911
5912(F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
5913in your Perl script (or eval) near the specified column. Perhaps you
5914tried to run a compressed script, a binary program, or a directory as
5915a Perl program.
5916
5917=item Unrecognized escape \%c in character class in regex; marked by
5918S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
5919
5920(F) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
5921recognized by Perl inside character classes. This is a fatal
5922error when the character class is used within C<(?[ ])>.
5923
5924=item Unrecognized escape \%c in character class passed through in regex;
5925marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
5926
5927(W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
5928recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
5929understood literally, but this may change in a future version of Perl.
5930The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
5931escape was discovered.
5932
5933=item Unrecognized escape \%c passed through
5934
5935(W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
5936recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally, but this may
5937change in a future version of Perl.
5938
5939=item Unrecognized escape \%s passed through in regex; marked by
5940S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
5941
5942(W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
5943recognized by Perl. The character(s) were understood literally, but
5944this may change in a future version of Perl. The S<<-- HERE> shows
5945whereabouts in the regular expression the escape was discovered.
5946
5947=item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
5948
5949(F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
5950recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
5951on your system.
5952
5953=item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
5954
5955(F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
5956think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
5957bad switch on your behalf.)
5958
5959=item unshift on reference is experimental
5960
5961(S experimental::autoderef) C<unshift> with a scalar argument
5962is experimental and may change or be removed in a future
5963Perl version. If you want to take the risk of using this
5964feature, simply disable this warning:
5965
5966 no warnings "experimental::autoderef";
5967
5968=item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
5969
5970(W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
5971operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
5972PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
5973
5974=item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
5975
5976(F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
5977
5978=item Unsupported function %s
5979
5980(F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
5981At least, Configure doesn't think so.
5982
5983=item Unsupported function fork
5984
5985(F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
5986
5987Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
5988of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
5989changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
5990
5991=item Unsupported script encoding %s
5992
5993(F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
5994declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot read.
5995
5996=item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
5997
5998(F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
5999least that's what Configure thought.
6000
6001=item Unterminated attribute list
6002
6003(F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
6004start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
6005block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
6006attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
6007
6008=item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
6009
6010(F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
6011an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
6012character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
6013character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
6014
6015=item Unterminated compressed integer
6016
6017(F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
6018compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
6019See L<perlfunc/pack>.
6020
6021=item Unterminated delimiter for here document
6022
6023(F) This message occurs when a here document label has an initial
6024quotation mark but the final quotation mark is missing. Perhaps
6025you wrote:
6026
6027 <<"foo
6028
6029instead of:
6030
6031 <<"foo"
6032
6033=item Unterminated \g... pattern in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
6034
6035=item Unterminated \g{...} pattern in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
6036
6037(F) In a regular expression, you had a C<\g> that wasn't followed by a
6038proper group reference. In the case of C<\g{>, the closing brace is
6039missing; otherwise the C<\g> must be followed by an integer. Fix the
6040pattern and retry.
6041
6042=item Unterminated <> operator
6043
6044(F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
6045a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
6046not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
6047earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
6048
6049=item Unterminated verb pattern argument in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
6050m/%s/
6051
6052(F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB:ARG)> but did not terminate
6053the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
6054
6055=item Unterminated verb pattern in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
6056
6057(F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB)> but did not terminate
6058the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
6059
6060=item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
6061
6062(W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
6063still valid when C<untie> was called.
6064
6065=item Usage: POSIX::%s(%s)
6066
6067(F) You called a POSIX function with incorrect arguments.
6068See L<POSIX/FUNCTIONS> for more information.
6069
6070=item Usage: Win32::%s(%s)
6071
6072(F) You called a Win32 function with incorrect arguments.
6073See L<Win32> for more information.
6074
6075=item $[ used in %s (did you mean $] ?)
6076
6077(W syntax) You used C<$[> in a comparison, such as:
6078
6079 if ($[ > 5.006) {
6080 ...
6081 }
6082
6083You probably meant to use C<$]> instead. C<$[> is the base for indexing
6084arrays. C<$]> is the Perl version number in decimal.
6085
6086=item Use "%s" instead of "%s"
6087
6088(F) The second listed construct is no longer legal. Use the first one
6089instead.
6090
6091=item Useless assignment to a temporary
6092
6093(W misc) You assigned to an lvalue subroutine, but what
6094the subroutine returned was a temporary scalar about to
6095be discarded, so the assignment had no effect.
