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1=head1 NAME
2
3perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
4
5=head1 DESCRIPTION
6
7These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
8desperation):
9
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (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.
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<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
29
30Severe warnings are always enabled, unless they are explicitly disabled
31with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
32
33Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
36See L<warnings>.
37
38The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
43letter.
44
45=over 4
46
47=item accept() on closed socket %s
48
49(W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50to check the return value of your socket() call? See
51L<perlfunc/accept>.
52
53=item Allocation too large: %x
54
55(X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
56
57=item '%c' allowed only after types %s
58
59(F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only
60after certain types. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
61
62=item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
63
64(W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67subroutine is not imported.
68
69To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
73
74To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($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 %c resolved as operator %c
93
94(S ambiguous) C<%>, C<&>, and C<*> are both infix operators (modulus,
95bitwise and, and multiplication) I<and> initial special characters
96(denoting hashes, subroutines and typeglobs), and you said something
97like C<*foo * foo> that might be interpreted as either of them. We
98assumed you meant the infix operator, but please try to make it more
99clear -- in the example given, you might write C<*foo * foo()> if you
100really meant to multiply a glob by the result of calling a function.
101
102=item Ambiguous use of %c{%s} resolved to %c%s
103
104(W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<@{foo}>, which might be
105asking for the variable C<@foo>, or it might be calling a function
106named foo, and dereferencing it as an array reference. If you wanted
107the variable, you can just write C<@foo>. If you wanted to call the
108function, write C<@{foo()}> ... or you could just not have a variable
109and a function with the same name, and save yourself a lot of trouble.
110
111=item Ambiguous use of %c{%s[...]} resolved to %c%s[...]
112
113=item Ambiguous use of %c{%s{...}} resolved to %c%s{...}
114
115(W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<${foo[2]}> (where foo represents
116the name of a Perl keyword), which might be looking for element number
1172 of the array named C<@foo>, in which case please write C<$foo[2]>, or you
118might have meant to pass an anonymous arrayref to the function named
119foo, and then do a scalar deref on the value it returns. If you meant
120that, write C<${foo([2])}>.
121
122In regular expressions, the C<${foo[2]}> syntax is sometimes necessary
123to disambiguate between array subscripts and character classes.
124C</$length[2345]/>, for instance, will be interpreted as C<$length> followed
125by the character class C<[2345]>. If an array subscript is what you
126want, you can avoid the warning by changing C</${length[2345]}/> to the
127unsightly C</${\$length[2345]}/>, by renaming your array to something
128that does not coincide with a built-in keyword, or by simply turning
129off warnings with C<no warnings 'ambiguous';>.
130
131=item Ambiguous use of -%s resolved as -&%s()
132
133(S ambiguous) You wrote something like C<-foo>, which might be the
134string C<"-foo">, or a call to the function C<foo>, negated. If you meant
135the string, just write C<"-foo">. If you meant the function call,
136write C<-foo()>.
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 %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
174
175(F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element or a
176subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
177
178 $foo{$bar}
179 $ref->{"susie"}[12]
180 &do_something
181
182=item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
183
184(F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
185such as:
186
187 $foo{$bar}
188 $ref->{"susie"}[12]
189
190or a hash or array slice, such as:
191
192 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
193 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
194
195=item %s argument is not a subroutine name
196
197(F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
198name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
199error.
200
201=item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
202
203(W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
204that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
205will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
206
207=item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
208
209(W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O
210system you forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers
211take care of transforming data between external and internal
212representations.) Perl stopped parsing the layer list at this
213point and did not attempt to push this layer. If your program
214didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the
215result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
216
217=item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
218
219(D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
220spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
221
222=item assertion botched: %s
223
224(X) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
225
226=item Assertion failed: file "%s"
227
228(X) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
229
230=item Assigning non-zero to $[ is no longer possible
231
232(F) When the "array_base" feature is disabled (e.g., under C<use v5.16;>)
233the special variable C<$[>, which is deprecated, is now a fixed zero value.
234
235=item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
236
237(F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
238must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
239know which context to supply to the right side.
240
241=item A thread exited while %d threads were running
242
243(W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily
244the main thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
245Usually it's a good idea first to collect the return values of the
246created threads by joining them, and only then to exit from the main
247thread. See L<threads>.
248
249=item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
250
251(F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
252the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
253
254=item Attempt to bless into a reference
255
256(F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
257the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
258supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
259
260 bless $self, $proto;
261
262when you intended
263
264 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
265
266If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
267of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
268example by:
269
270 bless $self, "$proto";
271
272=item Attempt to clear deleted array
273
274(S debugging) An array was assigned to when it was being freed.
275Freed values are not supposed to be visible to Perl code. This
276can also happen if XS code calls C<av_clear> from a custom magic
277callback on the array.
278
279=item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
280
281(F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
282which is not in its key set.
283
284=item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
285
286(F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
287declared readonly from a restricted hash.
288
289=item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%x
290
291(S internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
292that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
293outside any of those arenas.
294
295=item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string '%s'%s
296
297(S internal) Perl maintains a reference-counted internal table of
298strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
299strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
300of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
301
302=item Attempt to free temp prematurely: SV 0x%x
303
304(S debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
305free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
306SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
307free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
308try to free it.
309
310=item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
311
312(S internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
313
314=item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar: SV 0x%x
315
316(W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
317see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
318earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
319This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
320that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
321mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
322corrupted.
323
324=item Attempt to join self
325
326(F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
327impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
328to move the join() to some other thread.
329
330=item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
331
332(W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
333function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
334means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
335invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
336literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
337avoid this warning.
338
339=item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
340
341(F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
342compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
343unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
344L<perlvar/%INC>.
345
346=item Attempt to set length of freed array
347
348(W misc) You tried to set the length of an array which has
349been freed. You can do this by storing a reference to the
350scalar representing the last index of an array and later
351assigning through that reference. For example
352
353 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
354 $$r = 503
355
356=item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
357
358(W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
359used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
360dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
361
362=item Attribute "locked" is deprecated
363
364(D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the
365"locked" attribute on a code reference. The :locked attribute is
366obsolete, has had no effect since 5005 threads were removed, and
367will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
368
369=item Attribute "unique" is deprecated
370
371(D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify
372the "unique" attribute on an array, hash or scalar reference.
373The :unique attribute has had no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and
374will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
375
376=item av_reify called on tied array
377
378(S debugging) This indicates that something went wrong and Perl got I<very>
379confused about C<@_> or C<@DB::args> being tied.
380
381=item Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
382
383(F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
384or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
385S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
386S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
387
388=item Bad evalled substitution pattern
389
390(F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
391substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
392most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
393
394=item Bad filehandle: %s
395
396(F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
397symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
398open(), or did it in another package.
399
400=item Bad free() ignored
401
402(S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
403been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
404setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
405
406This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
407dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
408which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
409
410=item Bad hash
411
412(P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
413
414=item Badly placed ()'s
415
416(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
417of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
418Perl yourself.
419
420=item Bad name after %s
421
422(F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
423didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
424of quotes, so
425
426 $var = 'myvar';
427 $sym = mypack::$var;
428
429is not the same as
430
431 $var = 'myvar';
432 $sym = "mypack::$var";
433
434=item Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
435
436(F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the
437plugin API.
438
439=item Bad realloc() ignored
440
441(S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that
442had never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can
443be disabled by setting the environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
444
445=item Bad symbol for array
446
447(P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
448wasn't a symbol table entry.
449
450=item Bad symbol for dirhandle
451
452(P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
453that wasn't a symbol table entry.
454
455=item Bad symbol for filehandle
456
457(P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
458that wasn't a symbol table entry.
459
460=item Bad symbol for hash
461
462(P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
463wasn't a symbol table entry.
464
465=item Bareword found in conditional
466
467(W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
468conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
469of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
470
471 open FOO || die;
472
473It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
474a bareword:
475
476 use constant TYPO => 1;
477 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
478
479The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
480
481=item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
482
483(F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
484subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
485symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
486
487=item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
488
489(W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
490compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
491you need to predeclare a package?
492
493=item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
494
495(F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
496subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
497exited.
498
499=item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
500
501(F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
502implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
503occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
504be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
505depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
506
507=item \1 better written as $1
508
509(W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
510The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
511substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
512because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
513there are more than 9 backreferences.
514
515=item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
516
517(W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
518(4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
519L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
520
521=item bind() on closed socket %s
522
523(W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
524check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
525
526=item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
527
528(W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
529Check your control flow and number of arguments.
530
531=item "\b{" is deprecated; use "\b\{" instead
532
533=item "\B{" is deprecated; use "\B\{" instead
534
535(W deprecated, regexp) Use of an unescaped "{" immediately following a
536C<\b> or C<\B> is now deprecated so as to reserve its use for Perl
537itself in a future release.
538
539=item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
540
541(W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
542
543=item Bizarre copy of %s
544
545(P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
546copiable.
547
548=item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
549
550(W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
551iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
552which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
553
554=item Bizarre SvTYPE [%d]
555
556(P) When starting a new thread or return values from a thread, Perl
557encountered an invalid data type.
558
559=item Callback called exit
560
561(F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
562exited by calling exit.
563
564=item %s() called too early to check prototype
565
566(W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
567parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
568that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
569early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
570subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
571checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
572function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
573the warning. See L<perlsub>.
574
575=item Cannot compress integer in pack
576
577(F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
578compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
579attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
580See L<perlfunc/pack>.
581
582=item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
583
584(F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
585format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
586
587=item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
588
589(F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference
590in it, then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax.
591The access triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is
592no legal conversion from that type of reference to a typeglob.
593
594=item Cannot copy to %s
595
596(P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
597be directly assigned to.
598
599=item Cannot find encoding "%s"
600
601(S io) You tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to a filehandle,
602either with open() or binmode().
603
604=item Cannot set tied @DB::args
605
606(F) C<caller> tried to set C<@DB::args>, but found it tied. Tying C<@DB::args>
607is not supported. (Before this error was added, it used to crash.)
608
609=item Cannot tie unreifiable array
610
611(P) You somehow managed to call C<tie> on an array that does not
612keep a reference count on its arguments and cannot be made to
613do so. Such arrays are not even supposed to be accessible to
614Perl code, but are only used internally.
615
616=item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
617
618(F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
619integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
620to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
621
622=item Can't bless non-reference value
623
624(F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
625encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
626
627=item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
628
629(F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
630a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
631
632=item Can't "break" outside a given block
633
634(F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
635
636=item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
637
638(F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
639object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
640like this will reproduce the error:
641
642 $BADREF = undef;
643 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
644 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
645
646=item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
647
648(F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
649ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
650didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
651object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
652
653=item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
654
655(F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
656object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
657defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
658Something like this will reproduce the error:
659
660 $BADREF = 42;
661 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
662 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
663
664=item Can't chdir to %s
665
666(F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
667that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
668
669=item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
670
671(P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
672nosuid.
673
674=item Can't coerce %s to %s in %s
675
676(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
677(typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
678say things like:
679
680 *foo += 1;
681
682You CAN say
683
684 $foo = *foo;
685 $foo += 1;
686
687but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
688
689=item Can't "continue" outside a when block
690
691(F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
692or C<default> block.
693
694=item Can't create pipe mailbox
695
696(P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
697quotas or other plumbing problems.
698
699=item Can't declare %s in "%s"
700
701(F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
702"state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
703
704=item Can't "default" outside a topicalizer
705
706(F) You have used a C<default> block that is neither inside a
707C<foreach> loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is
708issued on exit from the C<default> block, so you won't get the
709error if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
710
711=item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
712
713(S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
714a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
715
716=item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
717
718(S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
719reason.
720
721=item Can't do inplace edit without backup
722
723(F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
724reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
725C<-i.bak>, or some such.
726
727=item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
728
729(S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
730characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
731inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
732
733=item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
734
735(F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really
736want your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The
737<-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
738was discovered. See L<perlre>.
739
740=item Can't do waitpid with flags
741
742(F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
743waitpid() without flags is emulated.
744
745=item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
746
747(F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
748point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
749line.
750
751=item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
752
753(F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
754or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
755little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
756See L<perlfunc/pack>.
757
758=item Can't exec "%s": %s
759
760(W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
761named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
762permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
763C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
764architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
765can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
766#! at all.)
767
768=item Can't exec %s
769
770(F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
771that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
772need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
773
774=item Can't execute %s
775
776(F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
777found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
778
779=item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
780
781(F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
782is no builtin with the name C<word>.
783
784=item Can't find %s character property "%s"
785
786(F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
787could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property?
788See L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
789for a complete list of available properties.
790
791=item Can't find label %s
792
793(F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
794possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
795
796=item Can't find %s on PATH
797
798(F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
799found in the PATH.
800
801=item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
802
803(F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
804found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
805script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
806
807=item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
808
809(F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
810that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
811nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
812
813 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
814
815If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
816included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag or there
817may not be a linebreak after it. A good programmer's editor will have
818a way to help you find these characters (or lack of characters). See
819L<perlop> for the full details on here-documents.
820
821=item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
822
823(F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode
824property (for example C<\p{Lu}> matches all uppercase
825letters). If you did mean to use a Unicode property, see
826L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
827for a complete list of available properties. If you didn't
828mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either by
829C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, or
830until C<\E>).
831
832=item Can't fork: %s
833
834(F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
835pipeline.
836
837=item Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
838
839(W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be retried
840after five seconds.
841
842=item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
843
844(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
845between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
846Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
847the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
848account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
849the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
850the access-checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
851the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
852if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
853because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
854appears, the name lookup failed, and the access-checking routine gave up
855and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access-checking
856routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
857shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
858only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
859
860=item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
861
862(P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
863pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
864
865=item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
866
867(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
868mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
869
870=item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
871
872(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
873loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
874
875=item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
876
877(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
878a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
879you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
880See L<perlfunc/goto>.
881
882=item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
883
884(F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
885comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
886as the reduce() function in List::Util).
887
888=item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
889
890(F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
891"string" or block.
