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 (optional).
12 (S) A severe warning (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
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<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Default warnings are always enabled unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %lx
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '!' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() or unpack() only after certain types.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($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 (W ambiguous)(S) 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 '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
94 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
95 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
96 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
98 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
100 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
101 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
102 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
103 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
104 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
106 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
113 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
115 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
116 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
117 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
118 a scalar value -- the length of an array, or the population info of a
119 hash -- and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
120 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
123 =item Args must match #! line
125 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
126 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
127 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
128 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
130 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
132 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
134 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element
136 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element, such as:
141 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
143 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
149 or a hash or array slice, such as:
151 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
152 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
154 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
156 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
157 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
160 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
162 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
163 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
164 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
166 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
168 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you
169 forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take care of transforming
170 data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing
171 the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer.
172 If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be
173 the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
175 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
177 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
178 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
180 =item assertion botched: %s
182 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
184 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
186 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
188 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
190 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
191 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
192 know which context to supply to the right side.
194 =item A thread exited while %d threads were running
196 (W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily the main
197 thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
198 Usually it's a good idea to first collect the return values of the
199 created threads by joining them, and only then exit from the main
200 thread. See L<threads>.
202 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
204 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
205 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
207 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
209 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
210 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
211 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
217 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
219 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
220 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
223 bless $self, "$proto";
225 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
227 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
228 which is not in its key set.
230 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
232 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
233 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
235 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
237 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
238 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
239 outside any of those arenas.
241 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
243 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of
244 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
245 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
246 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
248 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
250 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
251 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
252 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
253 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
256 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
258 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
260 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
262 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
263 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
264 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
265 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
266 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
267 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
270 =item Attempt to join self
272 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
273 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
274 to move the join() to some other thread.
276 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
278 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
279 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
280 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
281 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
282 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
285 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
287 (W) You tried to set the length of an array which has been freed. You
288 can do this by storing a reference to the scalar representing the last index
289 of an array and later assigning through that reference. For example
291 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
294 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
296 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
297 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
298 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
300 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %s
302 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
303 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
304 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
305 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
307 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
309 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
310 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
311 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
313 =item Bad filehandle: %s
315 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
316 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
317 open(), or did it in another package.
319 =item Bad free() ignored
321 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
322 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
323 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
325 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
326 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
327 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
331 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
333 =item Bad index while coercing array into hash
335 (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
336 pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
339 =item Badly placed ()'s
341 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
342 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
345 =item Bad name after %s::
347 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
348 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
357 $sym = "mypack::$var";
359 =item Bad realloc() ignored
361 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
362 never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
363 by setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
365 =item Bad symbol for array
367 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
368 wasn't a symbol table entry.
370 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
372 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
373 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
375 =item Bad symbol for hash
377 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
378 wasn't a symbol table entry.
380 =item Bareword found in conditional
382 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
383 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
384 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
388 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
391 use constant TYPO => 1;
392 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
394 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
396 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
398 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
399 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
400 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
402 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
404 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
405 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
406 you need to predeclare a package?
408 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
410 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
411 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
414 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
416 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
417 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
418 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
419 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
420 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
422 =item \1 better written as $1
424 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
425 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
426 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
427 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
428 there are more than 9 backreferences.
430 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
432 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
433 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
434 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
436 =item bind() on closed socket %s
438 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
439 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
441 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
443 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
444 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
446 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
448 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
450 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
452 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
455 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
457 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
458 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
459 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
461 =item Callback called exit
463 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
464 exited by calling exit.
466 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
468 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
469 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
470 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
471 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
472 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
473 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
474 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
475 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
477 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
479 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
480 compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
481 attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
482 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
484 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
486 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
487 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
489 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
491 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
492 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
493 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
495 =item Can't bless non-reference value
497 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
498 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
500 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
502 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
503 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
504 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
506 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
508 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
509 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
510 like this will reproduce the error:
513 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
514 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
516 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
518 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
519 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
520 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
521 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
523 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
525 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
526 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
527 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
528 Something like this will reproduce the error:
531 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
532 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
534 =item Can't chdir to %s
536 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
537 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
539 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
541 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
544 =item Can't coerce array into hash
546 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
547 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
548 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
550 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
552 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
553 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
563 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
565 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
567 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
568 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
570 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
572 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
573 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
575 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
577 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
578 quotas or other plumbing problems.