6096
6097=item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex; marked by
6098S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
6099
6100(W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
6101meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
6102
6103 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
6104
6105must be written as
6106
6107 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
6108
6109The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
6110discovered. See L<perlre>.
6111
6112=item Useless localization of %s
6113
6114(W syntax) The localization of lvalues such as C<local($x=10)> is legal,
6115but in fact the local() currently has no effect. This may change at
6116some point in the future, but in the meantime such code is discouraged.
6117
6118=item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
6119m/%s/
6120
6121(W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
6122meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
6123
6124 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
6125
6126must be written as
6127
6128 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
6129
6130The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
6131discovered. See L<perlre>.
6132
6133=item Useless use of /d modifier in transliteration operator
6134
6135(W misc) You have used the /d modifier where the searchlist has the
6136same length as the replacelist. See L<perlop> for more information
6137about the /d modifier.
6138
6139=item Useless use of '\'; doesn't escape metacharacter '%c'
6140
6141(D deprecated) You wrote a regular expression pattern something like
6142one of these:
6143
6144 m{ \x\{FF\} }x
6145 m{foo\{1,3\}}
6146 qr(foo\(bar\))
6147 s[foo\[a-z\]bar][baz]
6148
6149The interior braces, square brackets, and parentheses are treated as
6150metacharacters even though they are backslashed; instead write:
6151
6152 m{ \x{FF} }x
6153 m{foo{1,3}}
6154 qr(foo(bar))
6155 s[foo[a-z]bar][baz]
6156
6157The backslashes have no effect when a regular expression pattern is
6158delimited by C<{}>, C<[]>, or C<()>, which ordinarily are
6159metacharacters, and the delimiters are also used, paired, within the
6160interior of the pattern. It is planned that a future Perl release will
6161change the meaning of constructs like these so that the backslashes
6162will have an effect, so remove them from your code.
6163
6164=item Useless use of \E
6165
6166(W misc) You have a \E in a double-quotish string without a C<\U>,
6167C<\L> or C<\Q> preceding it.
6168
6169=item Useless use of greediness modifier '%c' in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
6170
6171(W regexp) You specified something like these:
6172
6173 qr/a{3}?/
6174 qr/b{1,1}+/
6175
6176The C<"?"> and C<"+"> don't have any effect, as they modify whether to
6177match more or fewer when there is a choice, and by specifying to match
6178exactly a given numer, there is no room left for a choice.
6179
6180=item Useless use of %s in void context
6181
6182(W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
6183nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
6184value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
6185often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
6186to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
6187get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
6188said
6189
6190 $one, $two = 1, 2;
6191
6192when you meant to say
6193
6194 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
6195
6196Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
6197reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
6198example, if you say
6199
6200 $array = (1,2);
6201
6202when you should have said
6203
6204 $array = [1,2];
6205
6206The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
6207while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
6208a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
6209throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
6210L<perlref> for more on this.
6211
6212This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
6213since they are often used in statements like
6214
6215 1 while sub_with_side_effects();
6216
6217String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
6218about.
6219
6220=item Useless use of (?-p) in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
6221
6222(W regexp) The C<p> modifier cannot be turned off once set. Trying to do
6223so is futile.
6224
6225=item Useless use of "re" pragma
6226
6227(W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
6228
6229=item Useless use of sort in scalar context
6230
6231(W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
6232
6233 my $x = sort @y;
6234
6235This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
6236
6237=item Useless use of %s with no values
6238
6239(W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
6240apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
6241usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
6242possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
6243if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
6244you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
6245
6246=item "use" not allowed in expression
6247
6248(F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
6249returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
6250
6251=item Use of assignment to $[ is deprecated
6252
6253(D deprecated) The C<$[> variable (index of the first element in an array)
6254is deprecated. See L<perlvar/"$[">.
6255
6256=item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
6257
6258(D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted
6259form if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the
6260here-document.
6261
6262=item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
6263
6264(D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
6265$ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
6266behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
6267will simply fail.
6268
6269Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
6270blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
6271
6272=item Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
6273
6274(W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution. The /c
6275modifier is not presently meaningful in substitutions.
6276
6277=item Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
6278
6279(W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't
6280use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is
6281used. (This may change in the future.)
6282
6283=item Use of comma-less variable list is deprecated
6284
6285(D deprecated) The values you give to a format should be
6286separated by commas, not just aligned on a line.