892
893=item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
894
895(F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
896subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
897cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
898routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
899
900=item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
901
902(W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
903signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
904signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
905processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
906situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
907may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
908
909=item Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
910
911(F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a fatal error to
912attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise non-numeric
913process identifier.
914
915=item Can't "last" outside a loop block
916
917(F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
918except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
919block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
920block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
921usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
922inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
923L<perlfunc/last>.
924
925=item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
926
927(F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
928package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
929
930=item Can't load '%s' for module %s
931
932(F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension.
933This may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one
934that is incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known
935to happen between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your
936dynamic extension was built against an older version of the library
937that is installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old
938dynamic extensions.
939
940=item Can't localize lexical variable %s
941
942(F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
943lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you
944want to localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with
945the package name.
946
947=item Can't localize through a reference
948
949(F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
950handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
951pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
952that $ref will still be a reference.
953
954=item Can't locate %s
955
956(F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be found.
957Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC, unless
958the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
959to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the
960extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
961to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
962L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
963
964=item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
965
966(F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
967autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
968are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
969the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
970
971=item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
972
973(F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
974for example, F<foo.so> or F<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
975unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
976
977=item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
978
979(F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
980functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
981method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
982
983=item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
984
985(W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
986doesn't seem to exist.
987
988=item Can't locate PerlIO%s
989
990(F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
991e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
992
993=item Can't make list assignment to %ENV on this system
994
995(F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
996VMS.
997
998=item Can't modify %s in %s
999
1000(F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
1001to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
1002
1003=item Can't modify nonexistent substring
1004
1005(P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
1006a NULL.
1007
1008=item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
1009
1010(F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
1011such. See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1012
1013=item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
1014
1015(F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
1016buffer.
1017
1018=item Can't "next" outside a loop block
1019
1020(F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
1021there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1022count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
1023grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1024though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
1025once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
1026
1027=item Can't open %s
1028
1029(F) You tried to run a perl built with MAD support with
1030the PERL_XMLDUMP environment variable set, but the file
1031named by that variable could not be opened.
1032
1033=item Can't open %s: %s
1034
1035(S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
1036filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
1037switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually
1038this is because you don't have read permission for a file which
1039you named on the command line.
1040
1041(F) You tried to call perl with the B<-e> switch, but F</dev/null> (or
1042your operating system's equivalent) could not be opened.
1043
1044=item Can't open a reference
1045
1046(W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
1047using the 3-arg open() syntax:
1048
1049 open FH, '>', $ref;
1050
1051but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
1052open is not supported.
1053
1054=item Can't open bidirectional pipe
1055
1056(W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
1057You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
1058as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
1059">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
1060
1061=item Can't open error file %s as stderr
1062
1063(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1064redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
1065the command line for writing.
1066
1067=item Can't open input file %s as stdin
1068
1069(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1070redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
1071command line for reading.
1072
1073=item Can't open output file %s as stdout
1074
1075(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1076redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
1077the command line for writing.
1078
1079=item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
1080
1081(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1082redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
1083for stdout.
1084
1085=item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
1086
1087(F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
1088
1089If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
1090shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1091you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1092
1093=item Can't read CRTL environ
1094
1095(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1096from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1097missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1098or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1099searched.
1100
1101=item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1102
1103(F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1104there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1105count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1106or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1107though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1108loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1109
1110=item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1111
1112(S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1113file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1114the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1115
1116=item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1117
1118(S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1119probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1120
1121=item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1122
1123(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1124to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1125
1126=item Can't reset %ENV on this system
1127
1128(F) You called C<reset('E')> or similar, which tried to reset
1129all variables in the current package beginning with "E". In
1130the main package, that includes %ENV. Resetting %ENV is not
1131supported on some systems, notably VMS.
1132
1133=item Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
1134
1135(F)(P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1136opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1137package. If the method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1138
1139=item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1140
1141(F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1142temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1143is not allowed.
1144
1145=item Can't return outside a subroutine
1146
1147(F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1148there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1149
1150=item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1151
1152(F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue
1153subroutine, but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl
1154think you meant to return only one value. You probably meant to
1155write parentheses around the call to the subroutine, which tell
1156Perl that the call should be in list context.
1157
1158=item Can't stat script "%s"
1159
1160(P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1161open already. Bizarre.
1162
1163=item Can't take log of %g
1164
1165(F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1166negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1167standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1168negative numbers.
1169
1170=item Can't take sqrt of %g
1171
1172(F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1173negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1174with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1175
1176=item Can't undef active subroutine
1177
1178(F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1179however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1180redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1181
1182=item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1183
1184(P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1185into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1186specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1187indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1188
1189=item Can't use '%c' after -mname
1190
1191(F) You tried to call perl with the B<-m> switch, but you put something
1192other than "=" after the module name.
1193
1194=item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1195
1196(F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1197table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1198for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1199
1200=item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1201
1202(F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1203be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1204
1205=item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1206
1207(F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1208references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1209
1210=item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1211
1212(F) The first time the C<%!> hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1213Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1214provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1215
1216=item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1217
1218(F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1219byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1220allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1221
1222=item Can't use %s for loop variable
1223
1224(F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1225foreach.
1226
1227=item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1228
1229(F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1230is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1231(namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1232have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1233weren't.
1234
1235=item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1236
1237(F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1238that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1239For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1240is inside a big-endian group.
1241
1242=item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1243
1244(F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1245You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1246and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1247Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1248lexical variable.
1249
1250=item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1251
1252(F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1253reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1254test the type of the reference, if need be.
1255
1256=item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1257
1258(F) You've told Perl to dereference a string, something which
1259C<use strict> blocks to prevent it happening accidentally. See
1260L<perlref/"Symbolic references">. This can be triggered by an C<@> or C<$>
1261in a double-quoted string immediately before interpolating a variable,
1262for example in C<"user @$twitter_id">, which says to treat the contents
1263of C<$twitter_id> as an array reference; use a C<\> to have a literal C<@>
1264symbol followed by the contents of C<$twitter_id>: C<"user \@$twitter_id">.
1265
1266=item Can't use subscript on %s
1267
1268(F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1269subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1270didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1271
1272=item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1273
1274(W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1275creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1276backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1277expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1278value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1279instead.
1280
1281=item Can't weaken a nonreference
1282
1283(F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1284references can be weakened.
1285
1286=item Can't "when" outside a topicalizer
1287
1288(F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1289loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1290from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1291or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1292
1293=item Can't x= to read-only value
1294
1295(F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1296with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1297Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1298
1299=item Character following "\c" must be ASCII
1300
1301(F)(W deprecated, syntax) In C<\cI<X>>, I<X> must be an ASCII character.
1302It is planned to make this fatal in all instances in Perl 5.18. In the
1303cases where it isn't fatal, the character this evaluates to is
1304derived by exclusive or'ing the code point of this character with 0x40.
1305
1306Note that non-alphabetic ASCII characters are discouraged here as well.
1307
1308=item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1309
1310(W pack) You said
1311
1312 pack("C", $x)
1313
1314where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1315only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1316and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1317
1318 pack("C", $x & 255)
1319
1320If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1321instead.
1322
1323=item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1324
1325(W pack) You said
1326
1327 pack("U0W", $x)
1328
1329where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode
1330expects all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved
1331as if you meant:
1332
1333 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1334
1335=item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1336
1337(W pack) You said
1338
1339 pack("c", $x)
1340
1341where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1342is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1343and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1344
1345 pack("c", $x & 255);
1346
1347If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1348instead.
1349
1350=item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1351
1352(W unpack) You tried something like
1353
1354 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1355
1356where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1357below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the
1358value modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1359
1360 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1361
1362=item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1363
1364(W pack) You tried something like
1365
1366 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1367
1368where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1369value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1370uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1371
1372 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1373
1374=item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1375
1376(W unpack) You tried something like
1377
1378 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1379
1380where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1381value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1382uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1383
1384 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1385
1386=item "\c{" is deprecated and is more clearly written as ";"
1387
1388(D deprecated, syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way
1389to specify non-printable characters. You used it with a "{" which
1390evaluates to ";", which is printable. It is planned to remove the
1391ability to specify a semi-colon this way in Perl 5.18. Just use a
1392semi-colon or a backslash-semi-colon without the "\c".
1393
1394=item "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"
1395
1396(W syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way to specify
1397non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which is better
1398written as simply itself, perhaps preceded by a backslash for non-word
1399characters.
1400
1401=item Cloning substitution context is unimplemented
1402
1403(F) Creating a new thread inside the C<s///> operator is not supported.
1404
1405=item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1406
1407(W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1408
1409=item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1410
1411(W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1412a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1413
1414=item Closure prototype called
1415
1416(F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to an attribute
1417handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure is created.
1418This subroutine cannot be called.
1419
1420=item Code missing after '/'
1421
1422(F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be
1423another template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1424
1425=item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
1426
1427=item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, all \p{} matches fail; all \P{} matches succeed
1428
1429(S utf8, non_unicode) You had a code point above the Unicode maximum
1430of U+10FFFF.
1431
1432Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code points, up
1433to the limit of what is storable in an unsigned integer on your system,
1434but these may not be accepted by other languages/systems. At one time,
1435it was legal in some standards to have code points up to 0x7FFF_FFFF,
1436but not higher. Code points above 0xFFFF_FFFF require larger than a
143732 bit word.
1438
1439None of the Unicode or Perl-defined properties will match a non-Unicode
1440code point. For example,
1441
1442 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\p{Any}/
1443
1444will not match, because the code point is not in Unicode. But
1445
1446 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\P{Any}/
1447
1448will match.
1449
1450This may be counterintuitive at times, as both these fail:
1451
1452 chr(0x110000) =~ /\p{ASCII_Hex_Digit=True}/ # Fails.
1453 chr(0x110000) =~ /\p{ASCII_Hex_Digit=False}/ # Also fails!
1454
1455and both these succeed:
1456
1457 chr(0x110000) =~ /\P{ASCII_Hex_Digit=True}/ # Succeeds.
1458 chr(0x110000) =~ /\P{ASCII_Hex_Digit=False}/ # Also succeeds!
1459
1460=item %s: Command not found
1461
1462(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> or another shell
1463shell instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
1464into Perl yourself. The #! line at the top of your file could look like
1465
1466 #!/usr/bin/perl -w
1467
1468=item Compilation failed in require
1469
1470(F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1471Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1472encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1473
1474=item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1475
1476(W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1477situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1478to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1479arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1480recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1481under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1482in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1483that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1484on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1485
1486=item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1487
1488(W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to
1489call cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked.
1490The cond_broadcast() function is used to wake up another thread
1491that is waiting in a cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't
1492sent before the other thread has a chance to enter the wait, it
1493is usual for the signaling thread first to wait for a lock on
1494variable. This lock attempt will only succeed after the other
1495thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the lock.
1496
1497=item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1498
1499(W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to
1500call cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The
1501cond_signal() function is used to wake up another thread that
1502is waiting in a cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't
1503sent before the other thread has a chance to enter the wait, it
1504is usual for the signaling thread first to wait for a lock on
1505variable. This lock attempt will only succeed after the other
1506thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the lock.
1507
1508=item connect() on closed socket %s
1509
1510(W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1511to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1512L<perlfunc/connect>.
1513
1514=item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1515
1516(F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1517an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1518specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1519corresponding L<overload> pragma?.
1520
1521=item Constant(%s)%s: %s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1522
1523(F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to find
1524the character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape.
1525
1526=item Constant is not %s reference
1527
1528(F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1529is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1530The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1531usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1532See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1533
1534=item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1535
1536(W redefine)(S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously
1537been eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions">
1538for commentary and workarounds.
1539
1540=item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1541
1542(W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1543for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1544workarounds.
1545
1546=item Copy method did not return a reference
1547
1548(F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1549L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1550
1551=item &CORE::%s cannot be called directly
1552
1553(F) You tried to call a subroutine in the C<CORE::> namespace
1554with C<&foo> syntax or through a reference. Some subroutines
1555in this package cannot yet be called that way, but must be
1556called as barewords. Something like this will work:
1557
1558 BEGIN { *shove = \&CORE::push; }
1559 shove @array, 1,2,3; # pushes on to @array
1560
1561=item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1562
1563(F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1564
1565=item corrupted regexp pointers
1566
1567(P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1568expression compiler gave it.
1569
1570=item corrupted regexp program
1571
1572(P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1573valid magic number.
1574
1575=item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
1576
1577(P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1578
1579=item Count after length/code in unpack
1580
1581(F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1582you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1583L<perlfunc/pack>.
1584
1585=item Deep recursion on anonymous subroutine
1586
1587=item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1588
1589(W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1590100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1591infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1592which case it indicates something else.
1593
1594This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the F<perl> binary,
1595setting the C pre-processor macro C<PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN> to the desired value.
1596
1597=item defined(@array) is deprecated
1598
1599(D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1600checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1601array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1602
1603=item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1604
1605(D deprecated) C<defined()> is not usually right on hashes and has been
1606discouraged since 5.004.
1607
1608Although C<defined %hash> is false on a plain not-yet-used hash, it
1609becomes true in several non-obvious circumstances, including iterators,
1610weak references, stash names, even remaining true after C<undef %hash>.
1611These things make C<defined %hash> fairly useless in practice.
1612
1613If a check for non-empty is what you wanted then just put it in boolean
1614context (see L<perldata/Scalar values>):
1615
1616 if (%hash) {
1617 # not empty
1618 }
1619
1620If you had C<defined %Foo::Bar::QUUX> to check whether such a package
1621variable exists then that's never really been reliable, and isn't
1622a good way to enquire about the features of a package, or whether
1623it's loaded, etc.
1624
1625
1626=item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1627
1628(F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
1629most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
1630of the C<....> part.
1631
1632The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1633discovered.
1634
1635=item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1636
1637(F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1638there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1639
1640=item Delimiter for here document is too long
1641
1642(F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1643long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1644that triggers this error.