580 =item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
582 (F) Currently, only scalar variables can be declared with a specific
583 class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration. The semantics may be
584 extended for other types of variables in future.
586 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
588 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my" or
589 "our" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
591 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
593 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
594 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
596 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
598 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
601 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
603 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
604 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
605 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
607 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
609 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
610 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
611 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
613 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
615 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
616 regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the
617 regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
619 =item Can't do setegid!
621 (P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
624 =item Can't do seteuid!
626 (P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
628 =item Can't do setuid
630 (F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl to do
631 setuid emulation, but couldn't exec it. It looks for a name of the form
632 sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl executable resides under
633 the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix machines. If the
634 file is there, check the execute permissions. If it isn't, ask your
635 sysadmin why he and/or she removed it.
637 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
639 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
640 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
642 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
644 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
645 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
648 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
650 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
651 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
652 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
653 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
654 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
655 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
660 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
661 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
662 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
664 =item Can't execute %s
666 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
667 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
669 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
671 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
672 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
674 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
676 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
677 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property
678 (remember that the names of character properties consist only of
679 alphanumeric characters), or maybe you forgot the C<Is> or C<In> prefix?
681 =item Can't find label %s
683 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
684 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
686 =item Can't find %s on PATH
688 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
691 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
693 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
694 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
695 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
697 =item Can't find %s property definition %s
699 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode property (for
700 example C<\p{Lu}> is all uppercase letters). If you did mean to use a
701 Unicode property, see L<perlunicode> for the list of known properties.
702 If you didn't mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either
703 by C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, until
706 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
708 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
709 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
710 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
712 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
714 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
715 unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
716 editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
720 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
723 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
725 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
726 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
727 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
728 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
729 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
730 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
731 the access checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
732 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
733 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
734 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
735 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up
736 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking
737 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
738 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
739 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
741 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
743 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
744 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
746 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
748 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
749 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
751 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
753 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
754 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
756 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
758 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
759 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
760 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
761 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
763 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
765 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
768 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
770 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
771 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
772 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
773 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
775 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
777 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
778 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
779 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
780 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
781 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
782 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
784 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
786 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
787 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
788 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
789 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
790 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
791 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
794 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
796 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension. This
797 may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one that is
798 incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known to happen
799 between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your dynamic
800 extension was built against an older version of the library that is
801 installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old dynamic
804 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
806 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
807 lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you want to
808 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
811 =item Can't localize pseudo-hash element
813 (F) You said something like C<< local $ar->{'key'} >>, where $ar is a
814 reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but you
815 can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array element
816 directly -- C<< local $ar->[$ar->[0]{'key'}] >>.
818 =item Can't localize through a reference
820 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
821 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
822 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
823 that $ref will still be a reference.
825 =item Can't locate %s
827 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
828 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
829 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
830 need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
831 the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
832 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
833 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
835 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
837 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
838 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
839 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
840 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
842 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
844 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
845 for example, C<foo.so> or C<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
846 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
848 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
850 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
851 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
852 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
854 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
856 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
857 doesn't seem to exist.
859 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
861 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
862 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
864 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
866 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
869 =item Can't modify %s in %s
871 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
872 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
874 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
876 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
879 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
881 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
882 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
884 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
886 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
889 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
891 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
892 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
893 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
894 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
895 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
896 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
898 =item Can't open %s: %s
900 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
901 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
902 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
903 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
906 =item Can't open a reference
908 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
909 using the 3-arg open() syntax :
913 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
914 open is not supported.
916 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
918 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
919 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
920 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
921 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
923 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
925 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
926 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
927 the command line for writing.
929 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
931 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
932 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
933 command line for reading.
935 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
937 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
938 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
939 the command line for writing.
941 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
943 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
944 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
947 =item Can't open perl script%s
949 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
951 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
952 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
953 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
955 =item Can't read CRTL environ
957 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
958 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
959 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
960 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
963 =item Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
965 (F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and keeps
966 pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort subroutine when
967 it was currently active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
968 this, you should write C<sort { &func } @x> instead of C<sort func @x>.
