3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (enabled by default).
12 (S) A severe warning (enabled by default).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
19 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
21 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
22 category is included with the classification letter in the description
23 below. E.g. C<(W closed)> means a warning in the C<closed> category.
25 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
26 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Severe warnings are always enabled, unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %x
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '%c' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only
60 after certain types. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
76 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
79 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
81 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
82 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
83 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
84 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
86 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
88 (S ambiguous) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
89 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
90 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
92 =item Ambiguous use of %c resolved as operator %c
94 (S ambiguous) C<%>, C<&>, and C<*> are both infix operators (modulus,
95 bitwise and, and multiplication) I<and> initial special characters
96 (denoting hashes, subroutines and typeglobs), and you said something
97 like C<*foo * foo> that might be interpreted as either of them. We
98 assumed you meant the infix operator, but please try to make it more
99 clear -- in the example given, you might write C<*foo * foo()> if you
100 really meant to multiply a glob by the result of calling a function.
102 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s} resolved to %c%s
104 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<@{foo}>, which might be
105 asking for the variable C<@foo>, or it might be calling a function
106 named foo, and dereferencing it as an array reference. If you wanted
107 the variable, you can just write C<@foo>. If you wanted to call the
108 function, write C<@{foo()}> ... or you could just not have a variable
109 and a function with the same name, and save yourself a lot of trouble.
111 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s[...]} resolved to %c%s[...]
113 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s{...}} resolved to %c%s{...}
115 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<${foo[2]}> (where foo represents
116 the name of a Perl keyword), which might be looking for element number
117 2 of the array named C<@foo>, in which case please write C<$foo[2]>, or you
118 might have meant to pass an anonymous arrayref to the function named
119 foo, and then do a scalar deref on the value it returns. If you meant
120 that, write C<${foo([2])}>.
122 In regular expressions, the C<${foo[2]}> syntax is sometimes necessary
123 to disambiguate between array subscripts and character classes.
124 C</$length[2345]/>, for instance, will be interpreted as C<$length> followed
125 by the character class C<[2345]>. If an array subscript is what you
126 want, you can avoid the warning by changing C</${length[2345]}/> to the
127 unsightly C</${\$length[2345]}/>, by renaming your array to something
128 that does not coincide with a built-in keyword, or by simply turning
129 off warnings with C<no warnings 'ambiguous';>.
131 =item Ambiguous use of -%s resolved as -&%s()
133 (S ambiguous) You wrote something like C<-foo>, which might be the
134 string C<"-foo">, or a call to the function C<foo>, negated. If you meant
135 the string, just write C<"-foo">. If you meant the function call,
138 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
140 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
141 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
142 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
144 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
146 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
147 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
148 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
149 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
150 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
152 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
159 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
161 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
162 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
163 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
164 a scalar value (the length of an array, or the population info of a
165 hash) and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
166 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
169 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
171 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
173 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
175 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element or a
176 subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
182 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
184 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
190 or a hash or array slice, such as:
192 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
193 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
195 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
197 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
198 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
201 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
203 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
204 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
205 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
207 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
209 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O
210 system you forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers
211 take care of transforming data between external and internal
212 representations.) Perl stopped parsing the layer list at this
213 point and did not attempt to push this layer. If your program
214 didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the
215 result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
217 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
219 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
220 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
222 =item A sequence of multiple spaces in a charnames alias definition is deprecated
224 (D deprecated) You defined a character name which had multiple space
225 characters in a row. Change them to single spaces. Usually these
226 names are defined in the C<:alias> import argument to C<use charnames>, but
227 they could be defined by a translator installed into C<$^H{charnames}>.
228 See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
230 =item assertion botched: %s
232 (X) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
234 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
236 (X) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
238 =item Assigning non-zero to $[ is no longer possible
240 (F) When the "array_base" feature is disabled (e.g., under C<use v5.16;>)
241 the special variable C<$[>, which is deprecated, is now a fixed zero value.
243 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
245 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
246 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
247 know which context to supply to the right side.
249 =item A thread exited while %d threads were running
251 (W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily
252 the main thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
253 Usually it's a good idea first to collect the return values of the
254 created threads by joining them, and only then to exit from the main
255 thread. See L<threads>.
257 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
259 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
260 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
262 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
264 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
265 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
266 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
272 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
274 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
275 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
278 bless $self, "$proto";
280 =item Attempt to clear deleted array
282 (S debugging) An array was assigned to when it was being freed.
283 Freed values are not supposed to be visible to Perl code. This
284 can also happen if XS code calls C<av_clear> from a custom magic
285 callback on the array.
287 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
289 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
290 which is not in its key set.
292 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
294 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
295 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
297 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%x
299 (S internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
300 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
301 outside any of those arenas.
303 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string '%s'%s
305 (S internal) Perl maintains a reference-counted internal table of
306 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
307 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
308 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
310 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely: SV 0x%x
312 (S debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
313 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
314 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
315 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
318 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
320 (S internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
322 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar: SV 0x%x
324 (S internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
325 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
326 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
327 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
328 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
329 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
332 =item Attempt to join self
334 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
335 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
336 to move the join() to some other thread.
338 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
340 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
341 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
342 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
343 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
344 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
347 =item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
349 (F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
350 compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
351 unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
354 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
356 (W misc) You tried to set the length of an array which has
357 been freed. You can do this by storing a reference to the
358 scalar representing the last index of an array and later
359 assigning through that reference. For example
361 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
364 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
366 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
367 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
368 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
370 =item Attribute "locked" is deprecated
372 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the
373 "locked" attribute on a code reference. The :locked attribute is
374 obsolete, has had no effect since 5005 threads were removed, and
375 will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
377 =item Attribute "unique" is deprecated
379 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify
380 the "unique" attribute on an array, hash or scalar reference.
381 The :unique attribute has had no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and
382 will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
384 =item av_reify called on tied array
386 (S debugging) This indicates that something went wrong and Perl got I<very>
387 confused about C<@_> or C<@DB::args> being tied.
389 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
391 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
392 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
393 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
394 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
396 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
398 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
399 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
400 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
402 =item Bad filehandle: %s
404 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
405 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
406 open(), or did it in another package.
408 =item Bad free() ignored
410 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
411 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
412 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
414 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
415 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
416 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
420 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
422 =item Badly placed ()'s
424 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
425 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
428 =item Bad name after %s
430 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
431 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
440 $sym = "mypack::$var";
442 =item Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
444 (F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the
447 =item Bad realloc() ignored
449 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that
450 had never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can
451 be disabled by setting the environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
453 =item Bad symbol for array
455 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
456 wasn't a symbol table entry.
458 =item Bad symbol for dirhandle
460 (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
461 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
463 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
465 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
466 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
468 =item Bad symbol for hash
470 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
471 wasn't a symbol table entry.
473 =item Bareword found in conditional
475 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
476 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
477 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
481 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
484 use constant TYPO => 1;
485 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
487 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
489 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
491 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
492 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
493 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
495 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
497 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
498 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
499 you need to predeclare a package?
501 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
503 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
504 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
507 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
509 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
510 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
511 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
512 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
513 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
515 =item \1 better written as $1
517 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
518 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
519 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
520 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
521 there are more than 9 backreferences.
523 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
525 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
526 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
527 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
529 =item bind() on closed socket %s
531 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
532 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
534 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
536 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
537 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
539 =item "\b{" is deprecated; use "\b\{" or "\b[{]" instead in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
541 =item "\B{" is deprecated; use "\B\{" or "\B[{]" instead in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
543 (D deprecated) Use of an unescaped "{" immediately following
544 a C<\b> or C<\B> is now deprecated so as to reserve its use for Perl
545 itself in a future release. You can either precede the brace
546 with a backslash, or enclose it in square brackets; the latter
547 is the way to go if the pattern delimiters are C<{}>.
549 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
551 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
553 =item Bizarre copy of %s
555 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
558 =item Bizarre SvTYPE [%d]
560 (P) When starting a new thread or return values from a thread, Perl
561 encountered an invalid data type.
563 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
565 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
566 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
567 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
569 =item Callback called exit
571 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
572 exited by calling exit.
574 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
576 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
577 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
578 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
579 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
580 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
581 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
582 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
583 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
585 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
587 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
588 compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
589 attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
590 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
592 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
594 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
595 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
597 =item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
599 (F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference
600 in it, then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax.
601 The access triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is
602 no legal conversion from that type of reference to a typeglob.
604 =item Cannot copy to %s
606 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
607 be directly assigned to.
609 =item Cannot find encoding "%s"
611 (S io) You tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to a filehandle,
612 either with open() or binmode().
614 =item Cannot set tied @DB::args
616 (F) C<caller> tried to set C<@DB::args>, but found it tied. Tying C<@DB::args>
617 is not supported. (Before this error was added, it used to crash.)
619 =item Cannot tie unreifiable array
621 (P) You somehow managed to call C<tie> on an array that does not
622 keep a reference count on its arguments and cannot be made to
623 do so. Such arrays are not even supposed to be accessible to
624 Perl code, but are only used internally.
626 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
628 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
629 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
630 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
632 =item Can't bless non-reference value
634 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
635 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
637 =item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
639 (F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
640 a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
642 =item Can't "break" outside a given block
644 (F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
646 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
648 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
649 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
650 like this will reproduce the error:
653 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
654 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
656 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
658 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
659 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
660 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
661 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
663 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
665 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
666 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
667 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
668 Something like this will reproduce the error:
671 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
672 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
674 =item Can't chdir to %s
676 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but F</foo/bar> is not a directory
677 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
679 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
681 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
684 =item Can't coerce %s to %s in %s
686 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
687 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
697 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
699 =item Can't "continue" outside a when block
701 (F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
704 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
706 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
707 quotas or other plumbing problems.
709 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
711 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
712 "state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
714 =item Can't "default" outside a topicalizer
716 (F) You have used a C<default> block that is neither inside a
717 C<foreach> loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is
718 issued on exit from the C<default> block, so you won't get the
719 error if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
721 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
723 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
724 a file in /dev, a FIFO or an uneditable directory. The file was ignored.
726 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
728 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
731 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
733 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
734 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
735 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
737 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
739 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
740 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
741 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
743 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
745 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
746 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
748 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
750 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
751 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
754 =item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
756 (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
757 or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
758 little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
759 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
761 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
763 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
764 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
765 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
766 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
767 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
768 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
773 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
774 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
775 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
777 =item Can't execute %s
779 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
780 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
782 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
784 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
785 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
787 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
789 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
790 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property?
791 See L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
792 for a complete list of available official properties.
794 =item Can't find label %s
796 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
797 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
799 =item Can't find %s on PATH
801 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
804 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
806 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
807 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
808 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
810 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
812 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
813 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
814 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
816 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
818 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
819 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag or there
820 may not be a linebreak after it. A good programmer's editor will have
821 a way to help you find these characters (or lack of characters). See
822 L<perlop> for the full details on here-documents.
824 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
826 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode
827 property (for example C<\p{Lu}> matches all uppercase
828 letters). If you did mean to use a Unicode property, see
829 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
830 for a complete list of available properties. If you didn't
831 mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either by
832 C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, or
837 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
840 =item Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
842 (W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be retried
845 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
847 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
848 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
849 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
850 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
851 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
852 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
853 the access-checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
854 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
855 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
856 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
857 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access-checking routine gave up
858 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access-checking
859 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
860 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
861 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
863 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
865 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
866 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
868 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
870 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
871 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
873 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
875 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
876 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
878 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
880 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
881 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
882 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
883 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
885 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
887 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
890 =item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
892 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
893 comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
894 as the reduce() function in List::Util).
896 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
898 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
899 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
900 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
901 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
903 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
905 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
906 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
907 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
908 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
909 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
910 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
912 =item Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
914 (F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a fatal error to
915 attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise non-numeric
918 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
920 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
921 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
922 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
923 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
924 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
925 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
928 =item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
930 (F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
931 package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
933 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
935 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension.
936 This may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one
937 that is incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known
938 to happen between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your
939 dynamic extension was built against an older version of the library
940 that is installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old
943 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
945 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
946 lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you
947 want to localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with
950 =item Can't localize through a reference
952 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
953 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
954 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
955 that $ref will still be a reference.
957 =item Can't locate %s
959 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be found.
960 Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC, unless
961 the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
962 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the
963 extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
964 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
965 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
967 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
969 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
970 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
971 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
972 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
974 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
976 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
977 for example, F<foo.so> or F<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
978 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
980 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
982 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
983 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
984 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
986 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
988 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
989 doesn't seem to exist.
991 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
993 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
994 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
996 =item Can't make list assignment to %ENV on this system
998 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
1001 =item Can't make loaded symbols global on this platform while loading %s
1003 (S) A module passed the flag 0x01 to DynaLoader::dl_load_file() to request
1004 that symbols from the stated file are made available globally within the
1005 process, but that functionality is not available on this platform. Whilst
1006 the module likely will still work, this may prevent the perl interpreter
1007 from loading other XS-based extensions which need to link directly to
1008 functions defined in the C or XS code in the stated file.
1010 =item Can't modify %s in %s
1012 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
1013 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
1015 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
1017 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
1020 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
1022 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
1023 such. See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1025 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
1027 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
1030 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
1032 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
1033 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1034 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
1035 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1036 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
1037 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
1041 (F) You tried to run a perl built with MAD support with
1042 the PERL_XMLDUMP environment variable set, but the file
1043 named by that variable could not be opened.