1645
1646=item Deprecated character in \N{...}; marked by <-- HERE in \N{%s<-- HERE %s
1647
1648(D deprecated) Just about anything is legal for the C<...> in C<\N{...}>.
1649But starting in 5.12, non-reasonable ones that don't look like names
1650are deprecated. A reasonable name begins with an alphabetic character
1651and continues with any combination of alphanumerics, dashes, spaces,
1652parentheses or colons.
1653
1654=item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1655
1656(D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>. There
1657has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1658not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1659conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1660static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1661relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1662declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1663
1664 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1665
1666becomes
1667
1668 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1669
1670Beginning with perl 5.9.4, you can also use C<state> variables to have
1671lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1672
1673 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1674
1675=item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1676
1677(F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1678just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather
1679than to create a dangling reference.
1680
1681=item Did not produce a valid header
1682
1683See Server error.
1684
1685=item %s did not return a true value
1686
1687(F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1688it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1689traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1690do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1691
1692=item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1693
1694(W misc) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or
1695some such.
1696
1697=item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1698
1699(W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1700variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1701seems superfluous.
1702
1703=item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1704
1705(W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1706@hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1707carried away.
1708
1709=item Died
1710
1711(F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1712you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
1713
1714=item Document contains no data
1715
1716See Server error.
1717
1718=item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1719
1720(F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1721define a C<$VERSION.>
1722
1723=item '/' does not take a repeat count
1724
1725(F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1726See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1727
1728=item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1729
1730(P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1731
1732=item do_study: out of memory
1733
1734(P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1735
1736=item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1737
1738(S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1739"%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1740name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1741because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1742"sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1743something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1744subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1745"sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1746
1747=item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1748
1749(W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1750qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1751
1752=item dump is not supported
1753
1754(F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1755
1756=item Duplicate free() ignored
1757
1758(S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1759already been freed.
1760
1761=item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1762
1763(W unpack) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a
1764type in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1765
1766=item elseif should be elsif
1767
1768(S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks
1769it's ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1770named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1771unlikely to be what you want.
1772
1773=item Empty %s
1774
1775(F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1776described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1777a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1778
1779=item entering effective %s failed
1780
1781(F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1782effective uids or gids failed.
1783
1784=item %ENV is aliased to %s
1785
1786(F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1787aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1788program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1789
1790=item Error converting file specification %s
1791
1792(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1793specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1794single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1795an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1796conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1797
1798=item Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1799
1800(F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1801expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1802is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1803
1804=item Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
1805
1806(F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1807C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1808pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk,
1809it is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by using the
1810C<re 'eval'> pragma or by explicitly building the pattern from an
1811interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval(). See
1812L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1813
1814=item Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
1815
1816(F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1817assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1818pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1819
1820=item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1821
1822(F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
1823any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
1824
1825The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1826discovered.
1827
1828=item Excessively long <> operator
1829
1830(F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1831Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1832filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1833variable and glob that.
1834
1835=item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1836
1837(F) The C<exec> function is not implemented on some systems, e.g., Symbian
1838OS. See L<perlport>.
1839
1840=item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
1841
1842(F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1843
1844=item Exiting eval via %s
1845
1846(W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1847goto, or a loop control statement.
1848
1849=item Exiting format via %s
1850
1851(W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1852goto, or a loop control statement.
1853
1854=item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1855
1856(W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1857sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1858loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1859
1860=item Exiting subroutine via %s
1861
1862(W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1863as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1864
1865=item Exiting substitution via %s
1866
1867(W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1868as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1869
1870=item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1871
1872(W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1873the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1874usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1875e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1876
1877=item %s: Expression syntax
1878
1879(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1880Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1881
1882=item %s failed--call queue aborted
1883
1884(F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
1885CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
1886queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
1887
1888=item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1889
1890(W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1891character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1892in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1893"-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1894problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1895
1896=item Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
1897
1898(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1899system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1900details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1901you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1902
1903=item fcntl is not implemented
1904
1905(F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1906PDP-11 or something?
1907
1908=item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
1909
1910(F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
1911is not possible.
1912
1913=item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1914
1915(W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string start with a length indicator
1916which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1917a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1918C<u63> as the format.
1919
1920=item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1921
1922(W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1923it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1924"+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1925write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1926
1927=item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1928
1929(W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1930you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1931with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with ">". If you intended only to
1932read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>. Another possibility
1933is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0 (also known as STDIN) for
1934output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
1935
1936=item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1937
1938(W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1939as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
1940previously.
1941
1942=item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
1943
1944(W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1945as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
1946
1947=item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1948
1949(F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1950a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1951happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1952name.
1953
1954=item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1955
1956(W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1957some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1958filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1959same name?
1960
1961=item Format not terminated
1962
1963(F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1964to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1965
1966=item Format %s redefined
1967
1968(W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1969
1970 {
1971 no warnings 'redefine';
1972 eval "format NAME =...";
1973 }
1974
1975=item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1976
1977(W syntax) You said
1978
1979 if ($foo = 123)
1980
1981when you meant
1982
1983 if ($foo == 123)
1984
1985(or something like that).
1986
1987=item %s found where operator expected
1988
1989(S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
1990If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1991operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1992operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1993
1994=item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1995
1996(S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1997
1998=item gethostent not implemented
1999
2000(F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
2001because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
2002on the Internet.
2003
2004=item get%sname() on closed socket %s
2005
2006(W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
2007socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
2008
2009=item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
2010
2011(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
2012C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
2013
2014=item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
2015
2016(W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
2017forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2018L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
2019
2020=item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
2021
2022(F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
2023that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
2024declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
2025which package the global variable is in (using "::").
2026
2027=item glob failed (%s)
2028
2029(S glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used
2030for C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
2031pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
2032nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
2033resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell)
2034is broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables
2035in config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as
2036if it were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them
2037all empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
2038think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
2039C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
2040
2041=item Glob not terminated
2042
2043(F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
2044a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
2045not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
2046earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
2047
2048=item gmtime(%f) too large
2049
2050(W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was larger than
2051it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
2052date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2053not-a-number value).
2054
2055=item gmtime(%f) too small
2056
2057(W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was smaller than
2058it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong date.
2059
2060=item Got an error from DosAllocMem
2061
2062(P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
2063version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
2064
2065=item goto must have label
2066
2067(F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
2068unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
2069
2070=item Goto undefined subroutine%s
2071
2072(F) You tried to call a subroutine with C<goto &sub> syntax, but
2073the indicated subroutine hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2074has since been undefined.
2075
2076=item ()-group starts with a count
2077
2078(F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is supposed to follow
2079something: a template character or a ()-group. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2080
2081=item Group name must start with a non-digit word character in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2082
2083(F) Group names must follow the rules for perl identifiers, meaning
2084they must start with a non-digit word character. A common cause of
2085this error is using (?&0) instead of (?0). See L<perlre>.
2086
2087=item %s had compilation errors.
2088
2089(F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
2090
2091=item Had to create %s unexpectedly
2092
2093(S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
2094to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
2095created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
2096
2097=item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
2098
2099(D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
2100spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
2101
2102=item %s has too many errors
2103
2104(F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
2105Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
2106
2107=item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
2108
2109(W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2110(4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2111L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2112
2113=item -i used with no filenames on the command line, reading from STDIN
2114
2115(S inplace) The C<-i> option was passed on the command line, indicating
2116that the script is intended to edit files inplace, but no files were
2117given. This is usually a mistake, since editing STDIN inplace doesn't
2118make sense, and can be confusing because it can make perl look like
2119it is hanging when it is really just trying to read from STDIN. You
2120should either pass a filename to edit, or remove C<-i> from the command
2121line. See L<perlrun> for more details.
2122
2123=item Identifier too long
2124
2125(F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
2126about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
2127names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
2128of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
2129
2130=item Ignoring zero length \N{} in character class
2131
2132(W) Named Unicode character escapes C<(\N{...})> may return a zero-length
2133sequence. When such an escape is used in a character class its
2134behaviour is not well defined. Check that the correct escape has
2135been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
2136
2137=item Illegal binary digit %s
2138
2139(F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
2140
2141=item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
2142
2143(W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
2144binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
2145offending digit.
2146
2147=item Illegal character after '_' in prototype for %s : %s
2148
2149(W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2150Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2151
2152=item Illegal character \%o (carriage return)
2153
2154(F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
2155would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
2156when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
2157version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
2158to your Perl administrator.
2159
2160=item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
2161
2162(W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2163Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2164
2165=item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
2166
2167(F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
2168you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
2169
2170=item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
2171
2172(F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
2173
2174=item Illegal division by zero
2175
2176(F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
2177your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
2178meaningless input.
2179
2180=item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
2181
2182(W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
2183A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
2184number stopped before the illegal character.
2185
2186=item Illegal modulus zero
2187
2188(F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
2189numbers don't take to this kindly.
2190
2191=item Illegal number of bits in vec
2192
2193(F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
2194two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
2195
2196=item Illegal octal digit %s
2197
2198(F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2199
2200=item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
2201
2202(W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2203Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
2204
2205=item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: -%c
2206
2207(X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
2208following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtw]>.
2209
2210=item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
2211
2212(W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
2213internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
2214delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
2215
2216=item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
2217
2218(W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
2219name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
2220didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
2221ignored.
2222
2223=item (in cleanup) %s
2224
2225(W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
2226the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
2227system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
2228times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
2229would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
2230
2231Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
2232also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
2233
2234=item Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on parent '%s'
2235
2236(F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not
2237C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See the C3
2238documentation in L<mro> for more information.
2239
2240=item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
2241
2242(F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
2243Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
2244encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
2245
2246=item Infinite recursion in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2247
2248(F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input
2249text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive patterns
2250either consume text or fail.
2251
2252The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2253discovered.
2254
2255=item Initialization of state variables in list context currently forbidden
2256
2257(F) Currently the implementation of "state" only permits the
2258initialization of scalar variables in scalar context. Re-write
2259C<state ($a) = 42> as C<state $a = 42> to change from list to scalar
2260context. Constructions such as C<state (@a) = foo()> will be
2261supported in a future perl release.
2262
2263=item Insecure dependency in %s
2264
2265(F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
2266The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
2267setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
2268tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
2269from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
2270such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
2271L<perlsec> for more information.
2272
2273=item Insecure directory in %s
2274
2275(F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2276setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
2277the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
2278See L<perlsec>.
2279
2280=item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
2281
2282(F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2283setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
2284C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
2285supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
2286the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
2287
2288=item Insecure user-defined property %s
2289
2290(F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
2291expression that contains a call to a user-defined character property
2292function, i.e. C<\p{IsFoo}> or C<\p{InFoo}>.
2293See L<perlunicode/User-Defined Character Properties> and L<perlsec>.
2294
2295=item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2296
2297(F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2298or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2299integers for your architecture.
2300
2301=item Integer overflow in %s number
2302
2303(S overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2304either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2305your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2306On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2307representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
23080b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2309transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2310internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2311operations.
2312
2313=item Integer overflow in srand
2314
2315(S overflow) The number you have passed to srand is too big to fit
2316in your architecture's integer representation. The number has been
2317replaced with the largest integer supported (0xFFFFFFFF on 32-bit
2318architectures). This means you may be getting less randomness than
2319you expect, because different random seeds above the maximum will
2320return the same sequence of random numbers.
2321
2322=item Integer overflow in version
2323
2324=item Integer overflow in version %d
2325
2326(W overflow) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for
2327the size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
2328because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use an
2329element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by trying
2330to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like 100/9.
2331
2332=item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2333
2334(P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
2335The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2336discovered.
2337
2338=item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2339
2340(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2341you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2342to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2343L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2344Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2345terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
2346
2347=item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2348
2349(P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2350<-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2351discovered.
2352
2353=item %s (...) interpreted as function
2354
2355(W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
2356followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
2357operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
2358L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
2359
2360=item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2361
2362(F) The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2363by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2364
2365=item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2366
2367(F) The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2368recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2369
2370=item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2371
2372(W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2373L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
2374
2375=item Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2376
2377(W regexp) The numeric escape (for example C<\xHH>) of value < 256
2378didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion
2379from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma.
2380The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD) instead.
2381The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2382escape was discovered.
2383
2384=item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
2385
2386=item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2387
2388(F) The character constant represented by C<...> is not a valid hexadecimal
2389number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use a character other than
23900 - 9 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
2391
2392=item Invalid module name %s with -%c option: contains single ':'
2393
2394(F) The module argument to perl's B<-m> and B<-M> command-line options
2395cannot contain single colons in the module name, but only in the
2396arguments after "=". In other words, B<-MFoo::Bar=:baz> is ok, but
2397B<-MFoo:Bar=baz> is not.
2398
2399=item Invalid mro name: '%s'
2400
2401(F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")> or C<use mro 'foo'>,
2402where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO). Currently,
2403the only valid ones supported are C<dfs> and C<c3>, unless you have loaded
2404a module that is a MRO plugin. See L<mro> and L<perlmroapi>.
2405
2406=item Invalid negative number (%s) in chr
2407
2408(W utf8) You passed a negative number to C<chr>. Negative numbers are
2409not valid characters numbers, so it return the Unicode replacement
2410character (U+FFFD).
2411
2412=item invalid option -D%c, use -D'' to see choices
2413
2414(S debugging) Perl was called with invalid debugger flags. Call perl
2415with the B<-D> option with no flags to see the list of acceptable values.
2416See also L<perlrun/B<-D>I<letters>>.
2417
2418=item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2419
2420(F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2421greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2422C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2423up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2424problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2425
2426=item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2427
2428(F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2429character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2430
2431=item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2432
2433(F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2434elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2435parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2436See L<attributes>.
2437
2438=item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2439
2440(W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other
2441than a colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2442If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2443list was terminated too soon.
2444
2445=item Invalid strict version format (%s)
2446
2447(F) A version number did not meet the "strict" criteria for versions.
2448A "strict" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2449decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2450v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least three components.
2451The parenthesized text indicates which criteria were not met.