970 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
972 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
973 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
974 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
975 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
976 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
977 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
979 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
981 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
982 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
983 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
985 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
987 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
988 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
990 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
992 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
993 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
995 =item Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
997 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
998 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
999 method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1001 =item Can't reswap uid and euid
1003 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
1006 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1008 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1009 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1012 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1014 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1015 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1017 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1019 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
1020 but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
1021 to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
1022 the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
1025 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1027 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1028 open already. Bizarre.
1030 =item Can't swap uid and euid
1032 (P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emulator of
1035 =item Can't take log of %g
1037 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1038 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1039 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1042 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1044 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1045 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1046 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1048 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1050 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1051 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1052 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1056 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
1057 as the main Perl stack.
1059 =item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1061 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1062 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1063 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1064 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1066 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1068 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1069 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1070 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1072 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1074 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1075 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1077 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1079 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1080 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1082 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1084 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1085 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1086 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1088 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1090 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1093 =item Can't use global %s in "my"
1095 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1096 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1097 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1098 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1101 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1103 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1104 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1105 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1106 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1109 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1111 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1112 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1113 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1115 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1117 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1118 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1120 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1122 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1123 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1124 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1126 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1128 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1129 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1130 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1131 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1132 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1135 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1137 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1138 references can be weakened.
1140 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1142 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1143 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1144 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1146 =item Character in "C" format wrapped in pack
1152 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1153 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1154 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1158 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1161 =item Character in "c" format wrapped in pack
1167 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1168 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1169 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1171 pack("c", $x & 255);
1173 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1176 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1178 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1180 =item Code missing after '/'
1182 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be another
1183 template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1185 =item %s: Command not found
1187 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1188 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1190 =item Compilation failed in require
1192 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1193 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1194 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1196 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1198 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1199 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1200 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1201 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1202 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1203 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1204 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1205 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1206 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1208 =item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1210 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1211 cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_broadcast()
1212 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1213 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1214 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1215 first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1216 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1219 =item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1221 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1222 cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_signal()
1223 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1224 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1225 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1226 first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1227 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1230 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1232 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1233 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1234 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1236 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1238 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1239 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1240 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1241 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1244 =item Constant is not %s reference
1246 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1247 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1248 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1249 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1250 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1252 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1254 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1255 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1256 commentary and workarounds.
1258 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1260 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1261 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1264 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1266 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1267 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1269 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1271 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1273 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1275 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1276 expression compiler gave it.
1278 =item corrupted regexp program
1280 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1283 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
1285 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1287 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1289 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1290 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1293 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1295 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1296 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1297 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1298 which case it indicates something else.
1300 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1302 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1303 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1304 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1306 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1308 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1309 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1310 is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1312 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1314 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1315 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1317 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1319 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1320 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1321 that triggers this error.
1323 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1325 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1326 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather than
1327 to create a dangling reference.
1329 =item Did not produce a valid header
1333 =item %s did not return a true value
1335 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1336 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1337 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1338 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1340 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1342 (W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or some
1345 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1347 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1348 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1351 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1353 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1354 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1359 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1360 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1362 =item Document contains no data
1366 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1368 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1369 define a C<$VERSION.>
1371 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1373 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1374 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1376 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1378 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1380 =item do_study: out of memory
1382 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1384 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1386 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1387 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1388 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1389 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1390 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1391 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1392 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1393 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1395 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1397 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1398 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1400 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1402 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1405 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1407 (W) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a type
1408 in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1410 =item elseif should be elsif
1412 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1413 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1414 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1415 unlikely to be what you want.
1419 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1420 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1421 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1423 =item entering effective %s failed
1425 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1426 effective uids or gids failed.
1428 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1430 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1431 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1432 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1434 =item Error converting file specification %s
1436 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1437 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1438 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1439 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1440 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1442 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1444 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1445 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1446 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1448 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
1450 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1451 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1452 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it
1453 is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly
1454 building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using
1455 that in an eval(). See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1457 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1459 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1460 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1461 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1463 =item Excessively long <> operator
1465 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1466 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1467 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1468 variable and glob that.
1470 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1472 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented in MacPerl. See L<perlport>.
1474 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
1476 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1478 =item Exiting eval via %s
1480 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1481 goto, or a loop control statement.
1483 =item Exiting format via %s
1485 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1486 goto, or a loop control statement.