1045 =item Can't open %s: %s
1047 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
1048 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
1049 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually
1050 this is because you don't have read permission for a file which
1051 you named on the command line.
1053 (F) You tried to call perl with the B<-e> switch, but F</dev/null> (or
1054 your operating system's equivalent) could not be opened.
1056 =item Can't open a reference
1058 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
1059 using the 3-arg open() syntax:
1063 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
1064 open is not supported.
1066 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
1068 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
1069 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
1070 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
1071 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
1073 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
1075 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1076 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
1077 the command line for writing.
1079 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
1081 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1082 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
1083 command line for reading.
1085 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
1087 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1088 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
1089 the command line for writing.
1091 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
1093 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1094 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
1097 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
1099 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
1101 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
1102 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1103 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1105 =item Can't read CRTL environ
1107 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1108 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1109 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1110 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1113 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1115 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1116 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1117 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1118 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1119 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1120 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1122 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1124 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1125 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1126 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1128 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1130 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1131 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1133 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1135 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1136 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1138 =item Can't reset %ENV on this system
1140 (F) You called C<reset('E')> or similar, which tried to reset
1141 all variables in the current package beginning with "E". In
1142 the main package, that includes %ENV. Resetting %ENV is not
1143 supported on some systems, notably VMS.
1145 =item Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
1147 (F)(P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1148 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1149 package. If the method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1151 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1153 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1154 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1157 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1159 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1160 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1162 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1164 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue
1165 subroutine, but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl
1166 think you meant to return only one value. You probably meant to
1167 write parentheses around the call to the subroutine, which tell
1168 Perl that the call should be in list context.
1170 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1172 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1173 open already. Bizarre.
1175 =item Can't take log of %g
1177 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1178 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1179 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1182 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1184 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1185 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1186 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1188 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1190 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1191 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1192 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1194 =item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1196 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1197 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1198 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1199 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1201 =item Can't use '%c' after -mname
1203 (F) You tried to call perl with the B<-m> switch, but you put something
1204 other than "=" after the module name.
1206 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1208 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1209 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1210 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1212 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1214 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1215 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1217 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1219 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1220 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1222 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1224 (F) The first time the C<%!> hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1225 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1226 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1228 =item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1230 (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1231 byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1232 allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1234 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1236 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1239 =item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1241 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1242 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1243 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1244 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1247 =item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1249 (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1250 that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1251 For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1252 is inside a big-endian group.
1254 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1256 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1257 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1258 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1259 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1262 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1264 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1265 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1266 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1268 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1270 (F) You've told Perl to dereference a string, something which
1271 C<use strict> blocks to prevent it happening accidentally. See
1272 L<perlref/"Symbolic references">. This can be triggered by an C<@> or C<$>
1273 in a double-quoted string immediately before interpolating a variable,
1274 for example in C<"user @$twitter_id">, which says to treat the contents
1275 of C<$twitter_id> as an array reference; use a C<\> to have a literal C<@>
1276 symbol followed by the contents of C<$twitter_id>: C<"user \@$twitter_id">.
1278 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1280 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1281 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1282 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1284 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1286 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1287 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1288 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1289 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1290 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1293 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1295 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1296 references can be weakened.
1298 =item Can't "when" outside a topicalizer
1300 (F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1301 loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1302 from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1303 or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1305 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1307 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1308 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1309 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1311 =item Character following "\c" must be ASCII
1313 (F)(D deprecated, syntax) In C<\cI<X>>, I<X> must be an ASCII character.
1314 It is planned to make this fatal in all instances in Perl v5.20. In
1315 the cases where it isn't fatal, the character this evaluates to is
1316 derived by exclusive or'ing the code point of this character with 0x40.
1318 Note that non-alphabetic ASCII characters are discouraged here as well,
1319 and using non-printable ones will be deprecated starting in v5.18.
1321 =item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1327 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1328 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1329 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1333 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1336 =item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1342 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1343 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1344 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1346 pack("c", $x & 255);
1348 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1351 =item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1353 (W unpack) You tried something like
1355 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1357 where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1358 below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the
1359 value modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1361 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1363 =item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1369 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode
1370 expects all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved
1373 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1375 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1377 (W pack) You tried something like
1379 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1381 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1382 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1383 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1385 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1387 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1389 (W unpack) You tried something like
1391 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1393 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1394 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1395 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1397 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1399 =item "\c{" is deprecated and is more clearly written as ";"
1401 (D deprecated, syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way
1402 to specify non-printable characters. You used it with a "{" which
1403 evaluates to ";", which is printable. It is planned to remove the
1404 ability to specify a semi-colon this way in Perl 5.20. Just use a
1405 semi-colon or a backslash-semi-colon without the "\c".
1407 =item "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"
1409 (W syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way to specify
1410 non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which is better
1411 written as simply itself, perhaps preceded by a backslash for non-word
1414 =item Cloning substitution context is unimplemented
1416 (F) Creating a new thread inside the C<s///> operator is not supported.
1418 =item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1420 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1421 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1423 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1425 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1427 =item Closure prototype called
1429 (F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to an attribute
1430 handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure is created.
1431 This subroutine cannot be called.
1433 =item Code missing after '/'
1435 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be
1436 another template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1438 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, all \p{} matches fail; all \P{} matches
1441 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
1443 (S utf8, non_unicode) You had a code point above the Unicode maximum
1446 Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code points, up
1447 to the limit of what is storable in an unsigned integer on your system,
1448 but these may not be accepted by other languages/systems. At one time,
1449 it was legal in some standards to have code points up to 0x7FFF_FFFF,
1450 but not higher. Code points above 0xFFFF_FFFF require larger than a
1453 None of the Unicode or Perl-defined properties will match a non-Unicode
1454 code point. For example,
1456 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\p{Any}/
1458 will not match, because the code point is not in Unicode. But
1460 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\P{Any}/
1464 This may be counterintuitive at times, as both these fail:
1466 chr(0x110000) =~ /\p{ASCII_Hex_Digit=True}/ # Fails.
1467 chr(0x110000) =~ /\p{ASCII_Hex_Digit=False}/ # Also fails!
1469 and both these succeed:
1471 chr(0x110000) =~ /\P{ASCII_Hex_Digit=True}/ # Succeeds.
1472 chr(0x110000) =~ /\P{ASCII_Hex_Digit=False}/ # Also succeeds!
1474 =item %s: Command not found
1476 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> or another shell
1477 shell instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
1478 into Perl yourself. The #! line at the top of your file could look like
1482 =item Compilation failed in require
1484 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1485 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1486 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1488 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1490 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1491 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1492 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1493 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1494 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1495 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1496 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1497 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1498 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1500 =item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1502 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to
1503 call cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked.
1504 The cond_broadcast() function is used to wake up another thread
1505 that is waiting in a cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't
1506 sent before the other thread has a chance to enter the wait, it
1507 is usual for the signaling thread first to wait for a lock on
1508 variable. This lock attempt will only succeed after the other
1509 thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the lock.
1511 =item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1513 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to
1514 call cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The
1515 cond_signal() function is used to wake up another thread that
1516 is waiting in a cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't
1517 sent before the other thread has a chance to enter the wait, it
1518 is usual for the signaling thread first to wait for a lock on
1519 variable. This lock attempt will only succeed after the other
1520 thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the lock.
1522 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1524 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1525 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1526 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1528 =item Constant(%s): Call to &{$^H{%s}} did not return a defined value
1530 (F) The subroutine registered to handle constant overloading
1531 (see L<overload>) or a custom charnames handler (see
1532 L<charnames/CUSTOM TRANSLATORS>) returned an undefined value.
1534 =item Constant(%s): $^H{%s} is not defined
1536 (F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to define an
1537 overloaded constant. Perhaps you forgot to load the corresponding
1538 L<overload> pragma?.
1540 =item Constant is not %s reference
1542 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1543 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1544 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1545 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1546 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1548 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1550 (W redefine)(S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously
1551 been eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions">
1552 for commentary and workarounds.
1554 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1556 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1557 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1560 =item Constant(%s) unknown
1562 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting
1563 to define an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the
1564 character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you
1565 forgot to load the corresponding L<overload> pragma?.
1567 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1569 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1570 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1572 =item &CORE::%s cannot be called directly
1574 (F) You tried to call a subroutine in the C<CORE::> namespace
1575 with C<&foo> syntax or through a reference. Some subroutines
1576 in this package cannot yet be called that way, but must be
1577 called as barewords. Something like this will work:
1579 BEGIN { *shove = \&CORE::push; }
1580 shove @array, 1,2,3; # pushes on to @array
1582 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1584 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1586 =item Corrupted regexp opcode %d > %d
1588 (P) This is either an error in Perl, or, if you're using
1589 one, your L<custom regular expression engine|perlreapi>. If not the
1590 latter, report the problem through the L<perlbug> utility.
1592 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1594 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1595 expression compiler gave it.
1597 =item corrupted regexp program
1599 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1602 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
1604 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1606 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1608 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1609 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1612 =item Deep recursion on anonymous subroutine
1614 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1616 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1617 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1618 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1619 which case it indicates something else.
1621 This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the F<perl> binary,
1622 setting the C pre-processor macro C<PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN> to the desired value.
1624 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1626 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1627 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1628 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1630 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1632 (D deprecated) C<defined()> is not usually right on hashes and has been
1633 discouraged since 5.004.
1635 Although C<defined %hash> is false on a plain not-yet-used hash, it
1636 becomes true in several non-obvious circumstances, including iterators,
1637 weak references, stash names, even remaining true after C<undef %hash>.
1638 These things make C<defined %hash> fairly useless in practice.
1640 If a check for non-empty is what you wanted then just put it in boolean
1641 context (see L<perldata/Scalar values>):
1647 If you had C<defined %Foo::Bar::QUUX> to check whether such a package
1648 variable exists then that's never really been reliable, and isn't
1649 a good way to enquire about the features of a package, or whether
1653 =item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
1656 (F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
1657 most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
1658 of the C<....> part.
1660 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
1663 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1665 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1666 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1668 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1670 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1671 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1672 that triggers this error.
1674 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1676 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>. There
1677 has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1678 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1679 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1680 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1681 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1682 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1684 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1688 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1690 Beginning with perl 5.9.4, you can also use C<state> variables to have
1691 lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1693 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1695 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1697 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1698 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather
1699 than to create a dangling reference.
1701 =item Did not produce a valid header
1705 =item %s did not return a true value
1707 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1708 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1709 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1710 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1712 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1714 (W misc) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or
1717 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1719 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1720 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1723 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1725 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1726 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1731 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1732 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
1734 =item Document contains no data
1738 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1740 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1741 define a C<$VERSION>.
1743 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1745 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1746 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1748 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1750 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1752 =item do_study: out of memory
1754 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1756 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1758 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1759 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1760 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1761 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1762 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1763 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1764 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1765 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1767 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1769 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1770 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1772 =item dump is not supported
1774 (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1776 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1778 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1781 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1783 (W unpack) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a
1784 type in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1786 =item elseif should be elsif
1788 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks
1789 it's ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1790 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1791 unlikely to be what you want.
1793 =item Empty \%c{} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1795 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1796 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1797 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1799 =item entering effective %s failed
1801 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1802 effective uids or gids failed.
1804 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1806 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1807 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1808 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1810 =item Error converting file specification %s
1812 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1813 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1814 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1815 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1816 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1818 =item Escape literal pattern white space under /x
1820 (D deprecated) You compiled a regular expression pattern with C</x> to
1821 ignore white space, and you used, as a literal, one of the characters
1822 that Perl plans to eventually treat as white space. The character must
1823 be escaped somehow, or it will work differently on a future Perl that
1824 does treat it as white space. The easiest way is to insert a backslash
1825 immediately before it, or to enclose it with square brackets. This
1826 change is to bring Perl into conformance with Unicode recommendations.
1827 Here are the five characters that generate this warning:
1829 U+200E LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK,
1830 U+200F RIGHT-TO-LEFT MARK,
1831 U+2028 LINE SEPARATOR,
1833 U+2029 PARAGRAPH SEPARATOR.
1835 =item Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1837 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1838 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1839 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1841 =item Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
1843 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1844 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1845 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk,
1846 it is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by using the
1847 C<re 'eval'> pragma or by explicitly building the pattern from an
1848 interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval(). See
1849 L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1851 =item Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
1853 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1854 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1855 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1857 =item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
1860 (F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
1861 any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
1863 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
1866 =item Excessively long <> operator
1868 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1869 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1870 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1871 variable and glob that.
1873 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1875 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented on some systems, e.g., Symbian
1876 OS. See L<perlport>.
1878 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
1880 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1882 =item Exiting eval via %s
1884 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1885 goto, or a loop control statement.
1887 =item Exiting format via %s
1889 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1890 goto, or a loop control statement.
1892 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1894 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1895 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1896 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1898 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1900 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1901 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1903 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1905 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1906 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1908 =item Expecting close bracket in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1910 (F) You wrote something like
1914 to denote a capturing group of the form
1915 L<C<(?I<PARNO>)>|perlre/(?PARNO) (?-PARNO) (?+PARNO) (?R) (?0)>,
1916 but omitted the C<")">.
1918 =item Experimental "%s" subs not enabled
1920 (F) To use lexical subs, you must first enable them:
1922 no warnings 'experimental::lexical_subs';
1923 use feature 'lexical_subs';
1926 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1928 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1929 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1930 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1931 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1933 =item %s: Expression syntax
1935 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1936 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1938 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1940 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
1941 CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
1942 queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
1944 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1946 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1947 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1948 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1949 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
1950 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1952 =item Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
1954 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1955 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1956 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1957 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1959 =item fcntl is not implemented
1961 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1962 PDP-11 or something?