2452See the L<version> module for more details on allowed version formats.
2453
2454=item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2455
2456(F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2457See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2458
2459(W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2460silently ignored.
2461
2462=item Invalid version format (%s)
2463
2464(F) A version number did not meet the "lax" criteria for versions.
2465A "lax" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2466decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2467v-string. If the v-string has fewer than three components, it
2468must have a leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading 'v' is
2469optional. Both decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a
2470trailing "alpha" component separated by an underscore character
2471after a fractional or dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized
2472text indicates which criteria were not met. See the L<version> module
2473for more details on allowed version formats.
2474
2475=item Invalid version object
2476
2477(F) The internal structure of the version object was invalid.
2478Perhaps the internals were modified directly in some way or
2479an arbitrary reference was blessed into the "version" class.
2480
2481=item ioctl is not implemented
2482
2483(F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2484strange for a machine that supports C.
2485
2486=item ioctl() on unopened %s
2487
2488(W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2489Check your control flow and number of arguments.
2490
2491=item IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
2492
2493(F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2494you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO, Perl must be configured
2495with 'useperlio'.
2496
2497=item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2498
2499(F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2500neither as a system call nor an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2501
2502=item $* is no longer supported
2503
2504(D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older
2505perls, has been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. In
2506previous versions of perl the use of C<$*> enabled or disabled multi-line
2507matching within a string.
2508
2509Instead of using C<$*> you should use the C</m> (and maybe C</s>) regexp
2510modifiers. You can enable C</m> for a lexical scope (even a whole file)
2511with C<use re '/m'>. (In older versions: when C<$*> was set to a true value
2512then all regular expressions behaved as if they were written using C</m>.)
2513
2514=item $# is no longer supported
2515
2516(D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older
2517perls, has been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported. You
2518should use the printf/sprintf functions instead.
2519
2520=item '%s' is not a code reference
2521
2522(W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of
2523overload::constant needs to be a code reference. Either
2524an anonymous subroutine, or a reference to a subroutine.
2525
2526=item '%s' is not an overloadable type
2527
2528(W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2529unaware of.
2530
2531=item Junk on end of regexp in regex m/%s/
2532
2533(P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2534
2535=item Label not found for "last %s"
2536
2537(F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2538of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2539L<perlfunc/last>.
2540
2541=item Label not found for "next %s"
2542
2543(F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2544that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2545L<perlfunc/last>.
2546
2547=item Label not found for "redo %s"
2548
2549(F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2550that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2551L<perlfunc/last>.
2552
2553=item leaving effective %s failed
2554
2555(F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2556effective uids or gids failed.
2557
2558=item length/code after end of string in unpack
2559
2560(F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2561length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2562an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2563
2564=item length() used on %s
2565
2566(W syntax) You used length() on either an array or a hash when you
2567probably wanted a count of the items.
2568
2569Array size can be obtained by doing:
2570
2571 scalar(@array);
2572
2573The number of items in a hash can be obtained by doing:
2574
2575 scalar(keys %hash);
2576
2577=item Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
2578
2579(F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse
2580(using L<lex_stuff_pvn|perlapi/lex_stuff_pvn> or similar), but tried to insert a character that
2581couldn't be part of the current input. This is an inherent pitfall
2582of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the reasons to avoid it. Where
2583it is necessary to stuff, stuffing only plain ASCII is recommended.
2584
2585=item Lexing code internal error (%s)
2586
2587(F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a
2588detectable way.
2589
2590=item listen() on closed socket %s
2591
2592(W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2593to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2594L<perlfunc/listen>.
2595
2596=item List form of piped open not implemented
2597
2598(F) On some platforms, notably Windows, the three-or-more-arguments
2599form of C<open> does not support pipes, such as C<open($pipe, '|-', @args)>.
2600Use the two-argument C<open($pipe, '|prog arg1 arg2...')> form instead.
2601
2602=item localtime(%f) too large
2603
2604(W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was larger
2605than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2606wrong date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2607not-a-number value).
2608
2609=item localtime(%f) too small
2610
2611(W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was smaller
2612than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2613wrong date.
2614
2615=item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
2616
2617(F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2618handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2619
2620=item Lost precision when %s %f by 1
2621
2622(W imprecision) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by one
2623is too large for the underlying floating point representation to store
2624accurately, hence the target of C<++> or C<--> is unchanged. Perl issues this
2625warning because it has already switched from integers to floating point
2626when values are too large for integers, and now even floating point is
2627insufficient. You may wish to switch to using L<Math::BigInt> explicitly.
2628
2629=item lstat() on filehandle%s
2630
2631(W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2632by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2633instead on the filehandle.)
2634
2635=item lvalue attribute %s already-defined subroutine
2636
2637(W misc) Although L<attributes.pm|attributes> allows this, turning the lvalue
2638attribute on or off on a Perl subroutine that is already defined
2639does not always work properly. It may or may not do what you
2640want, depending on what code is inside the subroutine, with exact
2641details subject to change between Perl versions. Only do this
2642if you really know what you are doing.
2643
2644=item lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined
2645
2646(W misc) Using the C<:lvalue> declarative syntax to make a Perl
2647subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it has been defined is
2648not permitted. To make the subroutine an lvalue subroutine,
2649add the lvalue attribute to the definition, or put the C<sub
2650foo :lvalue;> declaration before the definition.
2651
2652See also L<attributes.pm|attributes>.
2653
2654=item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2655
2656(F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2657are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2658
2659=item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2660
2661(F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2662are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2663
2664=item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2665
2666(F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2667
2668 prefix1;prefix2
2669
2670or
2671 prefix1 prefix2
2672
2673with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2674a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2675appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2676"PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2677
2678=item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2679
2680(F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2681syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2682obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2683when the function is called.
2684
2685=item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2686
2687(S utf8)(F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2688encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
2689
2690One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2691you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
26928-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2693
2694If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2695sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2696set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2697message.
2698
2699See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
2700
2701=item Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N
2702
2703(F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
2704
2705=item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2706
2707(F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2708rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2709
2710=item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2711
2712(F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2713rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2714
2715=item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2716
2717(F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2718rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2719
2720=item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2721
2722(F) Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2723doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2724
2725=item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2726
2727(W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2728regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
2729shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2730See L<perlre>.
2731
2732=item Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded
2733
2734(F) Perl aborted due to too high a number of signals pending. This
2735usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
2736too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
2737resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
2738safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
2739
2740=item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2741
2742(W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2743interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2744"use" or "my".
2745
2746=item '%' may not be used in pack
2747
2748(F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2749checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2750See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2751
2752=item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2753
2754(F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2755doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2756
2757=item Method %s not permitted
2758
2759See Server error.
2760
2761=item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2762
2763(S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2764by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2765ended earlier on the current line.
2766
2767=item Misplaced _ in number
2768
2769(W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2770separate two digits.
2771
2772=item Missing argument in %s
2773
2774(W uninitialized) A printf-type format required more arguments than were
2775supplied.
2776
2777=item Missing argument to -%c
2778
2779(F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2780immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2781
2782=item Missing braces on \N{}
2783
2784=item Missing braces on \N{} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2785
2786(F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2787double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space
2788(or comment) between the C<\N> and the C<{> in a regex with the C</x> modifier.
2789This modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately
2790follow the C<\N>.
2791
2792=item Missing braces on \o{}
2793
2794(F) A C<\o> must be followed immediately by a C<{> in double-quotish context.
2795
2796=item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2797
2798(F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2799"indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2800
2801=item Missing command in piped open
2802
2803(W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2804C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2805blank.
2806
2807=item Missing control char name in \c
2808
2809(F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2810character name.
2811
2812=item Missing name in "my sub"
2813
2814(F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2815they have a name with which they can be found.
2816
2817=item Missing $ on loop variable
2818
2819(F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2820are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2821can vary from one line to the next.
2822
2823=item (Missing operator before %s?)
2824
2825(S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2826"%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2827
2828=item Missing right brace on \%c{} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2829
2830(F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}>, C<\P{...}>, or C<\N{...}>.
2831
2832=item Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N
2833
2834(F) C<\N> has two meanings.
2835
2836The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed in braces,
2837meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that
2838name. Thus C<\N{ASTERISK}> is another way of writing C<*>, valid in both
2839double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns,
2840it doesn't have the meaning an unescaped C<*> does.
2841
2842Starting in Perl 5.12.0, C<\N> also can have an additional meaning (only)
2843in patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short
2844for C<[^\n]>, and like C<.> but is not affected by the C</s> regex modifier.)
2845
2846This can lead to some ambiguities. When C<\N> is not followed immediately
2847by a left brace, Perl assumes the C<[^\n]> meaning. Also, if the braces
2848form a valid quantifier such as C<\N{3}> or C<\N{5,}>, Perl assumes that this
2849means to match the given quantity of non-newlines (in these examples,
28503; and 5 or more, respectively). In all other case, where there is a
2851C<\N{> and a matching C<}>, Perl assumes that a character name is desired.
2852
2853However, if there is no matching C<}>, Perl doesn't know if it was
2854mistakenly omitted, or if C<[^\n]{> was desired, and raises this error.
2855If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant the latter,
2856escape the brace with a backslash, like so: C<\N\{>
2857
2858=item Missing right curly or square bracket
2859
2860(F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2861ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2862were last editing.
2863
2864=item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2865
2866(S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2867"%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2868the previous line just because you saw this message.
2869
2870=item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2871
2872(F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2873constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2874catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2875
2876 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2877 mod(2);
2878
2879Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2880
2881Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2882is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2883
2884 $x = 1;
2885 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2886 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to
2887 } # modify the 2
2888
2889=item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2890
2891(F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2892subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2893backwards.
2894
2895=item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2896
2897(P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2898couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2899
2900=item Module name must be constant
2901
2902(F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2903
2904=item Module name required with -%c option
2905
2906(F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2907you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2908about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2909
2910=item More than one argument to '%s' open
2911
2912(F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2913can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2914list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2915See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2916
2917=item msg%s not implemented
2918
2919(F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2920
2921=item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2922
2923(W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2924They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2925
2926=item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
2927
2928(F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
2929follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
2930See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2931
2932=item "my sub" not yet implemented
2933
2934(F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2935that yet.
2936
2937=item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
2938
2939(F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2940sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2941local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2942
2943=item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2944
2945(W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2946If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2947again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2948provided for this purpose.
2949
2950NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
2951%c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
2952the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
2953will not trigger this warning.
2954
2955=item \N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2956
2957(F) The new (5.12) meaning of C<\N> as C<[^\n]> is not valid in a bracketed
2958character class, for the same reason that C<.> in a character class loses
2959its specialness: it matches almost everything, which is probably not
2960what you want.
2961
2962=item \N{NAME} must be resolved by the lexer in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2963
2964(F) When compiling a regex pattern, an unresolved named character or
2965sequence was encountered. This can happen in any of several ways that
2966bypass the lexer, such as using single-quotish context, or an extra
2967backslash in double-quotish:
2968
2969 $re = '\N{SPACE}'; # Wrong!
2970 $re = "\\N{SPACE}"; # Wrong!
2971 /$re/;
2972
2973Instead, use double-quotes with a single backslash:
2974
2975 $re = "\N{SPACE}"; # ok
2976 /$re/;
2977
2978The lexer can be bypassed as well by creating the pattern from smaller
2979components:
2980
2981 $re = '\N';
2982 /${re}{SPACE}/; # Wrong!
2983
2984It's not a good idea to split a construct in the middle like this, and it
2985doesn't work here. Instead use the solution above.
2986
2987Finally, the message also can happen under the C</x> regex modifier when the
2988C<\N> is separated by spaces from the C<{>, in which case, remove the spaces.
2989
2990 /\N {SPACE}/x; # Wrong!
2991 /\N{SPACE}/x; # ok
2992
2993=item Negative '/' count in unpack
2994
2995(F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
2996negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2997
2998=item Negative length
2999
3000(F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
3001length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
3002
3003=item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
3004
3005(F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
3006greater than or equal to zero.
3007
3008=item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3009
3010(F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses.
3011So things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the
3012regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
3013
3014Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
3015C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
3016
3017=item %s never introduced
3018
3019(S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
3020scope before it could possibly have been used.
3021
3022=item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
3023
3024(F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
3025real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
3026See L<mro>.
3027
3028=item No %s allowed while running setuid
3029
3030(F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
3031setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
3032will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
3033securable. See L<perlsec>.
3034
3035=item No code specified for -%c
3036
3037(F) Perl's B<-e> and B<-E> command-line options require an argument. If
3038you want to run an empty program, pass the empty string as a separate
3039argument or run a program consisting of a single 0 or 1:
3040
3041 perl -e ""
3042 perl -e0
3043 perl -e1
3044
3045=item No comma allowed after %s
3046
3047(F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is
3048not allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
3049Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
3050
3051One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported
3052a constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
3053importing took place, it may for example be that your operating
3054system does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did
3055use an explicit import list for the constants you expect to see;
3056please see L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an
3057explicit import list would probably have caught this error earlier
3058it naturally does not remedy the fact that your operating system
3059still does not support that constant. Maybe you have a typo in
3060the constants of the symbol import list of B<use> or B<import> or in the
3061constant name at the line where this error was triggered?
3062
3063=item No command into which to pipe on command line
3064
3065(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3066redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
3067doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
3068
3069=item No DB::DB routine defined
3070
3071(F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3072for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3073module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
3074statement.
3075
3076=item No dbm on this machine
3077
3078(P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
3079supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
3080
3081=item No DB::sub routine defined
3082
3083(F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3084for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3085module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
3086of each ordinary subroutine call.
3087
3088=item No directory specified for -I
3089
3090(F) The B<-I> command-line switch requires a directory name as part of the
3091I<same> argument. Use B<-Ilib>, for instance. B<-I lib> won't work.