1488 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1490 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1491 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1492 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1494 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1496 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1497 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1499 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1501 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1502 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1504 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1506 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1507 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1508 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1509 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1511 =item %s: Expression syntax
1513 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1514 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1516 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1518 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a CHECK, INIT, or
1519 END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the queue of such
1520 routines has been prematurely ended.
1522 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1524 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1525 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1526 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1527 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1528 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1530 =item Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
1532 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1533 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1534 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1535 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1537 =item fcntl is not implemented
1539 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1540 PDP-11 or something?
1542 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1544 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1545 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1546 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1547 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1549 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1551 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1552 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1553 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
1554 intended only to read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1555 Another possibility is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0
1556 (also known as STDIN) for output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
1558 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1560 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1561 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
1564 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
1566 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1567 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
1569 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1571 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1572 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1573 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1576 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1578 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1579 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1580 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1583 =item Format not terminated
1585 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1586 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1588 =item Format %s redefined
1590 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1593 no warnings 'redefine';
1594 eval "format NAME =...";
1597 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1607 (or something like that).
1609 =item %s found where operator expected
1611 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
1612 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1613 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1614 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1616 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1618 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1620 =item gethostent not implemented
1622 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1623 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1626 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1628 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1629 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1631 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1633 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1634 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1636 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1638 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1639 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1640 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1642 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1644 (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that all variables
1645 must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), declared beforehand using
1646 "our", or explicitly qualified to say which package the global variable
1649 =item glob failed (%s)
1651 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1652 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1653 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1654 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1655 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1656 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1657 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1658 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1659 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1660 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1661 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1663 =item Glob not terminated
1665 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1666 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1667 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1668 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1670 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1672 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1673 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1675 =item goto must have label
1677 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1678 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1680 =item ()-group starts with a count
1682 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is
1683 supposed to follow something: a template character or a ()-group.
1684 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1686 =item %s had compilation errors
1688 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1690 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1692 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1693 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1694 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1696 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1698 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1699 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
1701 =item %s has too many errors
1703 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1704 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1706 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
1708 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
1709 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
1710 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
1712 =item Identifier too long
1714 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
1715 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
1716 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
1717 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
1719 =item Illegal binary digit %s
1721 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
1723 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
1725 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
1726 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
1729 =item Illegal character %s (carriage return)
1731 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
1732 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
1733 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
1734 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
1735 to your Perl administrator.
1737 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
1739 (W syntax) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration. Legal
1740 characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, and \.
1742 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
1744 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
1745 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
1747 =item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
1749 (F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
1751 =item Illegal division by zero
1753 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
1754 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
1757 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
1759 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
1760 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
1761 number stopped before the illegal character.
1763 =item Illegal modulus zero
1765 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
1766 numbers don't take to this kindly.
1768 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
1770 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
1771 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
1773 =item Illegal octal digit %s
1775 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1777 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
1779 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
1780 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
1782 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
1784 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
1785 following switches: B<-[DIMUdmtw]>.
1787 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
1789 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
1790 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
1791 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
1793 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
1795 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
1796 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
1797 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
1800 =item (in cleanup) %s
1802 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
1803 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
1804 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
1805 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
1806 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
1808 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
1809 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
1811 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
1813 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
1814 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
1815 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
1817 =item Insecure dependency in %s
1819 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
1820 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
1821 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
1822 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
1823 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
1824 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
1825 L<perlsec> for more information.
1827 =item Insecure directory in %s
1829 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1830 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
1831 the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
1834 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
1836 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
1837 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
1838 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
1839 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
1840 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
1842 =item Integer overflow in %s number
1844 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
1845 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
1846 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
1847 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
1848 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
1849 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
1850 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
1851 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
1854 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1856 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
1857 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1860 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
1862 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
1863 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
1864 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
1865 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
1866 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
1867 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
1869 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1871 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
1872 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1875 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
1877 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
1878 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
1879 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
1880 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
1882 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
1884 The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
1885 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1887 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
1889 The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
1890 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
1892 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
1894 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
1895 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
1897 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1899 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
1900 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
1901 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
1902 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1903 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1905 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
1907 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
1908 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
1910 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
1912 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
1913 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
1914 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
1917 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
1919 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other than a
1920 colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
1921 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
1922 list was terminated too soon.
1924 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
1926 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
1927 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1928 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
1931 =item ioctl is not implemented
1933 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
1934 strange for a machine that supports C.