6287
6288=item Use of each() on hash after insertion without resetting hash iterator results in undefined behavior
6289
6290(S internal) The behavior of C<each()> after insertion is undefined;
6291it may skip items, or visit items more than once. Consider using
6292C<keys()> instead of C<each()>.
6293
6294=item Use of := for an empty attribute list is not allowed
6295
6296(F) The construction C<my $x := 42> used to parse as equivalent to
6297C<my $x : = 42> (applying an empty attribute list to C<$x>).
6298This construct was deprecated in 5.12.0, and has now been made a syntax
6299error, so C<:=> can be reclaimed as a new operator in the future.
6300
6301If you need an empty attribute list, for example in a code generator, add
6302a space before the C<=>.
6303
6304=item Use of freed value in iteration
6305
6306(F) Perhaps you modified the iterated array within the loop?
6307This error is typically caused by code like the following:
6308
6309 @a = (3,4);
6310 @a = () for (1,2,@a);
6311
6312You are not supposed to modify arrays while they are being iterated over.
6313For speed and efficiency reasons, Perl internally does not do full
6314reference-counting of iterated items, hence deleting such an item in the
6315middle of an iteration causes Perl to see a freed value.
6316
6317=item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
6318
6319(D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
6320to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
6321
6322=item Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
6323
6324(W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a C<split>
6325operator. Since C<split> always tries to match the pattern
6326repeatedly, the C</g> has no effect.
6327
6328=item Use of "goto" to jump into a construct is deprecated
6329
6330(D deprecated) Using C<goto> to jump from an outer scope into an inner
6331scope is deprecated and should be avoided.
6332
6333=item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
6334
6335(D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD>
6336subroutines are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy)
6337even when the subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain
6338functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or
6339C<< $obj->bar() >>).
6340
6341This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
6342methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
6343code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
6344currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
6345C<AUTOLOAD>s.
6346
6347The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
6348non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
6349to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
6350named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
6351startup.
6352
6353In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
6354you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
6355C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
6356
6357=item Use of %s in printf format not supported
6358
6359(F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
6360only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
6361
6362=item Use of %s is deprecated
6363
6364(D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
6365generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
6366old way has bad side effects.
6367
6368=item Use of literal control characters in variable names is deprecated
6369
6370(D deprecated) Using literal control characters in the source to refer
6371to the ^FOO variables, like C<$^X> and C<${^GLOBAL_PHASE}> is now
6372deprecated. This only affects code like C<$\cT>, where \cT is a control in
6373the source code: C<${"\cT"}> and C<$^T> remain valid.
6374
6375=item Use of -l on filehandle%s
6376
6377(W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
6378it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
6379The operation returned C<undef>. Use a filename instead.
6380
6381=item Use of my $_ is experimental
6382
6383(S experimental::lexical_topic) Lexical $_ is an experimental feature and
6384its behavior may change or even be removed in any future release of perl.
6385See the explanation under L<perlvar/$_>.
6386
6387=item Use of %s on a handle without * is deprecated
6388
6389(D deprecated) You used C<tie>, C<tied> or C<untie> on a scalar but that scalar
6390happens to hold a typeglob, which means its filehandle will be tied. If
6391you mean to tie a handle, use an explicit * as in C<tie *$handle>.
6392
6393This was a long-standing bug that was removed in Perl 5.16, as there was
6394no way to tie the scalar itself when it held a typeglob, and no way to
6395untie a scalar that had had a typeglob assigned to it. If you see this
6396message, you must be using an older version.
6397
6398=item Use of ?PATTERN? without explicit operator is deprecated
6399
6400(D deprecated) You have written something like C<?\w?>, for a regular
6401expression that matches only once. Starting this term directly with
6402the question mark delimiter is now deprecated, so that the question mark
6403will be available for use in new operators in the future. Write C<m?\w?>
6404instead, explicitly using the C<m> operator: the question mark delimiter
6405still invokes match-once behaviour.
6406
6407=item Use of reference "%s" as array index
6408
6409(W misc) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
6410isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
6411to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
6412
6413If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
6414C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
6415however, because you can overload the numification and stringification
6416operators and then you presumably know what you are doing.
6417
6418=item Use of state $_ is experimental
6419
6420(S experimental::lexical_topic) Lexical $_ is an experimental feature and
6421its behavior may change or even be removed in any future release of perl.