3092
3093=item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
3094
3095(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3096redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
3097find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
3098
3099=item No group ending character '%c' found in template
3100
3101(F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
3102matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3103
3104=item No input file after < on command line
3105
3106(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3107redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
3108name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
3109
3110=item No next::method '%s' found for %s
3111
3112(F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
3113in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
3114it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
3115or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
3116
3117=item "no" not allowed in expression
3118
3119(F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
3120returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
3121
3122=item No output file after > on command line
3123
3124(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3125redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
3126doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
3127
3128=item No output file after > or >> on command line
3129
3130(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3131redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
3132find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
3133
3134=item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
3135
3136(F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
3137declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
3138semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
3139
3140=item No Perl script found in input
3141
3142(F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
3143with #! and containing the word "perl".
3144
3145=item No setregid available
3146
3147(F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
3148your system.
3149
3150=item No setreuid available
3151
3152(F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
3153your system.
3154
3155=item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
3156
3157(F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed
3158variable but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type.
3159The indicated package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the
3160L<fields> pragma.
3161
3162=item No such class %s
3163
3164(F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state"
3165declaration, but this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
3166
3167=item No such hook: %s
3168
3169(F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl.
3170Currently, Perl accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks.
3171
3172=item No such pipe open
3173
3174(P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
3175close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
3176earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
3177
3178=item No such signal: SIG%s
3179
3180(W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
3181not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
3182names on your system.
3183
3184=item Not a CODE reference
3185
3186(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3187subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3188use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3189also L<perlref>.
3190
3191=item Not a GLOB reference
3192
3193(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
3194symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
3195something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
3196kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3197
3198=item Not a HASH reference
3199
3200(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
3201reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
3202find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3203
3204=item Not an ARRAY reference
3205
3206(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
3207a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3208to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3209
3210=item Not an unblessed ARRAY reference
3211
3212(F) You passed a reference to a blessed array to C<push>, C<shift> or
3213another array function. These only accept unblessed array references
3214or arrays beginning explicitly with C<@>.
3215
3216=item Not a SCALAR reference
3217
3218(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
3219a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3220to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3221
3222=item Not a subroutine reference
3223
3224(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3225subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3226use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3227also L<perlref>.
3228
3229=item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
3230
3231(F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
3232doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
3233
3234=item Not enough arguments for %s
3235
3236(F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
3237
3238=item Not enough format arguments
3239
3240(W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
3241supplied. See L<perlform>.
3242
3243=item %s: not found
3244
3245(A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3246of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3247yourself.
3248
3249=item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
3250
3251(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
3252timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
3253to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
3254F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
3255need to be added to UTC to get local time.
3256
3257=item Non-octal character '%c'. Resolved as "%s"
3258
3259(W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character was
3260unexpectedly encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value
3261is as indicated.
3262
3263=item Non-string passed as bitmask
3264
3265(W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
3266Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
3267select. See L<perlfunc/select>.
3268
3269=item Null filename used
3270
3271(F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
3272machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
3273
3274=item NULL OP IN RUN
3275
3276(S debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
3277pointer.
3278
3279=item Null picture in formline
3280
3281(F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
3282specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
3283supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
3284
3285=item Null realloc
3286
3287(P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
3288
3289=item NULL regexp argument
3290
3291(P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
3292
3293=item NULL regexp parameter
3294
3295(P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
3296
3297=item Number too long
3298
3299(F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
3300about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
3301versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
3302the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
3303"1_000_000").
3304
3305=item Number with no digits
3306
3307(F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like
3308a number. This happens, for example with C<\o{}>, with no number between
3309the braces.
3310
3311=item "my %s" used in sort comparison
3312
3313(W syntax) The package variables $a and $b are used for sort comparisons.
3314You used $a or $b in as an operand to the C<< <=> >> or C<cmp> operator inside a
3315sort comparison block, and the variable had earlier been declared as a
3316lexical variable. Either qualify the sort variable with the package
3317name, or rename the lexical variable.
3318
3319=item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
3320
3321(W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
3322(4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
3323L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
3324
3325=item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
3326
3327(W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
3328arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
3329
3330=item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
3331
3332(W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3333which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3334
3335=item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
3336
3337(W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3338which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3339
3340=item Offset outside string
3341
3342(F)(W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
3343with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
3344imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
3345take place when going past the end of the string when either
3346C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
3347for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
3348with real files).
3349
3350=item %s() on unopened %s
3351
3352(W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
3353never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
3354call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
3355
3356=item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
3357
3358(W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
3359that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3360
3361=item oops: oopsAV
3362
3363(S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3364
3365=item oops: oopsHV
3366
3367(S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3368
3369=item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
3370
3371(D io, deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
3372a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
3373Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3374and is deprecated.
3375
3376=item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
3377
3378(D io, deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
3379a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
3380Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3381and is deprecated.
3382
3383=item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
3384
3385(F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
3386handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
3387of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
3388the C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
3389
3390=item Operation "%s" returns its argument for non-Unicode code point 0x%X
3391
3392(S utf8, non_unicode) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3393semantics on a code point that is not in Unicode, so what it should do
3394is not defined. Perl has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn you.
3395
3396If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3397matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3398
3399If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3400C<no warnings 'non_unicode';>.
3401
3402=item Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
3403
3404(S utf8, surrogate) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3405semantics on a Unicode surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use of
3406surrogates for anything but storing strings in UTF-16, but semantics
3407are (reluctantly) defined for the surrogates, and they are to do
3408nothing for this operation. Because the use of surrogates can be
3409dangerous, Perl warns.
3410
3411If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3412matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3413
3414If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3415C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
3416
3417=item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
3418
3419(S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
3420was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
3421use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
3422example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
3423"*foo * 'foo'".
3424
3425=item "our" variable %s redeclared
3426
3427(W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
3428in the current lexical scope.
3429
3430=item Out of memory!
3431
3432(X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3433remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
3434no option but to exit immediately.
3435
3436At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
3437process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
3438C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
3439the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
3440and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
3441
3442=item Out of memory during %s extend
3443
3444(X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
3445the largest possible memory allocation.
3446
3447=item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
3448
3449(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3450remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
3451the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
3452possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
3453
3454=item Out of memory during request for %s
3455
3456(X)(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
3457insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
3458request.
3459
3460The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
3461depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
3462However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
3463emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
3464is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
3465where the failed request happened.
3466
3467=item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
3468
3469(F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
3470is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
3471C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
3472
3473=item Out of memory for yacc stack
3474
3475(F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
3476parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
3477otherwise.
3478
3479=item '.' outside of string in pack
3480
3481(F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
3482position to before the start of the packed string being built.
3483
3484=item '@' outside of string in unpack
3485
3486(F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3487the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3488
3489=item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
3490
3491(F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3492the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
3493UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3494
3495=item overload arg '%s' is invalid
3496
3497(W overload) The L<overload> pragma was passed an argument it did not
3498recognize. Did you mistype an operator?
3499
3500=item Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
3501
3502(F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was dereferenced,
3503but the overloaded operation did not return a reference. See
3504L<overload>.
3505
3506=item Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
3507
3508(F) An object with a C<qr> overload was used as part of a match, but the
3509overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See L<overload>.
3510
3511=item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
3512
3513(W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
3514package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
3515some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
3516mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
3517
3518=item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
3519
3520(F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3521signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3522
3523=item page overflow
3524
3525(W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
3526page. See L<perlform>.
3527
3528=item panic: %s
3529
3530(P) An internal error.
3531
3532=item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
3533
3534(P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
3535an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
3536platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
3537enter this branch on this platform.
3538
3539=item panic: ck_grep, type=%u
3540
3541(P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
3542
3543=item panic: ck_split, type=%u
3544
3545(P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
3546
3547=item panic: corrupt saved stack index %ld
3548
3549(P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
3550there are in the savestack.
3551
3552=item panic: del_backref
3553
3554(P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
3555reference.
3556
3557=item panic: die %s
3558
3559(P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
3560it wasn't an eval context.
3561
3562=item panic: do_subst
3563
3564(P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
3565data.
3566
3567=item panic: do_trans_%s
3568
3569(P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
3570data.
3571
3572=item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
3573
3574(P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
3575failure was caught.
3576
3577=item panic: frexp
3578
3579(P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
3580
3581=item panic: goto, type=%u, ix=%ld
3582
3583(P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
3584and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
3585
3586=item panic: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
3587
3588(P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries tried
3589repeatedly, but each time something re-created entries in the glob.
3590Most likely the glob contains an object with a reference back to
3591the glob and a destructor that adds a new object to the glob.
3592
3593=item panic: INTERPCASEMOD, %s
3594
3595(P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
3596
3597=item panic: INTERPCONCAT, %s
3598
3599(P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
3600
3601=item panic: kid popen errno read
3602
3603(F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
3604
3605=item panic: last, type=%u
3606
3607(P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
3608it wasn't a block context.
3609
3610=item panic: leave_scope clearsv
3611
3612(P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
3613scope.
3614
3615=item panic: leave_scope inconsistency %u
3616
3617(P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
3618invalid enum on the top of it.
3619
3620=item panic: magic_killbackrefs
3621
3622(P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
3623references to an object.
3624
3625=item panic: malloc, %s
3626
3627(P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
3628
3629=item panic: memory wrap
3630
3631(P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
3632
3633=item panic: pad_alloc, %p!=%p
3634
3635(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3636and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3637
3638=item panic: pad_free curpad, %p!=%p
3639
3640(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3641and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3642
3643=item panic: pad_free po
3644
3645(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3646
3647=item panic: pad_reset curpad, %p!=%p
3648
3649(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3650and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3651
3652=item panic: pad_sv po
3653
3654(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3655
3656=item panic: pad_swipe curpad, %p!=%p
3657
3658(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3659and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3660
3661=item panic: pad_swipe po
3662
3663(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3664
3665=item panic: pp_iter, type=%u
3666
3667(P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
3668
3669=item panic: pp_match%s
3670
3671(P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
3672data.
3673
3674=item panic: pp_split, pm=%p, s=%p
3675
3676(P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
3677
3678=item panic: realloc, %s
3679
3680(P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
3681
3682=item panic: reference miscount on nsv in sv_replace() (%d != 1)
3683
3684(P) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
3685reference count other than 1.
3686
3687=item panic: restartop in %s
3688
3689(P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
3690didn't supply the destination.
3691
3692=item panic: return, type=%u
3693
3694(P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
3695then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
3696
3697=item panic: scan_num, %s
3698
3699(P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
3700
3701=item panic: Sequence (?{...}): no code block found
3702
3703(P) while compiling a pattern that has embedded (?{}) or (??{}) code
3704blocks, perl couldn't locate the code block that should have already been
3705seen and compiled by perl before control passed to the regex compiler.
3706
3707=item panic: sv_chop %s
3708
3709(P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the
3710scalar's string buffer.
3711
3712=item panic: sv_insert, midend=%p, bigend=%p
3713
3714(P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
3715was string.
3716
3717=item panic: strxfrm() gets absurd - a => %u, ab => %u
3718
3719(P) The interpreter's sanity check of the C function strxfrm() failed.
3720In your current locale the returned transformation of the string "ab" is
3721shorter than that of the string "a", which makes no sense.
3722
3723=item panic: top_env
3724
3725(P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
3726
3727=item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
3728
3729(P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't
3730permitted at run time.
3731
3732=item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
3733
3734(P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
3735to even) byte length.
3736
3737=item panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
3738
3739(P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an odd (as opposed
3740to even) byte length.
3741
3742=item panic: yylex, %s
3743
3744(P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
3745
3746=item Parsing code internal error (%s)
3747
3748(F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API in
3749a detectable way.
3750
3751=item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3752
3753(F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
3754consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before
3755the nesting limit is exceeded.
3756
3757The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3758discovered.
3759
3760=item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
3761
3762(W parenthesis) You said something like
3763
3764 my $foo, $bar = @_;
3765
3766when you meant
3767
3768 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
3769
3770Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
3771
3772=item C<-p> destination: %s
3773
3774(F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
3775command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
3776redirected it with select().)
3777
3778=item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
3779
3780(F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3781"Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
3782that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
3783
3784=item Perl folding rules are not up-to-date for 0x%x; please use the perlbug utility to report
3785
3786(W regex, deprecated) You used a regular expression with
3787case-insensitive matching, and there is a bug in Perl in which the
3788built-in regular expression folding rules are not accurate. This may
3789lead to incorrect results. Please report this as a bug using the
3790"perlbug" utility. (This message is marked deprecated, so that it by
3791default will be turned-on.)
3792
3793=item Perl_my_%s() not available
3794
3795(F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
3796so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
3797conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
3798'<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3799
3800=item Perl %s required (did you mean %s?)--this is only %s, stopped
3801
3802(F) The code you are trying to run has asked for a newer version of
3803Perl than you are running. Perhaps C<use 5.10> was written instead
3804of C<use 5.010> or C<use v5.10>. Without the leading C<v>, the number is
3805interpreted as a decimal, with every three digits after the
3806decimal point representing a part of the version number. So 5.10
3807is equivalent to v5.100.
3808
3809=item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
3810
3811(F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
3812recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
3813you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
3814
3815=item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3816
3817(F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3818C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
3819
3820=item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
3821
3822(X) See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
3823
3824=item Perls since %s too modern--this is %s, stopped
3825
3826(F) The code you are trying to run claims it will not run
3827on the version of Perl you are using because it is too new.
3828Maybe the code needs to be updated, or maybe it is simply
3829wrong and the version check should just be removed.
3830
3831=item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3832
3833(S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3834
3835 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3836 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3837 LC_ALL = "En_US",
3838 LANG = (unset)
3839 are supported and installed on your system.
3840 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3841
3842Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3843settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3844This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
3845system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
3846locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
3847dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
3848Perl can and will use, and the script will be run. Before you really
3849fix the problem, however, you will get the same error message each
3850time you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
3851L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3852
3853=item pid %x not a child
3854
3855(W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
3856process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
3857fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
3858
3859=item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
3860
3861(F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
3862
3863=item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3864
3865(F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
3866shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
3867Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
3868the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
3869not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
3870
3871=item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
3872
3873(F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
3874the BSD version, which takes a pid.