1964 =item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
1966 (F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
1969 =item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1971 (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string starts with a length indicator
1972 which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1973 a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1974 C<u63> as the format.
1976 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1978 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1979 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1980 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1981 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1983 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1985 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1986 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1987 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with ">". If you intended only to
1988 read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>. Another possibility
1989 is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0 (also known as STDIN) for
1990 output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
1992 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1994 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1995 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
1998 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
2000 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
2001 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
2003 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
2005 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
2006 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
2007 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
2010 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
2012 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
2013 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
2014 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
2017 =item Format not terminated
2019 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
2020 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
2022 =item Format %s redefined
2024 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
2027 no warnings 'redefine';
2028 eval "format NAME =...";
2031 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
2041 (or something like that).
2043 =item %s found where operator expected
2045 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
2046 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
2047 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
2048 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
2050 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
2052 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
2054 =item gethostent not implemented
2056 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
2057 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
2060 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
2062 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
2063 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
2065 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
2067 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
2068 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
2070 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
2072 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
2073 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2074 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
2076 =item given is experimental
2078 (S experimental::smartmatch) C<given> depends on smartmatch, which
2079 is experimental, so its behavior may change or even be removed
2080 in any future release of perl. See the explanation under
2081 L<perlsyn/Experimental Details on given and when>.
2083 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
2085 (F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
2086 that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
2087 declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
2088 which package the global variable is in (using "::").
2090 =item glob failed (%s)
2092 (S glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used
2093 for C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
2094 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
2095 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
2096 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell)
2097 is broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables
2098 in config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as
2099 if it were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them
2100 all empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
2101 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
2102 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
2104 =item Glob not terminated
2106 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
2107 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
2108 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
2109 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
2111 =item gmtime(%f) too large
2113 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was larger than
2114 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
2115 date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2116 not-a-number value).
2118 =item gmtime(%f) too small
2120 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was smaller than
2121 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong date.
2123 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
2125 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
2126 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
2128 =item goto must have label
2130 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
2131 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
2133 =item Goto undefined subroutine%s
2135 (F) You tried to call a subroutine with C<goto &sub> syntax, but
2136 the indicated subroutine hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2137 has since been undefined.
2139 =item Group name must start with a non-digit word character in regex; marked by
2142 (F) Group names must follow the rules for perl identifiers, meaning
2143 they must start with a non-digit word character. A common cause of
2144 this error is using (?&0) instead of (?0). See L<perlre>.
2146 =item ()-group starts with a count
2148 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is supposed to follow
2149 something: a template character or a ()-group. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2151 =item %s had compilation errors.
2153 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
2155 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
2157 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
2158 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
2159 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
2161 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
2163 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
2164 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
2166 =item %s has too many errors
2168 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
2169 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
2171 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
2173 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2174 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2175 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2177 =item Identifier too long
2179 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
2180 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
2181 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
2182 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
2184 =item Ignoring zero length \N{} in character class in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2186 (W regexp) Named Unicode character escapes C<(\N{...})> may return a
2187 zero-length sequence. When such an escape is used in a character class
2188 its behaviour is not well defined. Check that the correct escape has
2189 been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
2191 =item Illegal binary digit %s
2193 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
2195 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
2197 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
2198 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
2201 =item Illegal character after '_' in prototype for %s : %s
2203 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2204 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2206 =item Illegal character \%o (carriage return)
2208 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
2209 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
2210 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
2211 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
2212 to your Perl administrator.
2214 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
2216 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2217 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2219 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
2221 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
2222 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
2224 =item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
2226 (F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
2228 =item Illegal division by zero
2230 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
2231 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
2234 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
2236 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
2237 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
2238 number stopped before the illegal character.
2240 =item Illegal modulus zero
2242 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
2243 numbers don't take to this kindly.
2245 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
2247 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
2248 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
2250 =item Illegal octal digit %s
2252 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2254 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
2256 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2257 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
2259 =item Illegal pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2261 (F) You wrote something like
2265 The C<"+"> is valid only when followed by digits, indicating a
2266 capturing group. See
2267 L<C<(?I<PARNO>)>|perlre/(?PARNO) (?-PARNO) (?+PARNO) (?R) (?0)>.
2269 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: -%c
2271 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
2272 following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtw]>.
2274 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
2276 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
2277 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
2278 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
2280 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
2282 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
2283 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
2284 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
2287 =item (in cleanup) %s
2289 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
2290 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
2291 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
2292 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
2293 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
2295 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
2296 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
2298 =item Incomplete expression within '(?[ ])' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2300 (F) There was a syntax error within the C<(?[ ])>. This can happen if the
2301 expression inside the construct was completely empty, or if there are
2302 too many or few operands for the number of operators. Perl is not smart
2303 enough to give you a more precise indication as to what is wrong.
2305 =item Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on
2308 (F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not
2309 C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See the C3
2310 documentation in L<mro> for more information.
2312 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
2314 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
2315 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
2316 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
2318 =item Infinite recursion in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2320 (F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input
2321 text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive patterns
2322 either consume text or fail.
2324 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
2327 =item Initialization of state variables in list context currently forbidden
2329 (F) Currently the implementation of "state" only permits the
2330 initialization of scalar variables in scalar context. Re-write
2331 C<state ($a) = 42> as C<state $a = 42> to change from list to scalar
2332 context. Constructions such as C<state (@a) = foo()> will be
2333 supported in a future perl release.
2335 =item Insecure dependency in %s
2337 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
2338 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
2339 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
2340 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
2341 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
2342 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
2343 L<perlsec> for more information.
2345 =item Insecure directory in %s
2347 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2348 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
2349 the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
2352 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
2354 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2355 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
2356 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
2357 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
2358 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
2360 =item Insecure user-defined property %s
2362 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
2363 expression that contains a call to a user-defined character property
2364 function, i.e. C<\p{IsFoo}> or C<\p{InFoo}>.
2365 See L<perlunicode/User-Defined Character Properties> and L<perlsec>.
2367 =item In '(?...)', splitting the initial '(?' is deprecated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2369 (D regexp, deprecated) The two-character sequence C<"(?"> in
2370 this context in a regular expression pattern should be an
2371 indivisible token, with nothing intervening between the C<"(">
2372 and the C<"?">, but you separated them. Due to an accident of
2373 implementation, this prohibition was not enforced, but we do
2374 plan to forbid it in a future Perl version. This message
2375 serves as giving you fair warning of this pending change.
2377 =item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2379 (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2380 or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2381 integers for your architecture.
2383 =item Integer overflow in %s number
2385 (S overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2386 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2387 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2388 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2389 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
2390 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2391 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2392 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2395 =item Integer overflow in srand
2397 (S overflow) The number you have passed to srand is too big to fit
2398 in your architecture's integer representation. The number has been
2399 replaced with the largest integer supported (0xFFFFFFFF on 32-bit
2400 architectures). This means you may be getting less randomness than
2401 you expect, because different random seeds above the maximum will
2402 return the same sequence of random numbers.
2404 =item Integer overflow in version
2406 =item Integer overflow in version %d
2408 (W overflow) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for
2409 the size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
2410 because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use an
2411 element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by trying
2412 to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like 100/9.
2414 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2416 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
2417 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
2420 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2422 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2423 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2424 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2425 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2426 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2427 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
2429 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2431 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2432 <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
2435 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
2437 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
2438 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
2439 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
2440 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
2442 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2444 (F) The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2445 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2447 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2449 (F) The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2450 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2452 =item Invalid character in charnames alias definition; marked by <-- HERE in '%s
2454 (F) You tried to create a custom alias for a character name, with
2455 the C<:alias> option to C<use charnames> and the specified character in
2456 the indicated name isn't valid. See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
2458 =item Invalid character in \N{...}; marked by <-- HERE in \N{%s}
2460 (F) Only certain characters are valid for character names. The
2461 indicated one isn't. See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
2463 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2465 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2466 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
2468 =item Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
2471 (W regexp) The numeric escape (for example C<\xHH>) of value < 256
2472 didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion
2473 from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma.
2474 The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD) instead.
2475 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
2476 escape was discovered.
2478 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
2480 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
2483 (F) The character constant represented by C<...> is not a valid hexadecimal
2484 number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use a character other than
2485 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
2487 =item Invalid module name %s with -%c option: contains single ':'
2489 (F) The module argument to perl's B<-m> and B<-M> command-line options
2490 cannot contain single colons in the module name, but only in the
2491 arguments after "=". In other words, B<-MFoo::Bar=:baz> is ok, but
2492 B<-MFoo:Bar=baz> is not.
2494 =item Invalid mro name: '%s'
2496 (F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")> or C<use mro 'foo'>,
2497 where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO). Currently,
2498 the only valid ones supported are C<dfs> and C<c3>, unless you have loaded
2499 a module that is a MRO plugin. See L<mro> and L<perlmroapi>.
2501 =item Invalid negative number (%s) in chr
2503 (W utf8) You passed a negative number to C<chr>. Negative numbers are
2504 not valid characters numbers, so it return the Unicode replacement
2507 =item invalid option -D%c, use -D'' to see choices
2509 (S debugging) Perl was called with invalid debugger flags. Call perl
2510 with the B<-D> option with no flags to see the list of acceptable values.
2511 See also L<perlrun/-Dletters>.
2513 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2515 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2516 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2517 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2518 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
2519 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2521 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2523 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2524 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2526 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2528 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2529 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2530 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2533 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2535 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other
2536 than a colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2537 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2538 list was terminated too soon.
2540 =item Invalid strict version format (%s)
2542 (F) A version number did not meet the "strict" criteria for versions.
2543 A "strict" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2544 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2545 v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least three components.
2546 The parenthesized text indicates which criteria were not met.
2547 See the L<version> module for more details on allowed version formats.
2549 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2551 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2552 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2554 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2557 =item Invalid version format (%s)
2559 (F) A version number did not meet the "lax" criteria for versions.
2560 A "lax" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2561 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2562 v-string. If the v-string has fewer than three components, it
2563 must have a leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading 'v' is
2564 optional. Both decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a
2565 trailing "alpha" component separated by an underscore character
2566 after a fractional or dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized
2567 text indicates which criteria were not met. See the L<version> module
2568 for more details on allowed version formats.
2570 =item Invalid version object
2572 (F) The internal structure of the version object was invalid.
2573 Perhaps the internals were modified directly in some way or
2574 an arbitrary reference was blessed into the "version" class.
2576 =item In '(*VERB...)', splitting the initial '(*' is deprecated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2578 (D regexp, deprecated) The two-character sequence C<"(*"> in
2579 this context in a regular expression pattern should be an
2580 indivisible token, with nothing intervening between the C<"(">
2581 and the C<"*">, but you separated them. Due to an accident of
2582 implementation, this prohibition was not enforced, but we do
2583 plan to forbid it in a future Perl version. This message
2584 serves as giving you fair warning of this pending change.
2586 =item ioctl is not implemented
2588 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2589 strange for a machine that supports C.
2591 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
2593 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2594 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
2596 =item IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
2598 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2599 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO, Perl must be configured
2602 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2604 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2605 neither as a system call nor an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2607 =item $* is no longer supported
2609 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older
2610 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. In
2611 previous versions of perl the use of C<$*> enabled or disabled multi-line
2612 matching within a string.
2614 Instead of using C<$*> you should use the C</m> (and maybe C</s>) regexp
2615 modifiers. You can enable C</m> for a lexical scope (even a whole file)
2616 with C<use re '/m'>. (In older versions: when C<$*> was set to a true value
2617 then all regular expressions behaved as if they were written using C</m>.)
2619 =item $# is no longer supported
2621 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older
2622 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported. You
2623 should use the printf/sprintf functions instead.
2625 =item '%s' is not a code reference
2627 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of
2628 overload::constant needs to be a code reference. Either
2629 an anonymous subroutine, or a reference to a subroutine.
2631 =item '%s' is not an overloadable type
2633 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2636 =item -i used with no filenames on the command line, reading from STDIN
2638 (S inplace) The C<-i> option was passed on the command line, indicating
2639 that the script is intended to edit files in place, but no files were
2640 given. This is usually a mistake, since editing STDIN in place doesn't
2641 make sense, and can be confusing because it can make perl look like
2642 it is hanging when it is really just trying to read from STDIN. You
2643 should either pass a filename to edit, or remove C<-i> from the command
2644 line. See L<perlrun> for more details.
2646 =item Junk on end of regexp in regex m/%s/
2648 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2650 =item Label not found for "last %s"
2652 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2653 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2656 =item Label not found for "next %s"
2658 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2659 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2662 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
2664 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2665 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2668 =item leaving effective %s failed
2670 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2671 effective uids or gids failed.
2673 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
2675 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2676 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2677 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2679 =item length() used on %s
2681 (W syntax) You used length() on either an array or a hash when you
2682 probably wanted a count of the items.
2684 Array size can be obtained by doing:
2688 The number of items in a hash can be obtained by doing:
2692 =item Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
2694 (F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse
2695 (using L<lex_stuff_pvn|perlapi/lex_stuff_pvn> or similar), but tried to insert a character that
2696 couldn't be part of the current input. This is an inherent pitfall
2697 of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the reasons to avoid it. Where
2698 it is necessary to stuff, stuffing only plain ASCII is recommended.