1936 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
1938 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
1939 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
1941 =item IO layers (like "%s") unavailable
1943 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
1944 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO Perl must be configured
1947 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
1949 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
1950 neither as a system call or an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
1952 =item `%s' is not a code reference
1954 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant
1955 needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
1958 =item `%s' is not an overloadable type
1960 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
1963 =item junk on end of regexp
1965 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
1967 =item Label not found for "last %s"
1969 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
1970 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1973 =item Label not found for "next %s"
1975 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
1976 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1979 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
1981 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
1982 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
1985 =item leaving effective %s failed
1987 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1988 effective uids or gids failed.
1990 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
1992 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
1993 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
1994 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1996 =item listen() on closed socket %s
1998 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
1999 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2002 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2004 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2005 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release. The <-- HERE
2006 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2008 =item lstat() on filehandle %s
2010 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2011 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2012 instead on the filehandle.)
2014 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
2016 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
2017 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
2018 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
2020 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2022 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2023 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2025 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2027 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2028 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2030 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2032 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2039 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2040 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2041 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2042 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2044 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2046 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2047 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2048 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2049 when the function is called.
2051 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2053 (S utf8) (F) Perl detected something that didn't comply with UTF-8
2056 One possible cause is that you read in data that you thought to be in
2057 UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy 8-bit data). Another
2058 possibility is careless use of utf8::upgrade().
2060 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2062 Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2063 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2065 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2067 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2068 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
2069 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2072 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2074 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2075 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2078 =item % may not be used in pack
2080 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2081 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2082 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2084 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2086 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2087 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2089 =item Method %s not permitted
2093 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2095 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2096 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2097 ended earlier on the current line.
2099 =item Misplaced _ in number
2101 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2102 separate two digits.
2104 =item Missing argument to -%c
2106 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2107 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2109 =item Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
2111 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2112 double-quotish context.
2114 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2116 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2117 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2119 =item Missing command in piped open
2121 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2122 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2125 =item Missing control char name in \c
2127 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2130 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2132 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2133 they have a name with which they can be found.
2135 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2137 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2138 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2139 can vary from one line to the next.
2141 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2143 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2144 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2146 =item Missing right brace on %s
2148 (F) Missing right brace in C<\p{...}> or C<\P{...}>.
2150 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2152 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2153 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2156 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2158 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2159 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2160 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2162 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2164 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2165 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2166 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2168 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2171 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2173 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2174 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2177 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2178 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
2181 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2183 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2184 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2187 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2189 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2190 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2192 =item Module name must be constant
2194 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2196 =item Module name required with -%c option
2198 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2199 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2200 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2202 =item More than one argument to open
2204 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2205 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2206 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2207 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2209 =item msg%s not implemented
2211 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2213 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2215 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2216 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2218 =item '/' must be followed by 'a*', 'A*' or 'Z*'
2220 (F) You had a pack template indicating a counted-length string,
2221 Currently the only things that can have their length counted are a*, A*
2222 or Z*. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2224 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
2226 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
2227 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
2228 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2230 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2232 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2235 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
2237 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2238 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2239 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2241 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2243 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2244 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2245 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2246 provided for this purpose.
2248 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
2249 %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
2250 the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
2251 will not trigger this warning.
2253 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
2255 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
2256 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2258 =item Negative length
2260 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2261 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2263 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
2265 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
2266 greater than or equal to zero.
2268 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2270 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
2271 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
2272 expression about where the problem was discovered.
2274 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2275 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
2277 =item %s never introduced
2279 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2280 scope before it could possibly have been used.
2282 =item Newline in left-justified string for %s
2284 (W printf) There is a newline in a string to be left justified by
2285 C<printf> or C<sprintf>.
2287 The padding spaces will appear after the newline, which is probably not
2288 what you wanted. Usually you should remove the newline from the string
2289 and put formatting characters in the C<sprintf> format.
2291 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
2293 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2294 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2295 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2296 securable. See L<perlsec>.
2298 =item No comma allowed after %s
2300 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2301 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2302 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2304 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2305 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2306 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2307 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2308 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
2309 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2310 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2311 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2312 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2313 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2314 this error was triggered?