3875
3876=item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3877
3878(W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
3879I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
3880/[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
3881implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
3882cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3883where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3884
3885=item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3886
3887(F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
3888beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
3889If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
3890expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
3891backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3892about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3893
3894=item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3895
3896(F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
3897with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
3898need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
3899character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
3900and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3901problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3902
3903=item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
3904
3905(W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
3906strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
3907literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
3908parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
3909
3910You probably wrote something like this:
3911
3912 @list = qw(
3913 a # a comment
3914 b # another comment
3915 );
3916
3917when you should have written this:
3918
3919 @list = qw(
3920 a
3921 b
3922 );
3923
3924If you really want comments, build your list the
3925old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
3926
3927 @list = (
3928 'a', # a comment
3929 'b', # another comment
3930 );
3931
3932=item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
3933
3934(W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
3935commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
3936different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
3937frequently used.)
3938
3939You probably wrote something like this:
3940
3941 qw! a, b, c !;
3942
3943which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
3944commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
3945
3946 qw! a b c !;
3947
3948=item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
3949
3950(F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
3951Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
3952end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
3953Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
3954
3955=item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
3956
3957(W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
3958with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
3959
3960 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
3961
3962This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
3963higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
3964really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
3965parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
3966
3967=item Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
3968
3969(W ambiguous) You said something like C<m/$\/> in a regex.
3970The regex C<m/foo$\s+bar/m> translates to: match the word 'foo', the output
3971record separator (see L<perlvar/$\>) and the letter 's' (one time or more)
3972followed by the word 'bar'.
3973
3974If this is what you intended then you can silence the warning by using
3975C<m/${\}/> (for example: C<m/foo${\}s+bar/>).
3976
3977If instead you intended to match the word 'foo' at the end of the line
3978followed by whitespace and the word 'bar' on the next line then you can use
3979C<m/$(?)\/> (for example: C<m/foo$(?)\s+bar/>).
3980
3981=item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
3982
3983(W ambiguous) You said something like '@foo' in a double-quoted string
3984but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
3985literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
3986to the array you apparently lost track of.
3987
3988=item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
3989
3990(S precedence) The old irregular construct
3991
3992 open FOO || die;
3993
3994is now misinterpreted as
3995
3996 open(FOO || die);
3997
3998because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
3999list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
4000parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
4001of "||".
4002
4003=item Premature end of script headers
4004
4005See Server error.
4006
4007=item printf() on closed filehandle %s
4008
4009(W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4010before now. Check your control flow.
4011
4012=item print() on closed filehandle %s
4013
4014(W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
4015before now. Check your control flow.
4016
4017=item Process terminated by SIG%s
4018
4019(W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
4020applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
4021port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
4022L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
4023in L<perlos2>.
4024
4025=item Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
4026
4027(W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is
4028useless, since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments.
4029
4030=item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
4031
4032(S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
4033declared or defined with a different function prototype.
4034
4035=item Prototype not terminated
4036
4037(F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
4038definition.
4039
4040=item \p{} uses Unicode rules, not locale rules
4041
4042(W) You compiled a regular expression that contained a Unicode property
4043match (C<\p> or C<\P>), but the regular expression is also being told to
4044use the run-time locale, not Unicode. Instead, use a POSIX character
4045class, which should know about the locale's rules.
4046(See L<perlrecharclass/POSIX Character Classes>.)
4047
4048Even if the run-time locale is ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), which is a subset of
4049Unicode, some properties will give results that are not valid for that
4050subset.
4051
4052Here are a couple of examples to help you see what's going on. If the
4053locale is ISO 8859-7, the character at code point 0xD7 is the "GREEK
4054CAPITAL LETTER CHI". But in Unicode that code point means the
4055"MULTIPLICATION SIGN" instead, and C<\p> always uses the Unicode
4056meaning. That means that C<\p{Alpha}> won't match, but C<[[:alpha:]]>
4057should. Only in the Latin1 locale are all the characters in the same
4058positions as they are in Unicode. But, even here, some properties give
4059incorrect results. An example is C<\p{Changes_When_Uppercased}> which
4060is true for "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS", but since the upper
4061case of that character is not in Latin1, in that locale it doesn't
4062change when upper cased.
4063
4064=item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4065
4066(F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if
4067you meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
4068about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4069
4070=item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4071
4072(F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of
4073the {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
4074about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4075
4076=item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4077
4078(W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
4079it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
4080quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
4081"abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
4082C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
4083
4084The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4085discovered.
4086
4087=item Range iterator outside integer range
4088
4089(F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
4090are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
4091One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
4092by prepending "0" to your numbers.
4093
4094=item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4095
4096(W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
4097a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4098
4099=item readline() on closed filehandle %s
4100
4101(W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
4102before now. Check your control flow.
4103
4104=item read() on closed filehandle %s
4105
4106(W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4107
4108=item read() on unopened filehandle %s
4109
4110(W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4111
4112=item Reallocation too large: %x
4113
4114(F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
4115
4116=item realloc() of freed memory ignored
4117
4118(S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
4119already been freed.
4120
4121=item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
4122
4123(F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
4124the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
4125which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
4126
4127=item Recursive call to Perl_load_module in PerlIO_find_layer
4128
4129(P) It is currently not permitted to load modules when creating
4130a filehandle inside an %INC hook. This can happen with C<open my
4131$fh, '<', \$scalar>, which implicitly loads PerlIO::scalar. Try
4132loading PerlIO::scalar explicitly first.
4133
4134=item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
4135
4136(F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, Perl
4137believes it found an infinite loop in the C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a
4138crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth.
4139
4140=item refcnt_dec: fd %d%s
4141
4142=item refcnt: fd %d%s
4143
4144=item refcnt_inc: fd %d%s
4145
4146(P) Perl's I/O implementation failed an internal consistency check. If
4147you see this message, something is very wrong.
4148
4149=item Reference found where even-sized list expected
4150
4151(W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
4152with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
4153usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
4154to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
4155
4156 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
4157 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
4158 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
4159 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
4160
4161=item Reference is already weak
4162
4163(W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
4164Doing so has no effect.
4165
4166=item Reference to invalid group 0 in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4167
4168(F) You used C<\g0> or similar in a regular expression. You may refer
4169to capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers
4170(normal backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
4171backreferences). Using 0 does not make sense.
4172
4173=item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4174
4175(F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
4176not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If
4177you wanted to have the character with ordinal 7 inserted into the regular
4178expression, prepend zeroes to make it three digits long: C<\007>
4179
4180The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4181discovered.
4182
4183=item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4184
4185(F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k<NAME> >> in your regular
4186expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses
4187such as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<< (?<NAME>...) >>. Check if the name has been
4188spelled correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
4189
4190The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4191discovered.
4192
4193=item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4194
4195(F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there
4196are not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the
4197expression before where the C<\g{-7}> was located.
4198
4199The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4200discovered.
4201
4202=item regexp memory corruption
4203
4204(P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
4205expression compiler gave it.
4206
4207=item Regexp modifier "/%c" may appear a maximum of twice
4208
4209=item Regexp modifier "/%c" may not appear twice
4210
4211(F syntax, regexp) The regular expression pattern had too many occurrences
4212of the specified modifier. Remove the extraneous ones.
4213
4214=item Regexp modifier "%c" may not appear after the "-" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4215
4216(F) Turning off the given modifier has the side effect of turning on
4217another one. Perl currently doesn't allow this. Reword the regular
4218expression to use the modifier you want to turn on (and place it before
4219the minus), instead of the one you want to turn off.
4220
4221=item Regexp modifiers "/%c" and "/%c" are mutually exclusive
4222
4223(F syntax, regexp) The regular expression pattern had more than one of these
4224mutually exclusive modifiers. Retain only the modifier that is
4225supposed to be there.
4226
4227=item Regexp out of space in regex m/%s/
4228
4229(P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
4230earlier.
4231
4232=item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompatible)
4233
4234(F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
4235numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
4236terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
4237
4238=item Replacement list is longer than search list
4239
4240(W misc) You have used a replacement list that is longer than the
4241search list. So the additional elements in the replacement list
4242are meaningless.
4243
4244=item Reversed %s= operator
4245
4246(W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
4247always come last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
4248
4249=item rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4250
4251(W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either closed or not
4252really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4253
4254=item Scalars leaked: %d
4255
4256(W internal) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping
4257of scalars: not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time
4258Perl exited. What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which
4259is of course bad, especially if the Perl program is intended to be
4260long-running.
4261
4262=item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
4263
4264(W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
4265single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
4266value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
4267behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4268argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4269and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4270if you're expecting only one subscript.
4271
4272On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
4273element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
4274Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4275L<perlref>.
4276
4277=item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
4278
4279(W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
4280element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
4281(indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
4282like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4283argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4284and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4285if you're expecting only one subscript.
4286
4287On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
4288as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
4289not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4290L<perlref>.
4291
4292=item Search pattern not terminated
4293
4294(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
4295construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4296Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
4297
4298Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
4299construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
4300in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
4301misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
4302
4303=item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
4304
4305(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
4306construct.
4307
4308The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
4309C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
4310parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
4311the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
4312
4313=item seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4314
4315(W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed or not
4316really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4317
4318=item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
4319
4320(W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
4321filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
4322
4323=item select not implemented
4324
4325(F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
4326
4327=item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
4328
4329(F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
4330the current implementation.
4331
4332=item Semicolon seems to be missing
4333
4334(W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
4335semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
4336
4337=item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
4338
4339(S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
4340scalar that had previously been marked as free.
4341
4342=item sem%s not implemented
4343
4344(F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
4345
4346=item send() on closed socket %s
4347
4348(W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
4349before now. Check your control flow.
4350
4351=item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4352
4353(F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The
4354<-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4355discovered. See L<perlre>.
4356
4357=item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4358
4359(F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
4360but has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
4361expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4362
4363=item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4364
4365(F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
4366<-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4367discovered. This happens when using the C<(?^...)> construct to tell
4368Perl to use the default regular expression modifiers, and you
4369redundantly specify a default modifier. For other
4370causes, see L<perlre>.
4371
4372=item Sequence \%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4373
4374(F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument following the escape
4375sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly written.
4376
4377=item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex m/%s/
4378
4379(F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
4380parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See
4381L<perlre>.
4382
4383=item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated with ')'
4384
4385(F) The end of the perl code contained within the {...} must be
4386followed immediately by a ')'.
4387
4388=item Z<>500 Server error
4389
4390See Server error.
4391
4392=item Server error
4393
4394(A) This is the error message generally seen in a browser window
4395when trying to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The
4396actual error text varies widely from server to server. The most
4397frequently-seen variants are "500 Server error", "Method (something)
4398not permitted", "Document contains no data", "Premature end of script
4399headers", and "Did not produce a valid header".
4400
4401B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
4402
4403You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by
4404the user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the
4405user account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment
4406variables (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't
4407in a location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or
4408less. Please see the following for more information:
4409
4410 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
4411 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
4412 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
4413
4414You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
4415
4416=item setegid() not implemented
4417
4418(F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
4419support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4420didn't think so.
4421
4422=item seteuid() not implemented
4423
4424(F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
4425support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4426didn't think so.
4427
4428=item setpgrp can't take arguments
4429
4430(F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
4431arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
4432group ID.
4433
4434=item setrgid() not implemented
4435
4436(F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
4437support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4438didn't think so.
4439
4440=item setruid() not implemented
4441
4442(F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
4443support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4444didn't think so.
4445
4446=item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
4447
4448(W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
4449forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
4450L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
4451
4452=item shm%s not implemented
4453
4454(F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
4455
4456=item !=~ should be !~
4457
4458(W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
4459interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
4460operators: probably not what you intended.
4461
4462=item <> should be quotes
4463
4464(F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
4465C<require 'file'>.
4466
4467=item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
4468
4469(W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
4470as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
4471result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
4472probably not what you had in mind.
4473
4474=item shutdown() on closed socket %s
4475
4476(W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
4477superfluous.
4478
4479=item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
4480
4481(W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
4482Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
4483
4484=item Slab leaked from cv %p
4485
4486(S) If you see this message, then something is seriously wrong with the
4487internal bookkeeping of op trees. An op tree needed to be freed after
4488a compilation error, but could not be found, so it was leaked instead.
4489
4490=item Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks encapsulation
4491
4492(F) You should not use the C<~~> operator on an object that does not
4493overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's underlying structure for
4494the smart match.
4495
4496=item sort is now a reserved word
4497
4498(F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
4499But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
4500
4501=item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
4502
4503(F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
4504or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4505
4506=item Source filters apply only to byte streams
4507
4508(F) You tried to activate a source filter (usually by loading a
4509source filter module) within a string passed to C<eval>. This is
4510not permitted under the C<unicode_eval> feature. Consider using
4511C<evalbytes> instead. See L<feature>.
4512
4513=item splice() offset past end of array
4514
4515(W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
4516the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the
4517end of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want,
4518try explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset.
4519See L<perlfunc/splice>.
4520
4521=item Split loop
4522
4523(P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
4524iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
4525happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
4526
4527=item Statement unlikely to be reached
4528
4529(W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
4530die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
4531unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
4532instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
4533a block by itself.
4534
4535=item "state" variable %s can't be in a package
4536
4537(F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
4538sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
4539local() if you want to localize a package variable.
4540
4541=item "state %s" used in sort comparison
4542
4543(W syntax) The package variables $a and $b are used for sort comparisons.
4544You used $a or $b in as an operand to the C<< <=> >> or C<cmp> operator inside a
4545sort comparison block, and the variable had earlier been declared as a
4546lexical variable. Either qualify the sort variable with the package
4547name, or rename the lexical variable.
4548
4549=item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
4550
4551(W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
4552was either never opened or has since been closed.
4553
4554=item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
4555
4556(P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
4557stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
4558C<can> may break this.