2700 =item Lexing code internal error (%s)
2702 (F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a
2705 =item listen() on closed socket %s
2707 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2708 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2711 =item List form of piped open not implemented
2713 (F) On some platforms, notably Windows, the three-or-more-arguments
2714 form of C<open> does not support pipes, such as C<open($pipe, '|-', @args)>.
2715 Use the two-argument C<open($pipe, '|prog arg1 arg2...')> form instead.
2717 =item localtime(%f) too large
2719 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was larger
2720 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2721 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2722 not-a-number value).
2724 =item localtime(%f) too small
2726 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was smaller
2727 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2730 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
2732 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2733 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2735 =item Lost precision when %s %f by 1
2737 (W imprecision) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by one
2738 is too large for the underlying floating point representation to store
2739 accurately, hence the target of C<++> or C<--> is unchanged. Perl issues this
2740 warning because it has already switched from integers to floating point
2741 when values are too large for integers, and now even floating point is
2742 insufficient. You may wish to switch to using L<Math::BigInt> explicitly.
2744 =item lstat() on filehandle%s
2746 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2747 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2748 instead on the filehandle.)
2750 =item lvalue attribute %s already-defined subroutine
2752 (W misc) Although L<attributes.pm|attributes> allows this, turning the lvalue
2753 attribute on or off on a Perl subroutine that is already defined
2754 does not always work properly. It may or may not do what you
2755 want, depending on what code is inside the subroutine, with exact
2756 details subject to change between Perl versions. Only do this
2757 if you really know what you are doing.
2759 =item lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined
2761 (W misc) Using the C<:lvalue> declarative syntax to make a Perl
2762 subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it has been defined is
2763 not permitted. To make the subroutine an lvalue subroutine,
2764 add the lvalue attribute to the definition, or put the C<sub
2765 foo :lvalue;> declaration before the definition.
2767 See also L<attributes.pm|attributes>.
2769 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2771 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2772 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2774 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2776 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2777 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2779 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2781 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2788 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2789 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2790 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2791 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2793 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2795 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2796 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2797 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2798 when the function is called.
2800 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2802 (S utf8)(F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2803 encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
2805 One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2806 you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
2807 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2809 If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2810 sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2811 set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2814 See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
2816 =item Malformed UTF-8 character immediately after '%s'
2818 (F) You said C<use utf8>, but the program file doesn't comply with UTF-8
2819 encoding rules. The message prints out the properly encoded characters
2820 just before the first bad one. If C<utf8> warnings are enabled, a
2821 warning is generated that gives more details about the type of
2824 =item Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N{%s} immediately after '%s'
2826 (F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
2828 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2830 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2831 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2833 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2835 (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2836 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2838 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2840 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2841 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2843 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2845 (F) Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2846 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2848 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2850 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2851 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
2852 shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
2855 =item Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded
2857 (F) Perl aborted due to too high a number of signals pending. This
2858 usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
2859 too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
2860 resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
2861 safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
2863 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2865 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2866 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2869 =item '%' may not be used in pack
2871 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2872 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2873 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2875 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2877 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2878 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2880 =item Method %s not permitted
2884 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2886 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2887 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2888 ended earlier on the current line.
2890 =item Misplaced _ in number
2892 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2893 separate two digits.
2895 =item Missing argument in %s
2897 (W uninitialized) A printf-type format required more arguments than were
2900 =item Missing argument to -%c
2902 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2903 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2905 =item Missing braces on \N{}
2907 =item Missing braces on \N{} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2909 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2910 double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space
2911 (or comment) between the C<\N> and the C<{> in a regex with the C</x> modifier.
2912 This modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately
2915 =item Missing braces on \o{}
2917 (F) A C<\o> must be followed immediately by a C<{> in double-quotish context.
2919 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2921 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2922 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2924 =item Missing command in piped open
2926 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2927 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2930 =item Missing control char name in \c
2932 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2935 =item Missing name in "%s sub"
2937 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2938 they have a name with which they can be found.
2940 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2942 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2943 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2944 can vary from one line to the next.
2946 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2948 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2949 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2951 =item Missing right brace on \%c{} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2953 (F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}>, C<\P{...}>, or C<\N{...}>.
2955 =item Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N
2957 (F) C<\N> has two meanings.
2959 The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed in braces,
2960 meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that
2961 name. Thus C<\N{ASTERISK}> is another way of writing C<*>, valid in both
2962 double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns,
2963 it doesn't have the meaning an unescaped C<*> does.
2965 Starting in Perl 5.12.0, C<\N> also can have an additional meaning (only)
2966 in patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short
2967 for C<[^\n]>, and like C<.> but is not affected by the C</s> regex modifier.)
2969 This can lead to some ambiguities. When C<\N> is not followed immediately
2970 by a left brace, Perl assumes the C<[^\n]> meaning. Also, if the braces
2971 form a valid quantifier such as C<\N{3}> or C<\N{5,}>, Perl assumes that this
2972 means to match the given quantity of non-newlines (in these examples,
2973 3; and 5 or more, respectively). In all other case, where there is a
2974 C<\N{> and a matching C<}>, Perl assumes that a character name is desired.
2976 However, if there is no matching C<}>, Perl doesn't know if it was
2977 mistakenly omitted, or if C<[^\n]{> was desired, and raises this error.
2978 If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant the latter,
2979 escape the brace with a backslash, like so: C<\N\{>
2981 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2983 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2984 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2987 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2989 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2990 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2991 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2993 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2995 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2996 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2997 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2999 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
3002 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
3004 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
3005 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
3008 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
3009 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to
3012 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
3014 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
3015 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
3018 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
3020 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
3021 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
3023 =item Module name must be constant
3025 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
3027 =item Module name required with -%c option
3029 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
3030 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
3031 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
3033 =item More than one argument to '%s' open
3035 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
3036 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
3037 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
3038 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
3040 =item msg%s not implemented
3042 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
3044 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
3046 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
3047 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
3049 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
3051 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
3052 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
3053 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3055 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
3057 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
3060 =item "my %s" used in sort comparison
3062 (W syntax) The package variables $a and $b are used for sort comparisons.
3063 You used $a or $b in as an operand to the C<< <=> >> or C<cmp> operator inside a
3064 sort comparison block, and the variable had earlier been declared as a
3065 lexical variable. Either qualify the sort variable with the package
3066 name, or rename the lexical variable.
3068 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
3070 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
3071 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
3072 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
3074 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
3076 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
3077 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
3078 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
3079 provided for this purpose.
3081 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
3082 %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
3083 the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
3084 will not trigger this warning.
3086 =item Need exactly 3 octal digits in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3088 (F) Within S<C<(?[ ])>>, all constants interpreted as octal need to be
3089 exactly 3 digits long. This helps catch some ambiguities. If your
3090 constant is too short, add leading zeros, like
3092 (?[ [ \078 ] ]) # Syntax error!
3093 (?[ [ \0078 ] ]) # Works
3094 (?[ [ \007 8 ] ]) # Clearer
3096 The maximum number this construct can express is C<\777>. If you
3097 need a larger one, you need to use L<\o{}|perlrebackslash/Octal escapes> instead. If you meant
3098 two separate things, you need to separate them:
3100 (?[ [ \7776 ] ]) # Syntax error!
3101 (?[ [ \o{7776} ] ]) # One meaning
3102 (?[ [ \777 6 ] ]) # Another meaning
3103 (?[ [ \777 \006 ] ]) # Still another
3105 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
3107 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
3108 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3110 =item Negative length
3112 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
3113 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
3115 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
3117 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
3118 greater than or equal to zero.
3120 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3122 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses.
3123 So things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows
3124 whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
3126 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
3127 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
3129 =item %s never introduced
3131 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
3132 scope before it could possibly have been used.
3134 =item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
3136 (F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
3137 real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
3140 =item \N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...} in regex;
3141 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3143 (F) The new (5.12) meaning of C<\N> as C<[^\n]> is not valid in
3144 a bracketed character class, for the same reason that C<.> in
3145 a character class loses its specialness: it matches almost
3146 everything, which is probably not what you want.
3148 =item \N{NAME} must be resolved by the lexer in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3150 (F) When compiling a regex pattern, an unresolved named character or
3151 sequence was encountered. This can happen in any of several ways that
3152 bypass the lexer, such as using single-quotish context, or an extra
3153 backslash in double-quotish:
3155 $re = '\N{SPACE}'; # Wrong!
3156 $re = "\\N{SPACE}"; # Wrong!
3159 Instead, use double-quotes with a single backslash:
3161 $re = "\N{SPACE}"; # ok
3164 The lexer can be bypassed as well by creating the pattern from smaller
3168 /${re}{SPACE}/; # Wrong!
3170 It's not a good idea to split a construct in the middle like this, and
3171 it doesn't work here. Instead use the solution above.
3173 Finally, the message also can happen under the C</x> regex modifier when the
3174 C<\N> is separated by spaces from the C<{>, in which case, remove the spaces.
3176 /\N {SPACE}/x; # Wrong!
3179 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
3181 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
3182 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
3183 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
3184 securable. See L<perlsec>.
3186 =item No code specified for -%c
3188 (F) Perl's B<-e> and B<-E> command-line options require an argument. If
3189 you want to run an empty program, pass the empty string as a separate
3190 argument or run a program consisting of a single 0 or 1:
3196 =item No comma allowed after %s
3198 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is
3199 not allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
3200 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
3202 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported
3203 a constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
3204 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating
3205 system does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did
3206 use an explicit import list for the constants you expect to see;
3207 please see L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an
3208 explicit import list would probably have caught this error earlier
3209 it naturally does not remedy the fact that your operating system
3210 still does not support that constant. Maybe you have a typo in
3211 the constants of the symbol import list of B<use> or B<import> or in the
3212 constant name at the line where this error was triggered?
3214 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
3216 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3217 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
3218 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
3220 =item No DB::DB routine defined
3222 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3223 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3224 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
3227 =item No dbm on this machine
3229 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
3230 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
3232 =item No DB::sub routine defined
3234 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3235 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3236 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
3237 of each ordinary subroutine call.
3239 =item No directory specified for -I
3241 (F) The B<-I> command-line switch requires a directory name as part of the
3242 I<same> argument. Use B<-Ilib>, for instance. B<-I lib> won't work.
3244 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
3246 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3247 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
3248 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
3250 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
3252 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
3253 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3255 =item No input file after < on command line
3257 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3258 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
3259 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
3261 =item No next::method '%s' found for %s
3263 (F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
3264 in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
3265 it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
3266 or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
3268 =item Non-hex character in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3270 (F) In a regular expression, there was a non-hexadecimal character where
3271 a hex one was expected, like
3276 =item Non-octal character in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3278 (F) In a regular expression, there was a non-octal character where
3279 an octal one was expected, like
3283 =item Non-octal character '%c'. Resolved as "%s"
3285 (W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character was
3286 unexpectedly encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value
3289 =item "no" not allowed in expression
3291 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
3292 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
3294 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
3296 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
3297 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
3298 select. See L<perlfunc/select>.
3300 =item No output file after > on command line
3302 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3303 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
3304 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
3306 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
3308 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3309 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
3310 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
3312 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
3314 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
3315 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
3316 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
3318 =item No Perl script found in input
3320 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
3321 with #! and containing the word "perl".
3323 =item No setregid available
3325 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
3328 =item No setreuid available
3330 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
3333 =item No such class %s
3335 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state"
3336 declaration, but this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
3338 =item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
3340 (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed
3341 variable but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type.
3342 The indicated package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the
3345 =item No such hook: %s
3347 (F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl.
3348 Currently, Perl accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks.
3350 =item No such pipe open
3352 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
3353 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
3354 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
3356 =item No such signal: SIG%s
3358 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
3359 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
3360 names on your system.
3362 =item Not a CODE reference
3364 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3365 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3366 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3369 =item Not a GLOB reference
3371 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
3372 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
3373 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
3374 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3376 =item Not a HASH reference
3378 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
3379 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
3380 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3382 =item Not an ARRAY reference
3384 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
3385 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3386 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3388 =item Not an unblessed ARRAY reference
3390 (F) You passed a reference to a blessed array to C<push>, C<shift> or
3391 another array function. These only accept unblessed array references
3392 or arrays beginning explicitly with C<@>.
3394 =item Not a SCALAR reference
3396 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
3397 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3398 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3400 =item Not a subroutine reference
3402 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3403 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3404 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3407 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
3409 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
3410 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
3412 =item Not enough arguments for %s
3414 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
3416 =item Not enough format arguments
3418 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
3419 supplied. See L<perlform>.
3423 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3424 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3427 =item (?[...]) not valid in locale in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3429 (F) C<(?[...])> cannot be used within the scope of a C<S<use locale>> or with
3430 an C</l> regular expression modifier, as that would require deferring
3431 to run-time the calculation of what it should evaluate to, and it is
3432 regex compile-time only.