6422See the explanation under L<perlvar/$_>.
6423
6424=item Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
6425
6426(W taint, deprecated) You have supplied C<system()> or C<exec()> with multiple
6427arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used to be allowed
6428but will become a fatal error in a future version of perl. Untaint your
6429arguments. See L<perlsec>.
6430
6431=item Use of uninitialized value%s
6432
6433(W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
6434defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
6435To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
6436
6437To help you figure out what was undefined, perl will try to tell you
6438the name of the variable (if any) that was undefined. In some cases
6439it cannot do this, so it also tells you what operation you used the
6440undefined value in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your program
6441and the operation displayed in the warning may not necessarily appear
6442literally in your program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is usually
6443optimized into C<"that " . $foo>, and the warning will refer to the
6444C<concatenation (.)> operator, even though there is no C<.> in
6445your program.
6446
6447=item Use \x{...} for more than two hex characters in regex; marked by
6448S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
6449
6450(F) In a regular expression, you said something like
6451
6452 (?[ [ \xBEEF ] ])
6453
6454Perl isn't sure if you meant this
6455
6456 (?[ [ \x{BEEF} ] ])
6457
6458or if you meant this
6459
6460 (?[ [ \x{BE} E F ] ])
6461
6462You need to add either braces or blanks to disambiguate.
6463
6464=item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
6465
6466(D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
6467C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
6468used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now
6469deprecated, and will be removed in a future version.
6470
6471=item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
6472
6473(D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
6474C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
6475allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated,
6476and will be removed in a future version.
6477
6478=item Using just the first character returned by \N{} in character class in
6479regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
6480
6481(W regexp) A charnames handler may return a sequence of more than one
6482character. Currently all but the first one are discarded when used in
6483a regular expression pattern bracketed character class.
6484
6485=item Using !~ with %s doesn't make sense
6486
6487(F) Using the C<!~> operator with C<s///r>, C<tr///r> or C<y///r> is
6488currently reserved for future use, as the exact behaviour has not
6489been decided. (Simply returning the boolean opposite of the
6490modified string is usually not particularly useful.)
6491
6492=item UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
6493
6494(S surrogate) You had a UTF-16 surrogate in a context where they are
6495not considered acceptable. These code points, between U+D800 and
6496U+DFFF (inclusive), are used by Unicode only for UTF-16. However, Perl
6497internally allows all unsigned integer code points (up to the size limit
6498available on your platform), including surrogates. But these can cause
6499problems when being input or output, which is likely where this message
6500came from. If you really really know what you are doing you can turn
6501off this warning by C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
6502
6503=item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
6504
6505(W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
6506C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
6507can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
6508false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
6509constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
6510C<defined> operator.
6511
6512=item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
6513
6514(W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
6515%ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
6516longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
65171024 characters.
6518
6519=item values on reference is experimental
6520
6521(S experimental::autoderef) C<values> with a scalar argument
6522is experimental and may change or be removed in a future
6523Perl version. If you want to take the risk of using this
6524feature, simply disable this warning:
6525
6526 no warnings "experimental::autoderef";
6527
6528=item Variable "%s" is not available
6529
6530(W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is
6531attempting to capture an outer lexical that is not currently available.
6532This can happen for one of two reasons. First, the outer lexical may be
6533declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that has not yet been created.
6534(Remember that named subs are created at compile time, while anonymous
6535subs are created at run-time.) For example,
6536
6537 sub { my $a; sub f { $a } }
6538
6539At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current value of $a,
6540since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely,
6541the following won't give a warning since the anonymous subroutine has by
6542now been created and is live:
6543
6544 sub { my $a; eval 'sub f { $a }' }->();
6545
6546The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a variable that has
6547gone out of scope, for example,
6548
6549 sub f {
6550 my $a;
6551 sub { eval '$a' }
6552 }
6553 f()->();
6554
6555Here, when the '$a' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not currently
6556being executed, so its $a is not available for capture.
6557
6558=item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
6559
6560(S misc) With "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
6561that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
6562something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
6563that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
6564front of your variable.
6565
6566=item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in regex m/%s/
6567
6568(F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
6569known at compile time. See L<perlre>.
6570
6571=item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
6572
6573(W misc) A "my", "our" or "state" variable has been redeclared in the
6574current scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the
6575previous instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note
6576that the earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope
6577or until all closure references to it are destroyed.