4559
4560=item Subroutine %s redefined
4561
4562(W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
4563
4564 {
4565 no warnings 'redefine';
4566 eval "sub name { ... }";
4567 }
4568
4569=item Substitution loop
4570
4571(P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
4572shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
4573is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
4574L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
4575
4576=item Substitution pattern not terminated
4577
4578(F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4579construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4580Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4581
4582=item Substitution replacement not terminated
4583
4584(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4585construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4586Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4587
4588=item substr outside of string
4589
4590(W substr)(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
4591a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
4592length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
4593substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
4594assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
4595
4596=item sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
4597
4598(P) Perl tried to force the upgrade of an SV to a type which was actually
4599inferior to its current type.
4600
4601=item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4602
4603(F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most
4604two branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or
4605both to contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose
4606it in clustering parentheses:
4607
4608 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
4609
4610The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
4611was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4612
4613=item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4614
4615(F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is
4616a number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
4617expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4618
4619=item switching effective %s is not implemented
4620
4621(F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
4622and effective uids or gids.
4623
4624=item %s syntax OK
4625
4626(F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
4627
4628=item syntax error
4629
4630(F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
4631
4632 A keyword is misspelled.
4633 A semicolon is missing.
4634 A comma is missing.
4635 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
4636 An opening or closing brace is missing.
4637 A closing quote is missing.
4638
4639Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
4640error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
4641The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
4642it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
4643before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
4644Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
4645the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
4646C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
4647if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
4648
4649=item syntax error at line %d: '%s' unexpected
4650
4651(A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
4652of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
4653yourself.
4654
4655=item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
4656
4657(F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
4658a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
4659or "my $var" or "our $var".
4660
4661=item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
4662
4663(W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4664
4665=item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
4666
4667(W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4668
4669=item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
4670
4671(F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
4672"shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
4673machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
4674unconfigured. Consult your system support.
4675
4676=item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
4677
4678(W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4679before now. Check your control flow.
4680
4681=item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
4682
4683(F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
4684know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
4685
4686=item Target of goto is too deeply nested
4687
4688(F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
4689for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
4690
4691=item telldir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4692
4693(W io) The dirhandle you tried to telldir() is either closed or not really
4694a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4695
4696=item tell() on unopened filehandle
4697
4698(W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
4699was either never opened or has since been closed.
4700
4701=item That use of $[ is unsupported
4702
4703(F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
4704as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
4705
4706 $[ = 0;
4707 $[ = 1;
4708 ...
4709 local $[ = 0;
4710 local $[ = 1;
4711 ...
4712
4713This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
4714from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[> and L<arybase>.
4715
4716=item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
4717
4718(F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
4719probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
4720think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
4721will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
4722will deny it.
4723
4724=item The %s function is unimplemented
4725
4726(F) The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
4727to the probings of Configure.
4728
4729=item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
4730
4731(F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
4732linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
4733past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
4734instead.
4735
4736=item The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
4737
4738(F) This attribute was never supported on C<my> or C<sub> declarations.
4739
4740=item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
4741
4742=item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
4743
4744(W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
4745element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
4746wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
4747need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
4748F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
4749target of the change to
4750%ENV which produced the warning.
4751
4752=item thread failed to start: %s
4753
4754(W threads)(S) The entry point function of threads->create() failed for some reason.
4755
4756=item times not implemented
4757
4758(F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
4759suspect you're not running on Unix.
4760
4761=item "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
4762
4763(X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains
4764the B<-T> option (or the B<-t> option), but Perl was not invoked with
4765B<-T> in its command line. This is an error because, by the time
4766Perl discovers a B<-T> in a script, it's too late to properly taint
4767everything from the environment. So Perl gives up.
4768
4769If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
4770mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be
4771fixed by editing the #! line so that the B<-%c> option is a part of
4772Perl's first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -%c> to C<perl -%c -n>.
4773
4774If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
4775B<-%c> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -%c scriptname>.
4776
4777=item To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
4778
4779(F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
4780uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
4781specified an illegal mapping.
4782See L<perlunicode/"User-Defined Character Properties">.
4783
4784=item Too deeply nested ()-groups
4785
4786(F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level.
4787
4788=item Too few args to syscall
4789
4790(F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
4791system call to call, silly dilly.
4792
4793=item Too late for "-%s" option
4794
4795(X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4796B<-M>, B<-m> or B<-C> option.
4797
4798In the case of B<-M> and B<-m>, this is an error because those options
4799are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
4800
4801The B<-C> option only works if it is specified on the command line as
4802well (with the same sequence of letters or numbers following). Either
4803specify this option on the command line, or, if your system supports
4804it, make your script executable and run it directly instead of passing
4805it to perl.
4806
4807=item Too late to run %s block
4808
4809(W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
4810when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
4811loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
4812instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
4813BEGIN block.
4814
4815=item Too many args to syscall
4816
4817(F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
4818
4819=item Too many arguments for %s
4820
4821(F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
4822
4823=item Too many )'s
4824
4825(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4826Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4827
4828=item Too many ('s
4829
4830(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4831Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4832
4833=item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
4834
4835(F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
4836Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
4837
4838=item Transliteration pattern not terminated
4839
4840(F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
4841or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
4842C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
4843
4844=item Transliteration replacement not terminated
4845
4846(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][],
4847y/// or y[][] construct.
4848
4849=item '%s' trapped by operation mask
4850
4851(F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's
4852disallowed. See L<Safe>.
4853
4854=item truncate not implemented
4855
4856(F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
4857Configure knows about.
4858
4859=item Type of arg %d to &CORE::%s must be %s
4860
4861(F) The subroutine in question in the CORE package requires its argument
4862to be a hard reference to data of the specified type. Overloading is
4863ignored, so a reference to an object that is not the specified type, but
4864nonetheless has overloading to handle it, will still not be accepted.
4865
4866=item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
4867
4868(F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
4869certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
4870%NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
4871{EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
4872
4873=item Type of argument to %s must be unblessed hashref or arrayref
4874
4875(F) You called C<keys>, C<values> or C<each> with a scalar argument that
4876was not a reference to an unblessed hash or array.
4877
4878=item umask not implemented
4879
4880(F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
4881use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
4882
4883=item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
4884
4885(S internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4886many execution contexts were entered and left.
4887
4888=item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
4889
4890(S internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4891many values were temporarily localized.
4892
4893=item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
4894
4895(S internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4896many blocks were entered and left.
4897
4898=item Unbalanced string table refcount: (%d) for "%s"
4899
4900(W internal) On exit, Perl found some strings remaining in the shared
4901string table used for copy on write and for hash keys. The entries
4902should have been freed, so this indicates a bug somewhere.
4903
4904=item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
4905
4906(S internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4907many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
4908
4909=item Undefined format "%s" called
4910
4911(F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4912another package? See L<perlform>.
4913
4914=item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
4915
4916(F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
4917Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4918
4919=item Undefined subroutine &%s called
4920
4921(F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
4922since been undefined.
4923
4924=item Undefined subroutine called
4925
4926(F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
4927or if it was, it has since been undefined.
4928
4929=item Undefined subroutine in sort
4930
4931(F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
4932to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4933
4934=item Undefined top format "%s" called
4935
4936(F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4937another package? See L<perlform>.
4938
4939=item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
4940
4941(W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
4942C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
4943C<undef *foo>.
4944
4945=item %s: Undefined variable
4946
4947(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4948Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4949
4950=item Unescaped left brace in regex is deprecated, passed through
4951
4952(D) You used a literal C<"{"> character in a regular expression pattern.
4953You should change to use C<"\{"> instead, because a future version of
4954Perl (tentatively v5.20) will consider this to be a syntax error. If
4955the pattern delimiters are also braces, any matching right brace
4956(C<"}">) should also be escaped to avoid confusing the parser, for
4957example,
4958
4959 qr{abc\{def\}ghi}
4960
4961=item unexec of %s into %s failed!
4962
4963(F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
4964representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
4965
4966=item Unexpected constant lvalue entersub entry via type/targ %d:%d
4967
4968(P) When compiling a subroutine call in lvalue context, Perl failed an
4969internal consistency check. It encountered a malformed op tree.
4970
4971=item Unicode non-character U+%X is illegal for open interchange
4972
4973(S utf8, nonchar) Certain codepoints, such as U+FFFE and U+FFFF, are
4974defined by the Unicode standard to be non-characters. Those are
4975legal codepoints, but are reserved for internal use; so, applications
4976shouldn't attempt to exchange them. If you know what you are doing
4977you can turn off this warning by C<no warnings 'nonchar';>.
4978
4979=item Unicode surrogate U+%X is illegal in UTF-8
4980
4981(S utf8, surrogate) You had a UTF-16 surrogate in a context where they are
4982not considered acceptable. These code points, between U+D800 and
4983U+DFFF (inclusive), are used by Unicode only for UTF-16. However, Perl
4984internally allows all unsigned integer code points (up to the size limit
4985available on your platform), including surrogates. But these can cause
4986problems when being input or output, which is likely where this message
4987came from. If you really really know what you are doing you can turn
4988off this warning by C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
4989
4990=item Unknown BYTEORDER
4991
4992(F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
4993order.
4994
4995=item Unknown error
4996
4997(P) Perl was about to print an error message in C<$@>, but the C<$@> variable
4998did not exist, even after an attempt to create it.
4999
5000=item Unknown open() mode '%s'
5001
5002(F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
5003of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
5004C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->, C<< <& >>, C<< >& >>.
5005
5006=item Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
5007
5008(W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
5009system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
5010internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
5011are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
5012explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
5013value of the environment variable PERLIO.
5014
5015=item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
5016
5017(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
5018iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
5019data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
5020subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
5021
5022=item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
5023
5024(W) You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
5025
5026=item Unknown regex modifier "%s"
5027
5028(F) Alphanumerics immediately following the closing delimiter
5029of a regular expression pattern are interpreted by Perl as modifier
5030flags for the regex. One of the ones you specified is invalid. One way
5031this can happen is if you didn't put in white space between the end of
5032the regex and a following alphanumeric operator:
5033
5034 if ($a =~ /foo/and $bar == 3) { ... }
5035
5036The C<"a"> is a valid modifier flag, but the C<"n"> is not, and raises
5037this error. Likely what was meant instead was:
5038
5039 if ($a =~ /foo/ and $bar == 3) { ... }
5040
5041=item Unknown switch condition (?(%s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5042
5043(F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
5044is not known. The condition must be one of the following:
5045
5046 (1) (2) ... true if 1st, 2nd, etc., capture matched
5047 (<NAME>) ('NAME') true if named capture matched
5048 (?=...) (?<=...) true if subpattern matches
5049 (?!...) (?<!...) true if subpattern fails to match
5050 (?{ CODE }) true if code returns a true value
5051 (R) true if evaluating inside recursion
5052 (R1) (R2) ... true if directly inside capture group 1, 2, etc.
5053 (R&NAME) true if directly inside named capture
5054 (DEFINE) always false; for defining named subpatterns
5055
5056The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
5057discovered. See L<perlre>.
5058
5059=item Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
5060
5061(F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
5062of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
5063
5064=item Unknown Unicode option value %x
5065
5066(F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
5067of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
5068
5069=item Unknown verb pattern '%s' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5070
5071(F) You either made a typo or have incorrectly put a C<*> quantifier
5072after an open brace in your pattern. Check the pattern and review
5073L<perlre> for details on legal verb patterns.
5074
5075=item Unknown warnings category '%s'
5076
5077(F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
5078category that is unknown to perl at this point.
5079
5080Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a
5081module (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have loaded this
5082module first.
5083
5084=item Unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5085
5086(F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
5087include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
5088first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
5089problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
5090
5091=item Unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5092
5093=item Unmatched ) in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5094
5095(F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
5096expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
5097the matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
5098about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
5099
5100=item Unmatched right %s bracket
5101
5102(F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
5103ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
5104general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
5105you were last editing.
5106
5107=item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
5108
5109(W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
5110reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
5111somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
5112subroutine.
5113
5114=item Unrecognized character %s; marked by <-- HERE after %s near column %d
5115
5116(F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
5117in your Perl script (or eval) near the specified column. Perhaps you tried
5118to run a compressed script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
5119
5120=item Unrecognized escape \%c in character class passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5121
5122(W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
5123recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
5124understood literally, but this may change in a future version of Perl.
5125The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
5126escape was discovered.
5127
5128=item Unrecognized escape \%c passed through
5129
5130(W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
5131recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally, but this may
5132change in a future version of Perl.
5133
5134=item Unrecognized escape \%s passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5135
5136(W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
5137recognized by Perl. The character(s) were understood literally, but
5138this may change in a future version of Perl. The <-- HERE shows in
5139the regular expression about where the escape was discovered.
5140
5141=item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
5142
5143(F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
5144recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
5145on your system.
5146
5147=item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
5148
5149(F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
5150think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
5151bad switch on your behalf.)
5152
5153=item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
5154
5155(W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
5156operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
5157PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
5158
5159=item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
5160
5161(F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
5162
5163=item Unsupported function %s
5164
5165(F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
5166At least, Configure doesn't think so.
5167
5168=item Unsupported function fork
5169
5170(F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
5171
5172Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
5173of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
5174changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
5175
5176=item Unsupported script encoding %s
5177
5178(F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
5179declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot read.
5180
5181=item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
5182
5183(F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
5184least that's what Configure thought.
5185
5186=item Unterminated attribute list
5187
5188(F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
5189start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
5190block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
5191attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
5192
5193=item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
5194
5195(F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
5196an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
5197character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
5198character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
5199
5200=item Unterminated compressed integer
5201
5202(F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
5203compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
5204See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5205
5206=item Unterminated \g{...} pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5207
5208(F) You missed a close brace on a \g{..} pattern (group reference) in
5209a regular expression. Fix the pattern and retry.
5210
5211=item Unterminated <> operator
5212
5213(F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
5214a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
5215not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
5216earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
5217
5218=item Unterminated verb pattern argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5219
5220(F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB:ARG)> but did not terminate
5221the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
5222
5223=item Unterminated verb pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5224
5225(F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB)> but did not terminate
5226the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
5227
5228=item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
5229
5230(W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
5231still valid when C<untie> was called.