3434 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
3436 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
3437 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
3438 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
3439 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
3440 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
3442 =item Null filename used
3444 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
3445 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
3447 =item NULL OP IN RUN
3449 (S debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
3452 =item Null picture in formline
3454 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
3455 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
3456 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
3460 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
3462 =item NULL regexp argument
3464 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
3466 =item NULL regexp parameter
3468 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
3470 =item Number too long
3472 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
3473 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
3474 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
3475 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
3478 =item Number with no digits
3480 (F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like
3481 a number. This happens, for example with C<\o{}>, with no number between
3484 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
3486 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
3487 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
3488 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
3490 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
3492 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
3493 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
3495 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
3497 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3498 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3500 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
3502 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3503 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3505 =item Offset outside string
3507 (F)(W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
3508 with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
3509 imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
3510 take place when going past the end of the string when either
3511 C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
3512 for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
3515 =item %s() on unopened %s
3517 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
3518 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
3519 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
3521 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
3523 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
3524 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3528 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3532 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3534 =item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
3536 (D io, deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
3537 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
3538 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3541 =item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
3543 (D io, deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
3544 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
3545 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3548 =item Operand with no preceding operator in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3550 (F) You wrote something like
3552 (?[ \p{Digit} \p{Thai} ])
3554 There are two operands, but no operator giving how you want to combine
3557 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
3559 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
3560 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
3561 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
3562 the C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
3564 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for non-Unicode code point 0x%X
3566 (S utf8, non_unicode) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3567 semantics on a code point that is not in Unicode, so what it should do
3568 is not defined. Perl has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn you.
3570 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3571 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3573 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3574 C<no warnings 'non_unicode';>.
3576 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
3578 (S utf8, surrogate) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3579 semantics on a Unicode surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use of
3580 surrogates for anything but storing strings in UTF-16, but semantics
3581 are (reluctantly) defined for the surrogates, and they are to do
3582 nothing for this operation. Because the use of surrogates can be
3583 dangerous, Perl warns.
3585 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3586 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3588 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3589 C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
3591 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
3593 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
3594 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
3595 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
3596 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
3599 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
3601 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
3602 in the current lexical scope.
3604 =item Out of memory!
3606 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3607 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
3608 no option but to exit immediately.
3610 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
3611 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
3612 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
3613 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
3614 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
3616 =item Out of memory during %s extend
3618 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
3619 the largest possible memory allocation.
3621 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
3623 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3624 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
3625 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
3626 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
3628 =item Out of memory during request for %s
3630 (X)(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
3631 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
3634 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
3635 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
3636 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
3637 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
3638 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
3639 where the failed request happened.
3641 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
3643 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
3644 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
3645 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
3647 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
3649 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
3650 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
3653 =item '.' outside of string in pack
3655 (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
3656 position to before the start of the packed string being built.
3658 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
3660 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3661 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3663 =item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
3665 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3666 the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
3667 UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3669 =item overload arg '%s' is invalid
3671 (W overload) The L<overload> pragma was passed an argument it did not
3672 recognize. Did you mistype an operator?
3674 =item Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
3676 (F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was dereferenced,
3677 but the overloaded operation did not return a reference. See
3680 =item Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
3682 (F) An object with a C<qr> overload was used as part of a match, but the
3683 overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See L<overload>.
3685 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
3687 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
3688 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
3689 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
3690 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
3692 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
3694 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3695 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3699 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
3700 page. See L<perlform>.
3704 (P) An internal error.
3706 =item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
3708 (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
3709 an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
3710 platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
3711 enter this branch on this platform.
3713 =item panic: child pseudo-process was never scheduled
3715 (P) A child pseudo-process in the ithreads implementation on Windows
3716 was not scheduled within the time period allowed and therefore was not
3717 able to initialize properly.
3719 =item panic: ck_grep, type=%u
3721 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
3723 =item panic: ck_split, type=%u
3725 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
3727 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index %ld
3729 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
3730 there are in the savestack.
3732 =item panic: del_backref
3734 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
3739 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
3740 it wasn't an eval context.
3742 =item panic: do_subst
3744 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
3747 =item panic: do_trans_%s
3749 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
3752 =item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
3754 (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
3759 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
3761 =item panic: goto, type=%u, ix=%ld
3763 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
3764 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
3766 =item panic: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
3768 (P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries tried
3769 repeatedly, but each time something re-created entries in the glob.
3770 Most likely the glob contains an object with a reference back to
3771 the glob and a destructor that adds a new object to the glob.
3773 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD, %s
3775 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
3777 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT, %s
3779 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
3781 =item panic: kid popen errno read
3783 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
3785 =item panic: last, type=%u
3787 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
3788 it wasn't a block context.
3790 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
3792 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
3795 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency %u
3797 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
3798 invalid enum on the top of it.
3800 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
3802 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
3803 references to an object.
3805 =item panic: malloc, %s
3807 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
3809 =item panic: memory wrap
3811 (P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
3813 =item panic: pad_alloc, %p!=%p
3815 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3816 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3818 =item panic: pad_free curpad, %p!=%p
3820 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3821 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3823 =item panic: pad_free po
3825 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3827 =item panic: pad_reset curpad, %p!=%p
3829 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3830 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3832 =item panic: pad_sv po
3834 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3836 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad, %p!=%p
3838 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3839 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3841 =item panic: pad_swipe po
3843 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3845 =item panic: pp_iter, type=%u
3847 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
3849 =item panic: pp_match%s
3851 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
3854 =item panic: pp_split, pm=%p, s=%p
3856 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
3858 =item panic: realloc, %s
3860 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
3862 =item panic: reference miscount on nsv in sv_replace() (%d != 1)
3864 (P) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
3865 reference count other than 1.
3867 =item panic: restartop in %s
3869 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
3870 didn't supply the destination.
3872 =item panic: return, type=%u
3874 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
3875 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
3877 =item panic: scan_num, %s
3879 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
3881 =item panic: Sequence (?{...}): no code block found
3883 (P) while compiling a pattern that has embedded (?{}) or (??{}) code
3884 blocks, perl couldn't locate the code block that should have already been
3885 seen and compiled by perl before control passed to the regex compiler.
3887 =item panic: strxfrm() gets absurd - a => %u, ab => %u
3889 (P) The interpreter's sanity check of the C function strxfrm() failed.
3890 In your current locale the returned transformation of the string "ab"
3891 is shorter than that of the string "a", which makes no sense.
3893 =item panic: sv_chop %s
3895 (P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the
3896 scalar's string buffer.
3898 =item panic: sv_insert, midend=%p, bigend=%p
3900 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
3903 =item panic: top_env
3905 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
3907 =item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
3909 (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't
3910 permitted at run time.
3912 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
3914 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
3915 to even) byte length.
3917 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
3919 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an odd (as opposed
3920 to even) byte length.
3922 =item panic: yylex, %s
3924 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
3926 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
3928 (W parenthesis) You said something like
3934 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
3936 Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
3938 =item Parsing code internal error (%s)
3940 (F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API in
3943 =item Passing malformed UTF-8 to "%s" is deprecated
3945 (D deprecated, utf8) This message indicates a bug either in the Perl
3946 core or in XS code. Such code was trying to find out if a character,
3947 allegedly stored internally encoded as UTF-8, was of a given type, such
3948 as being punctuation or a digit. But the character was not encoded in
3949 legal UTF-8. The C<%s> is replaced by a string that can be used by
3950 knowledgeable people to determine what the type being checked against
3951 was. If C<utf8> warnings are enabled, a further message is raised,
3952 giving details of the malformation.
3954 =item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex;
3955 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3957 (F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
3958 consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before
3959 the nesting limit is exceeded.
3961 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
3964 =item C<-p> destination: %s
3966 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
3967 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
3968 redirected it with select().)
3970 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
3972 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3973 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
3974 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
3976 =item Perl folding rules are not up-to-date for 0x%X; please use the perlbug
3977 utility to report; in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3979 (D regexp, deprecated) You used a regular expression with
3980 case-insensitive matching, and there is a bug in Perl in which the
3981 built-in regular expression folding rules are not accurate. This
3982 may lead to incorrect results. Please report this as a bug using the
3983 L<perlbug> utility. (This message is marked deprecated, so that it by
3984 default will be turned-on.)
3986 =item Perl_my_%s() not available
3988 (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
3989 so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
3990 conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
3991 '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3993 =item Perl %s required (did you mean %s?)--this is only %s, stopped
3995 (F) The code you are trying to run has asked for a newer version of
3996 Perl than you are running. Perhaps C<use 5.10> was written instead
3997 of C<use 5.010> or C<use v5.10>. Without the leading C<v>, the number is
3998 interpreted as a decimal, with every three digits after the
3999 decimal point representing a part of the version number. So 5.10
4000 is equivalent to v5.100.
4002 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
4004 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
4005 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
4006 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
4008 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
4010 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
4011 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
4013 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
4015 (X) See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
4017 =item Perls since %s too modern--this is %s, stopped
4019 (F) The code you are trying to run claims it will not run
4020 on the version of Perl you are using because it is too new.
4021 Maybe the code needs to be updated, or maybe it is simply
4022 wrong and the version check should just be removed.
4024 =item perl: warning: Non hex character in '$ENV{PERL_HASH_SEED}', seed only partially set
4026 (S) PERL_HASH_SEED should match /^\s*(?:0x)?[0-9a-fA-F]+\s*\z/ but it
4027 contained a non hex character. This could mean you are not using the
4028 hash seed you think you are.
4030 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
4032 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
4034 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
4035 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
4038 are supported and installed on your system.
4039 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
4041 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
4042 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
4043 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
4044 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
4045 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
4046 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
4047 Perl can and will use, and the script will be run. Before you really
4048 fix the problem, however, you will get the same error message each
4049 time you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
4050 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
4052 =item perl: warning: strange setting in '$ENV{PERL_PERTURB_KEYS}': '%s'
4054 (S) Perl was run with the environment variable PERL_PERTURB_KEYS defined
4055 but containing an unexpected value. The legal values of this setting
4058 Numeric | String | Result
4059 --------+---------------+-----------------------------------------
4060 0 | NO | Disables key traversal randomization
4061 1 | RANDOM | Enables full key traversal randomization
4062 2 | DETERMINISTIC | Enables repeatable key traversal randomization
4064 Both numeric and string values are accepted, but note that string values are
4065 case sensitive. The default for this setting is "RANDOM" or 1.
4067 =item pid %x not a child
4069 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
4070 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
4071 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
4073 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
4075 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
4077 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4079 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
4080 shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
4081 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
4082 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
4083 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
4085 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
4087 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
4088 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
4090 =item POSIX syntax [%c %c] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by
4093 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
4094 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
4095 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
4096 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and
4097 will cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular
4098 expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4100 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by
4103 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
4104 with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
4105 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
4106 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[."
4107 and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
4108 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4110 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by
4113 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
4114 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
4115 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
4116 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
4117 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
4118 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4120 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
4122 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
4123 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
4124 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
4125 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
4127 You probably wrote something like this:
4134 when you should have written this:
4141 If you really want comments, build your list the
4142 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
4146 'b', # another comment
4149 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
4151 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
4152 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
4153 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
4156 You probably wrote something like this:
4160 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
4161 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
4165 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
4167 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
4168 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
4169 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
4170 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
4172 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
4174 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
4175 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
4177 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
4179 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
4180 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
4181 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
4182 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
4184 =item Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
4186 (W ambiguous) You said something like C<m/$\/> in a regex.
4187 The regex C<m/foo$\s+bar/m> translates to: match the word 'foo', the output
4188 record separator (see L<perlvar/$\>) and the letter 's' (one time or more)
4189 followed by the word 'bar'.
4191 If this is what you intended then you can silence the warning by using
4192 C<m/${\}/> (for example: C<m/foo${\}s+bar/>).
4194 If instead you intended to match the word 'foo' at the end of the line
4195 followed by whitespace and the word 'bar' on the next line then you can use
4196 C<m/$(?)\/> (for example: C<m/foo$(?)\s+bar/>).
4198 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
4200 (W ambiguous) You said something like '@foo' in a double-quoted string
4201 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
4202 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
4203 to the array you apparently lost track of.
4205 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
4207 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
4211 is now misinterpreted as
4215 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
4216 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
4217 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
4220 =item Premature end of script headers
4224 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
4226 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4227 before now. Check your control flow.
4229 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
4231 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
4232 before now. Check your control flow.
4234 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
4236 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
4237 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
4238 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
4239 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
4242 =item Property '%s' is unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4244 (F) The named property which you specified via C<\p> or C<\P> is not one
4245 known to Perl. Perhaps you misspelled the name? See
4246 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
4247 for a complete list of available official
4248 properties. If it is a L<user-defined property|perlunicode/User-Defined Character Properties>
4249 it must have been defined by the time the regular expression is
4252 =item Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
4254 (W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is
4255 useless, since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments.
4257 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
4259 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
4260 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
4262 =item Prototype not terminated
4264 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
4267 =item \p{} uses Unicode rules, not locale rules
4269 (W) You compiled a regular expression that contained a Unicode property
4270 match (C<\p> or C<\P>), but the regular expression is also being told to
4271 use the run-time locale, not Unicode. Instead, use a POSIX character
4272 class, which should know about the locale's rules.
4273 (See L<perlrecharclass/POSIX Character Classes>.)
4275 Even if the run-time locale is ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), which is a subset of
4276 Unicode, some properties will give results that are not valid for that
4279 Here are a couple of examples to help you see what's going on. If the
4280 locale is ISO 8859-7, the character at code point 0xD7 is the "GREEK
4281 CAPITAL LETTER CHI". But in Unicode that code point means the
4282 "MULTIPLICATION SIGN" instead, and C<\p> always uses the Unicode
4283 meaning. That means that C<\p{Alpha}> won't match, but C<[[:alpha:]]>
4284 should. Only in the Latin1 locale are all the characters in the same
4285 positions as they are in Unicode. But, even here, some properties give
4286 incorrect results. An example is C<\p{Changes_When_Uppercased}> which
4287 is true for "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS", but since the upper
4288 case of that character is not in Latin1, in that locale it doesn't
4289 change when upper cased.