6578
6579=item Variable syntax
6580
6581(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
6582of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
6583Perl yourself.
6584
6585=item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
6586
6587(W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
6588lexical variable defined in an outer named subroutine.
6589
6590When the inner subroutine is called, it will see the value of
6591the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
6592call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
6593outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
6594longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
6595variable will no longer be shared.
6596
6597This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
6598anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
6599reference variables in outer subroutines are created, they
6600are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
6601
6602=item vector argument not supported with alpha versions
6603
6604(S printf) The %vd (s)printf format does not support version objects
6605with alpha parts.
6606
6607=item Verb pattern '%s' has a mandatory argument in regex; marked by
6608S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
6609
6610(F) You used a verb pattern that requires an argument. Supply an
6611argument or check that you are using the right verb.
6612
6613=item Verb pattern '%s' may not have an argument in regex; marked by
6614S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
6615
6616(F) You used a verb pattern that is not allowed an argument. Remove the
6617argument or check that you are using the right verb.
6618
6619=item Version number must be a constant number
6620
6621(P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
6622its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
6623the version number.
6624
6625=item Version string '%s' contains invalid data; ignoring: '%s'
6626
6627(W misc) The version string contains invalid characters at the end, which
6628are being ignored.
6629
6630=item Warning: something's wrong
6631
6632(W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
6633you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
6634
6635=item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
6636
6637(S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
6638the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
6639space.
6640
6641=item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
6642
6643(S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
6644looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
6645term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
6646function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
6647
6648 rand + 5;
6649
6650you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
6651
6652 rand() + 5;
6653
6654but in actual fact, you got
6655
6656 rand(+5);
6657
6658So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
6659
6660=item when is experimental
6661
6662(S experimental::smartmatch) C<when> depends on smartmatch, which is
6663experimental. Additionally, it has several special cases that may
6664not be immediately obvious, and their behavior may change or
6665even be removed in any future release of perl. See the explanation
6666under L<perlsyn/Experimental Details on given and when>.
6667
6668=item Wide character in %s
6669
6670(S utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting
6671one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print). The easiest
6672way to quiet this warning is simply to add the C<:utf8> layer to the
6673output, e.g. C<binmode STDOUT, ':utf8'>. Another way to turn off the
6674warning is to add C<no warnings 'utf8';> but that is often closer to
6675cheating. In general, you are supposed to explicitly mark the
6676filehandle with an encoding, see L<open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>.
6677
6678=item Within []-length '%c' not allowed
6679
6680(F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by C<[TEMPLATE]>
6681only if C<TEMPLATE> always matches the same amount of packed bytes that
6682can be determined from the template alone. This is not possible if
6683it contains any of the codes @, /, U, u, w or a *-length. Redesign
6684the template.
6685
6686=item write() on closed filehandle %s
6687
6688(W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
6689before now. Check your control flow.
6690
6691=item %s "\x%X" does not map to Unicode
6692
6693(S utf8) When reading in different encodings, Perl tries to
6694map everything into Unicode characters. The bytes you read
6695in are not legal in this encoding. For example
6696
6697 utf8 "\xE4" does not map to Unicode
6698
6699if you try to read in the a-diaereses Latin-1 as UTF-8.
6700
6701=item 'X' outside of string
6702
6703(F) You had a (un)pack template that specified a relative position before
6704the beginning of the string being (un)packed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
6705
6706=item 'x' outside of string in unpack
6707
6708(F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
6709the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
6710
6711=item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
6712
6713(F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
6714sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
6715about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
6716your script.
6717
6718=item You need to quote "%s"
6719
6720(W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
6721Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
6722which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
6723assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
6724what you want, put an & in front.)
6725
6726=item Your random numbers are not that random
6727
6728(F) When trying to initialize the random seed for hashes, Perl could
6729not get any randomness out of your system. This usually indicates
6730Something Very Wrong.
6731
6732=item Zero length \N{} in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
6733
6734(F) Named Unicode character escapes C<(\N{...})> may return a zero-length
6735sequence. Such an escape was used in an extended character class, i.e.
6736C<(?[...])>, which is not permitted. Check that the correct escape has
6737been used, and the correct charnames handler is in scope. The S<<-- HERE>
6738shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
6739
6740=back
6741
6742=head1 SEE ALSO
6743
6744L<warnings>, L<diagnostics>.
6745
6746=cut