5232
5233=item Usage: POSIX::%s(%s)
5234
5235(F) You called a POSIX function with incorrect arguments.
5236See L<POSIX/FUNCTIONS> for more information.
5237
5238=item Usage: Win32::%s(%s)
5239
5240(F) You called a Win32 function with incorrect arguments.
5241See L<Win32> for more information.
5242
5243=item $[ used in %s (did you mean $] ?)
5244
5245(W syntax) You used C<$[> in a comparison, such as:
5246
5247 if ($[ > 5.006) {
5248 ...
5249 }
5250
5251You probably meant to use C<$]> instead. C<$[> is the base for indexing
5252arrays. C<$]> is the Perl version number in decimal.
5253
5254=item Useless assignment to a temporary
5255
5256(W misc) You assigned to an lvalue subroutine, but what
5257the subroutine returned was a temporary scalar about to
5258be discarded, so the assignment had no effect.
5259
5260=item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5261
5262(W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
5263meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
5264
5265 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
5266
5267must be written as
5268
5269 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
5270
5271The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
5272where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
5273
5274=item Useless localization of %s
5275
5276(W syntax) The localization of lvalues such as C<local($x=10)> is legal,
5277but in fact the local() currently has no effect. This may change at
5278some point in the future, but in the meantime such code is discouraged.
5279
5280=item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5281
5282(W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
5283meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
5284
5285 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
5286
5287must be written as
5288
5289 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
5290
5291The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
5292where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
5293
5294=item Useless use of /d modifier in transliteration operator
5295
5296(W misc) You have used the /d modifier where the searchlist has the
5297same length as the replacelist. See L<perlop> for more information
5298about the /d modifier.
5299
5300=item Useless use of \E
5301
5302(W misc) You have a \E in a double-quotish string without a C<\U>,
5303C<\L> or C<\Q> preceding it.
5304
5305=item Useless use of %s in void context
5306
5307(W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
5308nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
5309value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
5310often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
5311to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
5312get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
5313said
5314
5315 $one, $two = 1, 2;
5316
5317when you meant to say
5318
5319 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
5320
5321Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
5322reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
5323example, if you say
5324
5325 $array = (1,2);
5326
5327when you should have said
5328
5329 $array = [1,2];
5330
5331The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
5332while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
5333a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
5334throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
5335L<perlref> for more on this.
5336
5337This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
5338since they are often used in statements like
5339
5340 1 while sub_with_side_effects();
5341
5342String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
5343about.
5344
5345=item Useless use of "re" pragma
5346
5347(W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
5348
5349=item Useless use of sort in scalar context
5350
5351(W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
5352
5353 my $x = sort @y;
5354
5355This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
5356
5357=item Useless use of %s with no values
5358
5359(W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
5360apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
5361usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
5362possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
5363if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
5364you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
5365
5366=item "use" not allowed in expression
5367
5368(F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
5369returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
5370
5371=item Use of assignment to $[ is deprecated
5372
5373(D deprecated) The C<$[> variable (index of the first element in an array)
5374is deprecated. See L<perlvar/"$[">.
5375
5376=item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
5377
5378(D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted
5379form if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
5380
5381=item Use of comma-less variable list is deprecated
5382
5383(D deprecated) The values you give to a format should be
5384separated by commas, not just aligned on a line.
5385
5386=item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
5387
5388(D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
5389$ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
5390behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
5391will simply fail.
5392
5393Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
5394blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
5395
5396=item Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
5397
5398(W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution. The /c
5399modifier is not presently meaningful in substitutions.
5400
5401=item Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
5402
5403(W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't
5404use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is
5405used. (This may change in the future.)
5406
5407=item Use of := for an empty attribute list is not allowed
5408
5409(F) The construction C<my $x := 42> used to parse as equivalent to
5410C<my $x : = 42> (applying an empty attribute list to C<$x>).
5411This construct was deprecated in 5.12.0, and has now been made a syntax
5412error, so C<:=> can be reclaimed as a new operator in the future.
5413
5414If you need an empty attribute list, for example in a code generator, add
5415a space before the C<=>.
5416
5417=item Use of freed value in iteration
5418
5419(F) Perhaps you modified the iterated array within the loop?
5420This error is typically caused by code like the following:
5421
5422 @a = (3,4);
5423 @a = () for (1,2,@a);
5424
5425You are not supposed to modify arrays while they are being iterated over.
5426For speed and efficiency reasons, Perl internally does not do full
5427reference-counting of iterated items, hence deleting such an item in the
5428middle of an iteration causes Perl to see a freed value.
5429
5430=item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
5431
5432(D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
5433to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
5434
5435=item Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
5436
5437(W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a C<split>
5438operator. Since C<split> always tries to match the pattern
5439repeatedly, the C</g> has no effect.
5440
5441=item Use of "goto" to jump into a construct is deprecated
5442
5443(D deprecated) Using C<goto> to jump from an outer scope into an inner
5444scope is deprecated and should be avoided.
5445
5446=item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
5447
5448(D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD>
5449subroutines are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy)
5450even when the subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain
5451functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or
5452C<< $obj->bar() >>).
5453
5454This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
5455methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
5456code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
5457currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
5458C<AUTOLOAD>s.
5459
5460The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
5461non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
5462to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
5463named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
5464startup.
5465
5466In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
5467you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
5468C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
5469
5470=item Use of %s in printf format not supported
5471
5472(F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
5473only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
5474
5475=item Use of %s is deprecated
5476
5477(D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
5478generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
5479old way has bad side effects.
5480
5481=item Use of -l on filehandle %s
5482
5483(W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
5484it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
5485The operation returned C<undef>. Use a filename instead.
5486
5487=item Use of %s on a handle without * is deprecated
5488
5489(D deprecated) You used C<tie>, C<tied> or C<untie> on a scalar but that scalar
5490happens to hold a typeglob, which means its filehandle will be tied. If
5491you mean to tie a handle, use an explicit * as in C<tie *$handle>.
5492
5493This was a long-standing bug that was removed in Perl 5.16, as there was
5494no way to tie the scalar itself when it held a typeglob, and no way to
5495untie a scalar that had had a typeglob assigned to it. If you see this
5496message, you must be using an older version.
5497
5498=item Use of ?PATTERN? without explicit operator is deprecated
5499
5500(D deprecated) You have written something like C<?\w?>, for a regular
5501expression that matches only once. Starting this term directly with
5502the question mark delimiter is now deprecated, so that the question mark
5503will be available for use in new operators in the future. Write C<m?\w?>
5504instead, explicitly using the C<m> operator: the question mark delimiter
5505still invokes match-once behaviour.
5506
5507=item Use of reference "%s" as array index
5508
5509(W misc) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
5510isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
5511to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
5512
5513If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
5514C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
5515however, because you can overload the numification and stringification
5516operators and then you presumably know what you are doing.
5517
5518=item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
5519
5520(D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
5521versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
5522explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
5523use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
5524suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
5525a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
5526
5527=item Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
5528
5529(W taint, deprecated) You have supplied C<system()> or C<exec()> with multiple
5530arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used to be allowed
5531but will become a fatal error in a future version of perl. Untaint your
5532arguments. See L<perlsec>.
5533
5534=item Use of uninitialized value%s
5535
5536(W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
5537defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
5538To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
5539
5540To help you figure out what was undefined, perl will try to tell you
5541the name of the variable (if any) that was undefined. In some cases
5542it cannot do this, so it also tells you what operation you used the
5543undefined value in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your program
5544anid the operation displayed in the warning may not necessarily appear
5545literally in your program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is usually
5546optimized into C<"that " . $foo>, and the warning will refer to the
5547C<concatenation (.)> operator, even though there is no C<.> in
5548your program.
5549
5550=item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
5551
5552(D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
5553C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
5554used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now
5555deprecated, and will be removed in a future version.
5556
5557=item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
5558
5559(D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
5560C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
5561allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated,
5562and will be removed in a future version.
5563
5564=item Using just the first character returned by \N{} in character class
5565
5566(W) A charnames handler may return a sequence of more than one character.
5567Currently all but the first one are discarded when used in a regular
5568expression pattern bracketed character class.
5569
5570=item Using !~ with %s doesn't make sense
5571
5572(F) Using the C<!~> operator with C<s///r>, C<tr///r> or C<y///r> is
5573currently reserved for future use, as the exact behaviour has not
5574been decided. (Simply returning the boolean opposite of the
5575modified string is usually not particularly useful.)
5576
5577=item UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
5578
5579(S utf8, surrogate) You had a UTF-16 surrogate in a context where they are
5580not considered acceptable. These code points, between U+D800 and
5581U+DFFF (inclusive), are used by Unicode only for UTF-16. However, Perl
5582internally allows all unsigned integer code points (up to the size limit
5583available on your platform), including surrogates. But these can cause
5584problems when being input or output, which is likely where this message
5585came from. If you really really know what you are doing you can turn
5586off this warning by C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
5587
5588=item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
5589
5590(W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
5591C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
5592can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
5593false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
5594constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
5595C<defined> operator.
5596
5597=item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
5598
5599(W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
5600%ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
5601longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
56021024 characters.
5603
5604=item Variable "%s" is not available
5605
5606(W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is
5607attempting to capture an outer lexical that is not currently available.
5608This can happen for one of two reasons. First, the outer lexical may be
5609declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that has not yet been created.
5610(Remember that named subs are created at compile time, while anonymous
5611subs are created at run-time.) For example,
5612
5613 sub { my $a; sub f { $a } }
5614
5615At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current value of $a,
5616since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely,
5617the following won't give a warning since the anonymous subroutine has by
5618now been created and is live:
5619
5620 sub { my $a; eval 'sub f { $a }' }->();
5621
5622The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a variable that has
5623gone out of scope, for example,
5624
5625 sub f {
5626 my $a;
5627 sub { eval '$a' }
5628 }
5629 f()->();
5630
5631Here, when the '$a' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not currently being
5632executed, so its $a is not available for capture.
5633
5634=item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
5635
5636(S misc) With "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
5637that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
5638something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
5639that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
5640front of your variable.
5641
5642=item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in regex m/%s/
5643
5644(F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
5645known at compile time. See L<perlre>.
5646
5647=item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
5648
5649(W misc) A "my", "our" or "state" variable has been redeclared in the
5650current scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the
5651previous instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note
5652that the earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope
5653or until all closure referents to it are destroyed.
5654
5655=item Variable syntax
5656
5657(A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
5658of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
5659Perl yourself.
5660
5661=item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
5662
5663(W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
5664lexical variable defined in an outer named subroutine.
5665
5666When the inner subroutine is called, it will see the value of
5667the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
5668call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
5669outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
5670longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
5671variable will no longer be shared.
5672
5673This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
5674anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
5675reference variables in outer subroutines are created, they
5676are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
5677
5678=item vector argument not supported with alpha versions
5679
5680(W internal) The %vd (s)printf format does not support version objects
5681with alpha parts.
5682
5683=item Verb pattern '%s' has a mandatory argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5684
5685(F) You used a verb pattern that requires an argument. Supply an
5686argument or check that you are using the right verb.
5687
5688=item Verb pattern '%s' may not have an argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5689
5690(F) You used a verb pattern that is not allowed an argument. Remove the
5691argument or check that you are using the right verb.
5692
5693=item Version number must be a constant number
5694
5695(P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
5696its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
5697the version number.
5698
5699=item Version string '%s' contains invalid data; ignoring: '%s'
5700
5701(W misc) The version string contains invalid characters at the end, which
5702are being ignored.
5703
5704=item Warning: something's wrong
5705
5706(W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
5707you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
5708
5709=item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
5710
5711(S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
5712the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
5713space.
5714
5715=item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
5716
5717(S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
5718looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
5719term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
5720function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
5721
5722 rand + 5;
5723
5724you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
5725
5726 rand() + 5;
5727
5728but in actual fact, you got
5729
5730 rand(+5);
5731
5732So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
5733
5734=item Wide character in %s
5735
5736(S utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting
5737one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print). The easiest
5738way to quiet this warning is simply to add the C<:utf8> layer to the
5739output, e.g. C<binmode STDOUT, ':utf8'>. Another way to turn off the
5740warning is to add C<no warnings 'utf8';> but that is often closer to
5741cheating. In general, you are supposed to explicitly mark the
5742filehandle with an encoding, see L<open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>.
5743
5744=item Within []-length '%c' not allowed
5745
5746(F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by C<[TEMPLATE]>
5747only if C<TEMPLATE> always matches the same amount of packed bytes that
5748can be determined from the template alone. This is not possible if
5749it contains any of the codes @, /, U, u, w or a *-length. Redesign
5750the template.
5751
5752=item write() on closed filehandle %s
5753
5754(W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
5755before now. Check your control flow.
5756
5757=item %s "\x%X" does not map to Unicode
5758
5759(F) When reading in different encodings Perl tries to map everything
5760into Unicode characters. The bytes you read in are not legal in
5761this encoding, for example
5762
5763 utf8 "\xE4" does not map to Unicode
5764
5765if you try to read in the a-diaereses Latin-1 as UTF-8.
5766
5767=item 'X' outside of string
5768
5769(F) You had a (un)pack template that specified a relative position before
5770the beginning of the string being (un)packed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5771
5772=item 'x' outside of string in unpack
5773
5774(F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
5775the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5776
5777=item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
5778
5779(F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
5780sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
5781about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
5782your script.
5783
5784=item You need to quote "%s"
5785
5786(W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
5787Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
5788which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
5789assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
5790what you want, put an & in front.)
5791
5792=item Your random numbers are not that random
5793
5794(F) When trying to initialise the random seed for hashes, Perl could
5795not get any randomness out of your system. This usually indicates
5796Something Very Wrong.
5797
5798=back
5799
5800=head1 SEE ALSO
5801
5802L<warnings>, L<perllexwarn>, L<diagnostics>.
5803
5804=cut