4291 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4293 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if
4294 you meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular
4295 expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4297 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4299 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of
4300 the {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular
4301 expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4303 =item Quantifier {n,m} with n > m can't match in regex
4305 =item Quantifier {n,m} with n > m can't match in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4307 (W regexp) Minima should be less than or equal to maxima. If you really
4308 want your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}.
4310 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression in regex; marked by <--
4313 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
4314 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
4315 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
4316 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
4317 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
4319 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4322 =item Range iterator outside integer range
4324 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
4325 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
4326 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
4327 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
4329 =item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4331 (W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
4332 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4334 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
4336 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
4337 before now. Check your control flow.
4339 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
4341 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4343 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
4345 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4347 =item Reallocation too large: %x
4349 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
4351 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
4353 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
4356 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
4358 (S debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
4359 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
4360 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
4362 =item Recursive call to Perl_load_module in PerlIO_find_layer
4364 (P) It is currently not permitted to load modules when creating
4365 a filehandle inside an %INC hook. This can happen with C<open my
4366 $fh, '<', \$scalar>, which implicitly loads PerlIO::scalar. Try
4367 loading PerlIO::scalar explicitly first.
4369 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
4371 (F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, Perl
4372 believes it found an infinite loop in the C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a
4373 crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth.
4375 =item refcnt_dec: fd %d%s
4377 =item refcnt: fd %d%s
4379 =item refcnt_inc: fd %d%s
4381 (P) Perl's I/O implementation failed an internal consistency check. If
4382 you see this message, something is very wrong.
4384 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
4386 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
4387 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
4388 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
4389 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
4391 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
4392 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
4393 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
4394 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
4396 =item Reference is already weak
4398 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
4399 Doing so has no effect.
4401 =item Reference to invalid group 0 in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4403 (F) You used C<\g0> or similar in a regular expression. You may refer
4404 to capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers
4405 (normal backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
4406 backreferences). Using 0 does not make sense.
4408 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4410 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
4411 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If
4412 you wanted to have the character with ordinal 7 inserted into the regular
4413 expression, prepend zeroes to make it three digits long: C<\007>
4415 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4418 =item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4420 (F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k<NAME> >> in your regular
4421 expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses
4422 such as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<< (?<NAME>...) >>. Check if the name has been
4423 spelled correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
4425 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4428 =item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by <-- HERE
4431 (F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there
4432 are not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the
4433 expression before where the C<\g{-7}> was located.
4435 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4438 =item regexp memory corruption
4440 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
4441 expression compiler gave it.
4443 =item Regexp modifier "/%c" may appear a maximum of twice
4445 =item Regexp modifier "/%c" may not appear twice
4447 (F syntax, regexp) The regular expression pattern had too many occurrences
4448 of the specified modifier. Remove the extraneous ones.
4450 =item Regexp modifier "%c" may not appear after the "-" in regex; marked by <--
4453 (F) Turning off the given modifier has the side effect of turning on
4454 another one. Perl currently doesn't allow this. Reword the regular
4455 expression to use the modifier you want to turn on (and place it before
4456 the minus), instead of the one you want to turn off.
4458 =item Regexp modifiers "/%c" and "/%c" are mutually exclusive
4460 (F syntax, regexp) The regular expression pattern had more than one of these
4461 mutually exclusive modifiers. Retain only the modifier that is
4462 supposed to be there.
4464 =item Regexp out of space in regex m/%s/
4466 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
4469 =item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompatible)
4471 (F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
4472 numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
4473 terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
4475 =item Replacement list is longer than search list
4477 (W misc) You have used a replacement list that is longer than the
4478 search list. So the additional elements in the replacement list
4481 =item '%s' resolved to '\o{%s}%d'
4483 (W misc, regexp) You wrote something like C<\08>, or C<\179> in a
4484 double-quotish string. All but the last digit is treated as a single
4485 character, specified in octal. The last digit is the next character in
4486 the string. To tell Perl that this is indeed what you want, you can use
4487 the C<\o{ }> syntax, or use exactly three digits to specify the octal
4490 =item Reversed %s= operator
4492 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
4493 always come last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
4495 =item rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4497 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either closed or not
4498 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4500 =item Scalars leaked: %d
4502 (S internal) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping
4503 of scalars: not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time
4504 Perl exited. What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which
4505 is of course bad, especially if the Perl program is intended to be
4508 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
4510 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
4511 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
4512 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
4513 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4514 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4515 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4516 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4518 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
4519 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
4520 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4523 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
4525 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
4526 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
4527 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
4528 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4529 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4530 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4531 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4533 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
4534 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
4535 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4538 =item Search pattern not terminated
4540 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
4541 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4542 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
4544 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
4545 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
4546 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
4547 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
4549 =item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
4551 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
4554 The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
4555 C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
4556 parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
4557 the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
4559 =item seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4561 (W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed or not
4562 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4564 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
4566 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
4567 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
4569 =item select not implemented
4571 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
4573 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
4575 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
4576 the current implementation.
4578 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
4580 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
4581 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
4583 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
4585 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
4586 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
4588 =item sem%s not implemented
4590 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
4592 =item send() on closed socket %s
4594 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
4595 before now. Check your control flow.
4597 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4599 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The
4600 <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4601 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4603 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4605 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
4606 but has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the
4607 regular expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4609 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4611 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
4612 <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4613 discovered. This happens when using the C<(?^...)> construct to tell
4614 Perl to use the default regular expression modifiers, and you
4615 redundantly specify a default modifier. For other
4616 causes, see L<perlre>.
4618 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex m/%s/
4620 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
4621 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See
4624 =item Sequence \%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4626 (F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument following the escape
4627 sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly written.
4629 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated with ')'
4631 (F) The end of the perl code contained within the {...} must be
4632 followed immediately by a ')'.
4634 =item Server error (a.k.a. "500 Server error")
4636 (A) This is the error message generally seen in a browser window
4637 when trying to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The
4638 actual error text varies widely from server to server. The most
4639 frequently-seen variants are "500 Server error", "Method (something)
4640 not permitted", "Document contains no data", "Premature end of script
4641 headers", and "Did not produce a valid header".
4643 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
4645 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by
4646 the user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the
4647 user account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment
4648 variables (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't
4649 in a location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or
4650 less. Please see the following for more information:
4652 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
4653 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
4654 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
4656 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
4658 =item setegid() not implemented
4660 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
4661 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4664 =item seteuid() not implemented
4666 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
4667 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4670 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
4672 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
4673 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
4676 =item setrgid() not implemented
4678 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
4679 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4682 =item setruid() not implemented
4684 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
4685 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4688 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
4690 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
4691 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
4692 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
4694 =item shm%s not implemented
4696 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
4698 =item !=~ should be !~
4700 (W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
4701 interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
4702 operators: probably not what you intended.
4704 =item <> should be quotes
4706 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
4709 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
4711 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
4712 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
4713 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
4714 probably not what you had in mind.
4716 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
4718 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
4721 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
4723 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
4724 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
4726 =item Slab leaked from cv %p
4728 (S) If you see this message, then something is seriously wrong with the
4729 internal bookkeeping of op trees. An op tree needed to be freed after
4730 a compilation error, but could not be found, so it was leaked instead.
4732 =item sleep(%u) too large
4734 (W overflow) You called C<sleep> with a number that was larger than
4735 it can reliably handle and C<sleep> probably slept for less time than
4738 =item Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks encapsulation
4740 (F) You should not use the C<~~> operator on an object that does not
4741 overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's underlying structure
4742 for the smart match.
4744 =item Smartmatch is experimental
4746 (S experimental::smartmatch) This warning is emitted if you
4747 use the smartmatch (C<~~>) operator. This is currently an experimental
4748 feature, and its details are subject to change in future releases of
4749 Perl. Particularly, its current behavior is noticed for being
4750 unnecessarily complex and unintuitive, and is very likely to be
4753 =item sort is now a reserved word
4755 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
4756 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
4758 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
4760 (F) A sort comparison subroutine written in XS must return exactly one
4761 item. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4763 =item Source filters apply only to byte streams
4765 (F) You tried to activate a source filter (usually by loading a
4766 source filter module) within a string passed to C<eval>. This is
4767 not permitted under the C<unicode_eval> feature. Consider using
4768 C<evalbytes> instead. See L<feature>.
4770 =item splice() offset past end of array
4772 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
4773 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the
4774 end of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want,
4775 try explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset.
4776 See L<perlfunc/splice>.
4780 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
4781 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
4782 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
4784 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
4786 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
4787 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
4788 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
4789 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
4792 =item "state %s" used in sort comparison
4794 (W syntax) The package variables $a and $b are used for sort comparisons.
4795 You used $a or $b in as an operand to the C<< <=> >> or C<cmp> operator inside a
4796 sort comparison block, and the variable had earlier been declared as a
4797 lexical variable. Either qualify the sort variable with the package
4798 name, or rename the lexical variable.
4800 =item "state" variable %s can't be in a package
4802 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
4803 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
4804 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
4806 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
4808 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
4809 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4811 =item Strings with code points over 0xFF may not be mapped into in-memory file handles
4813 (W utf8) You tried to open a reference to a scalar for read or append
4814 where the scalar contained code points over 0xFF. In-memory files
4815 model on-disk files and can only contain bytes.
4817 =item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
4819 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
4820 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
4821 C<can> may break this.
4823 =item Subroutine "&%s" is not available
4825 (W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is
4826 attempting to capture an outer lexical subroutine that is not currently
4827 available. This can happen for one of two reasons. First, the lexical
4828 subroutine may be declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that has not
4829 yet been created. (Remember that named subs are created at compile time,
4830 while anonymous subs are created at run-time.) For example,
4832 sub { my sub a {...} sub f { \&a } }
4834 At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current the "a" sub,
4835 since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely, the
4836 following won't give a warning since the anonymous subroutine has by now
4837 been created and is live:
4839 sub { my sub a {...} eval 'sub f { \&a }' }->();
4841 The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a variable that has
4842 gone out of scope, for example,
4850 Here, when the '\&a' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not currently
4851 being executed, so its &a is not available for capture.
4853 =item "%s" subroutine &%s masks earlier declaration in same %s
4855 (W misc) A "my" or "state" subroutine has been redeclared in the
4856 current scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to
4857 the previous instance. This is almost always a typographical error.
4858 Note that the earlier subroutine will still exist until the end of
4859 the scope or until all closure references to it are destroyed.
4861 =item Subroutine %s redefined
4863 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
4866 no warnings 'redefine';
4867 eval "sub name { ... }";
4870 =item Substitution loop
4872 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
4873 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
4874 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
4875 L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
4877 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
4879 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4880 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4881 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4883 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
4885 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4886 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4887 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4889 =item substr outside of string
4891 (W substr)(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
4892 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
4893 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
4894 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
4895 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
4897 =item sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
4899 (P) Perl tried to force the upgrade of an SV to a type which was actually
4900 inferior to its current type.
4902 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by
4905 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most
4906 two branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or
4907 both to contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose
4908 it in clustering parentheses:
4910 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
4912 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem
4913 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4915 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4917 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is
4918 a number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in
4919 the regular expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4921 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
4923 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
4924 and effective uids or gids.
4928 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
4932 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
4934 A keyword is misspelled.
4935 A semicolon is missing.
4937 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
4938 An opening or closing brace is missing.
4939 A closing quote is missing.
4941 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
4942 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
4943 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
4944 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
4945 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
4946 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
4947 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
4948 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
4949 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
4951 =item syntax error at line %d: '%s' unexpected
4953 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
4954 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
4957 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
4959 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
4960 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
4961 or "my $var" or "our $var".
4963 =item Syntax error in (?[...]) in regex m/%s/
4965 (F) Perl could not figure out what you meant inside this construct; this
4966 notifies you that it is giving up trying.
4968 =item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
4970 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4972 =item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
4974 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4976 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
4978 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
4979 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
4980 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
4981 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
4983 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
4985 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4986 before now. Check your control flow.
4988 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
4990 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
4991 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
4993 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
4995 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
4996 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
4998 =item telldir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
5000 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to telldir() is either closed or not really
5001 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
5003 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
5005 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
5006 was either never opened or has since been closed.
5008 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
5010 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
5011 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
5020 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
5021 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[> and L<arybase>.
5023 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia.
5025 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
5026 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
5027 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
5028 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
5031 =item The %s feature is experimental
5033 (S experimental) This warning is emitted if you enable an experimental
5034 feature via C<use feature>. Simply suppress the warning if you want
5035 to use the feature, but know that in doing so you are taking the risk
5036 of using an experimental feature which may change or be removed in a
5037 future Perl version:
5039 no warnings "experimental::lexical_subs";
5040 use feature "lexical_subs";
5042 =item The %s function is unimplemented
5044 (F) The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture,
5045 according to the probings of Configure.
5047 =item The lexical_subs feature is experimental
5049 (S experimental::lexical_subs) This warning is emitted if you
5050 declare a sub with C<my> or C<state>. Simply suppress the warning
5051 if you want to use the feature, but know that in doing so you
5052 are taking the risk of using an experimental feature which may
5053 change or be removed in a future Perl version:
5055 no warnings "experimental::lexical_subs";
5056 use feature "lexical_subs";
5059 =item The regex_sets feature is experimental
5061 (S experimental::regex_sets) This warning is emitted if you
5062 use the syntax S<C<(?[ ])>> in a regular expression.
5063 The details of this feature are subject to change.
5064 if you want to use it, but know that in doing so you
5065 are taking the risk of using an experimental feature which may
5066 change in a future Perl version, you can do this to silence the
5069 no warnings "experimental::regex_sets";
5071 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
5073 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
5074 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
5075 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
5078 =item The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
5080 (F) This attribute was never supported on C<my> or C<sub> declarations.
5082 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
5084 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
5086 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
5087 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
5088 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
5089 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
5090 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
5091 target of the change to
5092 %ENV which produced the warning.
5094 =item This Perl has not been built with support for randomized hash key traversal but something called Perl_hv_rand_set().
5096 (F) Something has attempted to use an internal API call which
5097 depends on Perl being compiled with the default support for randomized hash
5098 key traversal, but this Perl has been compiled without it. You should
5099 report this warning to the relevant upstream party, or recompile perl
5100 with default options.
5102 =item thread failed to start: %s
5104 (W threads)(S) The entry point function of threads->create() failed for some reason.
5106 =item times not implemented
5108 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
5109 suspect you're not running on Unix.
5111 =item "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
5113 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains
5114 the B<-T> option (or the B<-t> option), but Perl was not invoked with
5115 B<-T> in its command line. This is an error because, by the time
5116 Perl discovers a B<-T> in a script, it's too late to properly taint
5117 everything from the environment. So Perl gives up.
5119 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
5120 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be
5121 fixed by editing the #! line so that the B<-%c> option is a part of
5122 Perl's first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -%c> to C<perl -%c -n>.
5124 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
5125 B<-%c> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -%c scriptname>.
5127 =item To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
5129 (F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
5130 uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
5131 specified an illegal mapping.
5132 See L<perlunicode/"User-Defined Character Properties">.
5134 =item Too deeply nested ()-groups
5136 (F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level.
5138 =item Too few args to syscall
5140 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
5141 system call to call, silly dilly.
5143 =item Too late for "-%s" option
5145 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
5146 B<-M>, B<-m> or B<-C> option.
5148 In the case of B<-M> and B<-m>, this is an error because those options
5149 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
5151 The B<-C> option only works if it is specified on the command line as
5152 well (with the same sequence of letters or numbers following). Either
5153 specify this option on the command line, or, if your system supports
5154 it, make your script executable and run it directly instead of passing
5157 =item Too late to run %s block
5159 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
5160 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
5161 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
5162 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
5165 =item Too many args to syscall
5167 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
5169 =item Too many arguments for %s
5171 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
5175 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
5176 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
5180 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
5181 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
5183 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
5185 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
5186 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
5188 =item Trailing white-space in a charnames alias definition is deprecated
5190 (D deprecated) You defined a character name which ended in a space
5191 character. Remove the trailing space(s). Usually these names are
5192 defined in the C<:alias> import argument to C<use charnames>, but they
5193 could be defined by a translator installed into C<$^H{charnames}>.
5194 See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
5196 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
5198 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
5199 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
5200 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
5202 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
5204 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][],
5205 y/// or y[][] construct.
5207 =item '%s' trapped by operation mask
5209 (F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's
5210 disallowed. See L<Safe>.
5212 =item truncate not implemented
5214 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
5215 Configure knows about.
5217 =item Type of arg %d to &CORE::%s must be %s
5219 (F) The subroutine in question in the CORE package requires its argument
5220 to be a hard reference to data of the specified type. Overloading is
5221 ignored, so a reference to an object that is not the specified type, but
5222 nonetheless has overloading to handle it, will still not be accepted.
5224 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
5226 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
5227 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
5228 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
5229 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
5231 =item Type of argument to %s must be unblessed hashref or arrayref
5233 (F) You called C<keys>, C<values> or C<each> with a scalar argument that
5234 was not a reference to an unblessed hash or array.
5236 =item umask not implemented
5238 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
5239 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
5241 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
5243 (S internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
5244 many execution contexts were entered and left.
5246 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
5248 (S internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
5249 many values were temporarily localized.
5251 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
5253 (S internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
5254 many blocks were entered and left.
5256 =item Unbalanced string table refcount: (%d) for "%s"
5258 (S internal) On exit, Perl found some strings remaining in the shared
5259 string table used for copy on write and for hash keys. The entries
5260 should have been freed, so this indicates a bug somewhere.
5262 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
5264 (S internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
5265 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
5267 =item Undefined format "%s" called
5269 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
5270 another package? See L<perlform>.
5272 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
5274 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
5275 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
5277 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
5279 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
5280 since been undefined.
5282 =item Undefined subroutine called
5284 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
5285 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
5287 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
5289 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
5290 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
5292 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
5294 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
5295 another package? See L<perlform>.
5297 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
5299 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
5300 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
5303 =item %s: Undefined variable
5305 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
5306 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
5308 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
5310 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
5311 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
5313 =item Unexpected binary operator '%c' with no preceding operand in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5315 (F) You had something like this:
5319 where the C<"|"> is a binary operator with an operand on the right, but
5320 no operand on the left.
5322 =item Unexpected character in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5324 (F) You had something like this:
5328 Within C<(?[ ])>, no literal characters are allowed unless they are
5329 within an inner pair of square brackets, like
5333 Another possibility is that you forgot a backslash. Perl isn't smart
5334 enough to figure out what you really meant.
5336 =item Unexpected constant lvalue entersub entry via type/targ %d:%d
5338 (P) When compiling a subroutine call in lvalue context, Perl failed an
5339 internal consistency check. It encountered a malformed op tree.
5341 =item Unexpected ')' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5343 (F) You had something like this:
5345 (?[ ( \p{Digit} + ) ])
5347 The C<")"> is out-of-place. Something apparently was supposed to
5348 be combined with the digits, or the C<"+"> shouldn't be there, or
5349 something like that. Perl can't figure out what was intended.
5351 =item Unexpected '(' with no preceding operator in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5353 (F) You had something like this:
5355 (?[ \p{Digit} ( \p{Lao} + \p{Thai} ) ])
5357 There should be an operator before the C<"(">, as there's
5358 no indication as to how the digits are to be combined
5359 with the characters in the Lao and Thai scripts.
5361 =item Unicode non-character U+%X is illegal for open interchange
5363 (S utf8, nonchar) Certain codepoints, such as U+FFFE and U+FFFF, are
5364 defined by the Unicode standard to be non-characters. Those are
5365 legal codepoints, but are reserved for internal use; so, applications
5366 shouldn't attempt to exchange them. If you know what you are doing
5367 you can turn off this warning by C<no warnings 'nonchar';>.
5369 =item Unicode surrogate U+%X is illegal in UTF-8
5371 (S utf8, surrogate) You had a UTF-16 surrogate in a context where they are
5372 not considered acceptable. These code points, between U+D800 and
5373 U+DFFF (inclusive), are used by Unicode only for UTF-16. However, Perl
5374 internally allows all unsigned integer code points (up to the size limit
5375 available on your platform), including surrogates. But these can cause
5376 problems when being input or output, which is likely where this message
5377 came from. If you really really know what you are doing you can turn
5378 off this warning by C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
5380 =item Unknown charname '%s'
5382 (F) The name you used inside C<\N{}> is unknown to Perl. Check the
5383 spelling. You can say C<use charnames ":loose"> to not have to be
5384 so precise about spaces, hyphens, and capitalization on standard Unicode
5385 names. (Any custom aliases that have been created must be specified
5386 exactly, regardless of whether C<:loose> is used or not.) This error may
5387 also happen if the C<\N{}> is not in the scope of the corresponding
5388 C<S<use charnames>>.
5392 (P) Perl was about to print an error message in C<$@>, but the C<$@> variable
5393 did not exist, even after an attempt to create it.
5395 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
5397 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
5398 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
5399 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->, C<< <& >>, C<< >& >>.
5401 =item Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
5403 (W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
5404 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
5405 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
5406 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
5407 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
5408 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
5410 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
5412 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
5413 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
5414 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
5415 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
5417 =item Unknown regex modifier "%s"
5419 (F) Alphanumerics immediately following the closing delimiter
5420 of a regular expression pattern are interpreted by Perl as modifier
5421 flags for the regex. One of the ones you specified is invalid. One way
5422 this can happen is if you didn't put in white space between the end of
5423 the regex and a following alphanumeric operator:
5425 if ($a =~ /foo/and $bar == 3) { ... }
5427 The C<"a"> is a valid modifier flag, but the C<"n"> is not, and raises
5428 this error. Likely what was meant instead was:
5430 if ($a =~ /foo/ and $bar == 3) { ... }
5432 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
5434 (W) You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
5436 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5438 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
5439 is not known. The condition must be one of the following:
5441 (1) (2) ... true if 1st, 2nd, etc., capture matched
5442 (<NAME>) ('NAME') true if named capture matched
5443 (?=...) (?<=...) true if subpattern matches
5444 (?!...) (?<!...) true if subpattern fails to match
5445 (?{ CODE }) true if code returns a true value
5446 (R) true if evaluating inside recursion
5447 (R1) (R2) ... true if directly inside capture group 1, 2, etc.
5448 (R&NAME) true if directly inside named capture
5449 (DEFINE) always false; for defining named subpatterns
5451 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
5452 discovered. See L<perlre>.
5454 =item Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
5456 (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
5457 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
5459 =item Unknown Unicode option value %x
5461 (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
5462 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
5464 =item Unknown verb pattern '%s' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5466 (F) You either made a typo or have incorrectly put a C<*> quantifier
5467 after an open brace in your pattern. Check the pattern and review
5468 L<perlre> for details on legal verb patterns.
5470 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
5472 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
5473 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
5475 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a
5476 module (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have loaded this
5479 =item Unmatched '[' in POSIX class in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5481 (F) You had something like this:
5485 That should be written:
5489 =item Unmatched '%c' in POSIX class in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5491 (F) You had something like this:
5495 There should be a second C<":">, like this:
5499 =item Unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5501 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
5502 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
5503 first. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
5504 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
5506 =item Unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5508 =item Unmatched ) in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5510 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
5511 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
5512 the matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the
5513 regular expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
5515 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
5517 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
5518 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
5519 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
5520 you were last editing.
5522 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
5524 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
5525 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
5526 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
5529 =item Unrecognized character %s; marked by <-- HERE after %s near column %d
5531 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
5532 in your Perl script (or eval) near the specified column. Perhaps you tried
5533 to run a compressed script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
5535 =item Unrecognized escape \%c in character class in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5537 (F) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
5538 recognized by Perl inside character classes. This is a fatal
5539 error when the character class is used within C<(?[ ])>.
5541 =item Unrecognized escape \%c in character class passed through in regex;
5542 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5544 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
5545 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
5546 understood literally, but this may change in a future version of Perl.
5547 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
5548 escape was discovered.
5550 =item Unrecognized escape \%c passed through
5552 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
5553 recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally, but this may
5554 change in a future version of Perl.
5556 =item Unrecognized escape \%s passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5558 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
5559 recognized by Perl. The character(s) were understood literally, but
5560 this may change in a future version of Perl. The <-- HERE shows
5561 whereabouts in the regular expression the escape was discovered.
5563 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
5565 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
5566 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
5569 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
5571 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
5572 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
5573 bad switch on your behalf.)
5575 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
5577 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
5578 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
5579 PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
5581 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
5583 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
5585 =item Unsupported function %s
5587 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
5588 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
5590 =item Unsupported function fork
5592 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
5594 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
5595 of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
5596 changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
5598 =item Unsupported script encoding %s
5600 (F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
5601 declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot read.
5603 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
5605 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
5606 least that's what Configure thought.
5608 =item Unterminated attribute list
5610 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
5611 start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
5612 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
5613 attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
5615 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
5617 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
5618 an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
5619 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
5620 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
5622 =item Unterminated compressed integer
5624 (F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
5625 compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
5626 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5628 =item Unterminated delimiter for here document
5630 (F) This message occurs when a here document label has an initial
5631 quotation mark but the final quotation mark is missing. Perhaps
5640 =item Unterminated \g... pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5642 =item Unterminated \g{...} pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5644 (F) In a regular expression, you had a C<\g> that wasn't followed by a
5645 proper group reference. In the case of C<\g{>, the closing brace is
5646 missing; otherwise the C<\g> must be followed by an integer. Fix the
5649 =item Unterminated <> operator
5651 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
5652 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
5653 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
5654 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
5656 =item Unterminated verb pattern argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5658 (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB:ARG)> but did not terminate
5659 the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
5661 =item Unterminated verb pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5663 (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB)> but did not terminate
5664 the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
5666 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
5668 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
5669 still valid when C<untie> was called.
5671 =item Usage: POSIX::%s(%s)
5673 (F) You called a POSIX function with incorrect arguments.
5674 See L<POSIX/FUNCTIONS> for more information.
5676 =item Usage: Win32::%s(%s)
5678 (F) You called a Win32 function with incorrect arguments.
5679 See L<Win32> for more information.
5681 =item $[ used in %s (did you mean $] ?)
5683 (W syntax) You used C<$[> in a comparison, such as:
5689 You probably meant to use C<$]> instead. C<$[> is the base for indexing
5690 arrays. C<$]> is the Perl version number in decimal.
5692 =item Useless assignment to a temporary
5694 (W misc) You assigned to an lvalue subroutine, but what
5695 the subroutine returned was a temporary scalar about to
5696 be discarded, so the assignment had no effect.
5698 =item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
5701 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
5702 meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
5704 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
5708 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
5710 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
5711 discovered. See L<perlre>.
5713 =item Useless localization of %s
5715 (W syntax) The localization of lvalues such as C<local($x=10)> is legal,
5716 but in fact the local() currently has no effect. This may change at
5717 some point in the future, but in the meantime such code is discouraged.
5719 =item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5721 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
5722 meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
5724 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
5728 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
5730 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
5731 discovered. See L<perlre>.
5733 =item Useless use of /d modifier in transliteration operator
5735 (W misc) You have used the /d modifier where the searchlist has the
5736 same length as the replacelist. See L<perlop> for more information
5737 about the /d modifier.
5739 =item Useless use of '\'; doesn't escape metacharacter '%c'
5741 (D deprecated) You wrote a regular expression pattern something like
5747 s[foo\[a-z\]bar][baz]
5749 The interior braces, square brackets, and parentheses are treated as
5750 metacharacters even though they are backslashed; instead write:
5757 The backslashes have no effect when a regular expression pattern is
5758 delimited by C<{}>, C<[]>, or C<()>, which ordinarily are
5759 metacharacters, and the delimiters are also used, paired, within the
5760 interior of the pattern. It is planned that a future Perl release will
5761 change the meaning of constructs like these so that the backslashes
5762 will have an effect, so remove them from your code.
5764 =item Useless use of \E
5766 (W misc) You have a \E in a double-quotish string without a C<\U>,
5767 C<\L> or C<\Q> preceding it.
5769 =item Useless use of %s in void context
5771 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
5772 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
5773 value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
5774 often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
5775 to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
5776 get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
5781 when you meant to say
5783 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
5785 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
5786 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
5791 when you should have said
5795 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
5796 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
5797 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
5798 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
5799 L<perlref> for more on this.
5801 This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
5802 since they are often used in statements like
5804 1 while sub_with_side_effects();
5806 String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
5809 =item Useless use of (?-p) in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5811 (W regexp) The C<p> modifier cannot be turned off once set. Trying to do
5814 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
5816 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
5818 =item Useless use of sort in scalar context
5820 (W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
5824 This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
5826 =item Useless use of %s with no values
5828 (W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
5829 apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
5830 usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
5831 possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
5832 if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
5833 you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
5835 =item "use" not allowed in expression
5837 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
5838 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
5840 =item Use of assignment to $[ is deprecated
5842 (D deprecated) The C<$[> variable (index of the first element in an array)
5843 is deprecated. See L<perlvar/"$[">.
5845 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
5847 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted
5848 form if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
5850 =item Use of comma-less variable list is deprecated
5852 (D deprecated) The values you give to a format should be
5853 separated by commas, not just aligned on a line.
5855 =item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
5857 (D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
5858 $ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
5859 behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
5862 Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
5863 blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
5865 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
5867 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution. The /c
5868 modifier is not presently meaningful in substitutions.
5870 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
5872 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't
5873 use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is
5874 used. (This may change in the future.)
5876 =item Use of each() on hash after insertion without resetting hash iterator results in undefined behavior
5878 (S internal) The behavior of C<each()> after insertion is undefined; it may
5879 skip items, or visit items more than once. Consider using C<keys()> instead
5882 =item Use of := for an empty attribute list is not allowed
5884 (F) The construction C<my $x := 42> used to parse as equivalent to
5885 C<my $x : = 42> (applying an empty attribute list to C<$x>).
5886 This construct was deprecated in 5.12.0, and has now been made a syntax
5887 error, so C<:=> can be reclaimed as a new operator in the future.
5889 If you need an empty attribute list, for example in a code generator, add
5890 a space before the C<=>.
5892 =item Use of freed value in iteration
5894 (F) Perhaps you modified the iterated array within the loop?
5895 This error is typically caused by code like the following:
5898 @a = () for (1,2,@a);
5900 You are not supposed to modify arrays while they are being iterated over.
5901 For speed and efficiency reasons, Perl internally does not do full
5902 reference-counting of iterated items, hence deleting such an item in the
5903 middle of an iteration causes Perl to see a freed value.
5905 =item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
5907 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
5908 to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
5910 =item Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
5912 (W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a C<split>
5913 operator. Since C<split> always tries to match the pattern
5914 repeatedly, the C</g> has no effect.
5916 =item Use of "goto" to jump into a construct is deprecated
5918 (D deprecated) Using C<goto> to jump from an outer scope into an inner
5919 scope is deprecated and should be avoided.
5921 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
5923 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD>
5924 subroutines are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy)
5925 even when the subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain
5926 functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or
5927 C<< $obj->bar() >>).
5929 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
5930 methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
5931 code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
5932 currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
5935 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
5936 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
5937 to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
5938 named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
5941 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
5942 you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
5943 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
5945 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
5947 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
5948 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
5950 =item Use of %s is deprecated
5952 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
5953 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
5954 old way has bad side effects.
5956 =item Use of -l on filehandle %s
5958 (W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
5959 it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
5960 The operation returned C<undef>. Use a filename instead.
5962 =item Use of my $_ is experimental
5964 (S experimental::lexical_topic) Lexical $_ is an experimental feature and
5965 its behavior may change or even be removed in any future release of perl.
5966 See the explanation under L<perlvar/$_>.
5968 =item Use of %s on a handle without * is deprecated
5970 (D deprecated) You used C<tie>, C<tied> or C<untie> on a scalar but that scalar
5971 happens to hold a typeglob, which means its filehandle will be tied. If
5972 you mean to tie a handle, use an explicit * as in C<tie *$handle>.
5974 This was a long-standing bug that was removed in Perl 5.16, as there was
5975 no way to tie the scalar itself when it held a typeglob, and no way to
5976 untie a scalar that had had a typeglob assigned to it. If you see this
5977 message, you must be using an older version.
5979 =item Use of ?PATTERN? without explicit operator is deprecated
5981 (D deprecated) You have written something like C<?\w?>, for a regular
5982 expression that matches only once. Starting this term directly with
5983 the question mark delimiter is now deprecated, so that the question mark
5984 will be available for use in new operators in the future. Write C<m?\w?>
5985 instead, explicitly using the C<m> operator: the question mark delimiter
5986 still invokes match-once behaviour.
5988 =item Use of reference "%s" as array index
5990 (W misc) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
5991 isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
5992 to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
5994 If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
5995 C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
5996 however, because you can overload the numification and stringification
5997 operators and then you presumably know what you are doing.
5999 =item Use of state $_ is experimental
6001 (S experimental::lexical_topic) Lexical $_ is an experimental feature and
6002 its behavior may change or even be removed in any future release of perl.
6003 See the explanation under L<perlvar/$_>.
6005 =item Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
6007 (W taint, deprecated) You have supplied C<system()> or C<exec()> with multiple
6008 arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used to be allowed
6009 but will become a fatal error in a future version of perl. Untaint your
6010 arguments. See L<perlsec>.
6012 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
6014 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
6015 defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
6016 To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
6018 To help you figure out what was undefined, perl will try to tell you
6019 the name of the variable (if any) that was undefined. In some cases
6020 it cannot do this, so it also tells you what operation you used the
6021 undefined value in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your program
6022 and the operation displayed in the warning may not necessarily appear
6023 literally in your program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is usually
6024 optimized into C<"that " . $foo>, and the warning will refer to the
6025 C<concatenation (.)> operator, even though there is no C<.> in
6028 =item Use \x{...} for more than two hex characters in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
6030 (F) In a regular expression, you said something like
6034 Perl isn't sure if you meant this
6038 or if you meant this
6040 (?[ [ \x{BE} E F ] ])
6042 You need to add either braces or blanks to disambiguate.
6044 =item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
6046 (D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
6047 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
6048 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now
6049 deprecated, and will be removed in a future version.
6051 =item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
6053 (D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
6054 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
6055 allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated,
6056 and will be removed in a future version.
6058 =item Using just the first character returned by \N{} in character class in
6059 regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
6061 (W regexp) A charnames handler may return a sequence of more than one
6062 character. Currently all but the first one are discarded when used in
6063 a regular expression pattern bracketed character class.
6065 =item Using !~ with %s doesn't make sense
6067 (F) Using the C<!~> operator with C<s///r>, C<tr///r> or C<y///r> is
6068 currently reserved for future use, as the exact behaviour has not
6069 been decided. (Simply returning the boolean opposite of the
6070 modified string is usually not particularly useful.)
6072 =item UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
6074 (S utf8, surrogate) You had a UTF-16 surrogate in a context where they are
6075 not considered acceptable. These code points, between U+D800 and
6076 U+DFFF (inclusive), are used by Unicode only for UTF-16. However, Perl
6077 internally allows all unsigned integer code points (up to the size limit
6078 available on your platform), including surrogates. But these can cause
6079 problems when being input or output, which is likely where this message
6080 came from. If you really really know what you are doing you can turn
6081 off this warning by C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
6083 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
6085 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
6086 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
6087 can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
6088 false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
6089 constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
6090 C<defined> operator.
6092 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
6094 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
6095 %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
6096 longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
6099 =item Variable "%s" is not available
6101 (W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is
6102 attempting to capture an outer lexical that is not currently available.
6103 This can happen for one of two reasons. First, the outer lexical may be
6104 declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that has not yet been created.
6105 (Remember that named subs are created at compile time, while anonymous
6106 subs are created at run-time.) For example,
6108 sub { my $a; sub f { $a } }
6110 At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current value of $a,
6111 since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely,
6112 the following won't give a warning since the anonymous subroutine has by
6113 now been created and is live:
6115 sub { my $a; eval 'sub f { $a }' }->();
6117 The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a variable that has
6118 gone out of scope, for example,
6126 Here, when the '$a' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not currently being
6127 executed, so its $a is not available for capture.
6129 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
6131 (S misc) With "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
6132 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
6133 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
6134 that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
6135 front of your variable.
6137 =item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in regex m/%s/
6139 (F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
6140 known at compile time. See L<perlre>.
6142 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
6144 (W misc) A "my", "our" or "state" variable has been redeclared in the
6145 current scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the
6146 previous instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note
6147 that the earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope
6148 or until all closure references to it are destroyed.
6150 =item Variable syntax
6152 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
6153 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
6156 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
6158 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
6159 lexical variable defined in an outer named subroutine.
6161 When the inner subroutine is called, it will see the value of
6162 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
6163 call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
6164 outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
6165 longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
6166 variable will no longer be shared.
6168 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
6169 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
6170 reference variables in outer subroutines are created, they
6171 are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
6173 =item vector argument not supported with alpha versions
6175 (S printf) The %vd (s)printf format does not support version objects
6178 =item Verb pattern '%s' has a mandatory argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE
6181 (F) You used a verb pattern that requires an argument. Supply an
6182 argument or check that you are using the right verb.
6184 =item Verb pattern '%s' may not have an argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE
6187 (F) You used a verb pattern that is not allowed an argument. Remove the
6188 argument or check that you are using the right verb.
6190 =item Version number must be a constant number
6192 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
6193 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
6196 =item Version string '%s' contains invalid data; ignoring: '%s'
6198 (W misc) The version string contains invalid characters at the end, which
6201 =item Warning: something's wrong
6203 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
6204 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
6206 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
6208 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
6209 the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
6212 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
6214 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
6215 looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
6216 term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
6217 function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
6221 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
6225 but in actual fact, you got
6229 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
6231 =item when is experimental
6233 (S experimental::smartmatch) C<when> depends on smartmatch, which is
6234 experimental. Additionally, it has several special cases that may
6235 not be immediately obvious, and their behavior may change or
6236 even be removed in any future release of perl. See the explanation
6237 under L<perlsyn/Experimental Details on given and when>.
6239 =item Wide character in %s
6241 (S utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting
6242 one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print). The easiest
6243 way to quiet this warning is simply to add the C<:utf8> layer to the
6244 output, e.g. C<binmode STDOUT, ':utf8'>. Another way to turn off the
6245 warning is to add C<no warnings 'utf8';> but that is often closer to
6246 cheating. In general, you are supposed to explicitly mark the
6247 filehandle with an encoding, see L<open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>.
6249 =item Within []-length '%c' not allowed
6251 (F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by C<[TEMPLATE]>
6252 only if C<TEMPLATE> always matches the same amount of packed bytes that
6253 can be determined from the template alone. This is not possible if
6254 it contains any of the codes @, /, U, u, w or a *-length. Redesign
6257 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
6259 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
6260 before now. Check your control flow.
6262 =item %s "\x%X" does not map to Unicode
6264 (F) When reading in different encodings, Perl tries to map
6265 everything into Unicode characters. The bytes you read in
6266 are not legal in this encoding. For example
6268 utf8 "\xE4" does not map to Unicode
6270 if you try to read in the a-diaereses Latin-1 as UTF-8.
6272 =item 'X' outside of string
6274 (F) You had a (un)pack template that specified a relative position before
6275 the beginning of the string being (un)packed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
6277 =item 'x' outside of string in unpack
6279 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
6280 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
6282 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
6284 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
6285 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
6286 about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
6289 =item You need to quote "%s"
6291 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
6292 Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
6293 which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
6294 assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
6295 what you want, put an & in front.)
6297 =item Your random numbers are not that random
6299 (F) When trying to initialize the random seed for hashes, Perl could
6300 not get any randomness out of your system. This usually indicates
6301 Something Very Wrong.
6307 L<warnings>, L<perllexwarn>, L<diagnostics>.