2316 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
2318 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2319 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2320 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
2322 =item No DB::DB routine defined
2324 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2325 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2326 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
2329 =item No dbm on this machine
2331 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
2332 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
2334 =item No DB::sub routine defined
2336 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2337 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2338 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
2339 of each ordinary subroutine call.
2341 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
2343 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
2345 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2347 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2348 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2349 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2351 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
2353 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
2354 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2356 =item No input file after < on command line
2358 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2359 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2360 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2364 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2365 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2367 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2369 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2370 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2372 =item No output file after > on command line
2374 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2375 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2376 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2378 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2380 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2381 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2382 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2384 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2386 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2387 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2388 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2390 =item No Perl script found in input
2392 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2393 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2395 =item No setregid available
2397 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2400 =item No setreuid available
2402 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2405 =item No %s specified for -%c
2407 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2408 you haven't specified one.
2410 =item No such class %s
2412 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration, but
2413 this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
2415 =item No such pipe open
2417 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2418 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2419 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2421 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s"
2423 (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is
2424 not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to
2425 array indices for that to work.
2427 =item No such pseudo-hash field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2429 (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type does
2430 not know about the field name. The field names are looked up in the
2431 %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash is
2432 %usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
2434 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2436 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
2437 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
2438 names on your system.
2440 =item Not a CODE reference
2442 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2443 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2444 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2447 =item Not a format reference
2449 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
2450 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
2452 =item Not a GLOB reference
2454 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
2455 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
2456 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
2457 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2459 =item Not a HASH reference
2461 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
2462 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
2463 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2465 =item Not an ARRAY reference
2467 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
2468 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2469 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2471 =item Not a perl script
2473 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2474 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
2477 =item Not a SCALAR reference
2479 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
2480 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
2481 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
2483 =item Not a subroutine reference
2485 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
2486 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
2487 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
2490 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
2492 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2493 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2495 =item Not enough arguments for %s
2497 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
2499 =item Not enough format arguments
2501 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
2502 supplied. See L<perlform>.
2506 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
2507 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
2510 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
2512 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
2513 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
2514 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
2515 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
2516 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
2518 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
2520 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
2521 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
2522 select. See L<perlfunc/select>
2524 =item Null filename used
2526 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
2527 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
2529 =item NULL OP IN RUN
2531 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
2534 =item Null picture in formline
2536 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
2537 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
2538 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
2542 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
2544 =item NULL regexp argument
2546 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
2548 =item NULL regexp parameter
2550 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
2552 =item Number too long
2554 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
2555 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
2556 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
2557 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
2560 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
2562 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
2563 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
2566 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
2568 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2569 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2570 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2572 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
2574 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
2576 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
2577 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
2579 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
2581 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2582 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2584 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
2586 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
2587 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
2589 =item Offset outside string
2591 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
2592 pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine. The sole
2593 exception to this is that C<sysread()>ing past the buffer will extend
2594 the buffer and zero pad the new area.
2596 =item %s() on unopened %s
2598 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
2599 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
2600 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
2602 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
2604 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
2605 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
2609 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2613 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
2615 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
2617 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
2618 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
2619 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
2620 C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
2622 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
2624 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
2625 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
2626 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
2627 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
2630 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
2632 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
2633 in the current lexical scope.
2635 =item Out of memory!
2637 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2638 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
2639 no option but to exit immediately.
2641 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
2642 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
2643 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
2644 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
2645 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
2647 =item Out of memory during %s extend
2649 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
2650 the largest possible memory allocation.
2652 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
2654 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
2655 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
2656 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
2657 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
2659 =item Out of memory during request for %s
2661 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
2662 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
2665 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
2666 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
2667 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
2668 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
2669 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
2670 where the failed request happened.
2672 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
2674 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
2675 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
2676 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
2678 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
2680 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
2681 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
2684 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
2686 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
2687 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2689 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
2691 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
2692 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
2693 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
2694 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
2696 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
2698 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
2699 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2703 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
2704 page. See L<perlform>.
2708 (P) An internal error.
2710 =item panic: ck_grep
2712 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
2714 =item panic: ck_split
2716 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
2718 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
2720 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
2721 there are in the savestack.
2723 =item panic: del_backref
2725 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
2728 =item panic: Devel::DProf inconsistent subroutine return
2730 (P) Devel::DProf called a subroutine that exited using goto(LABEL),
2731 last(LABEL) or next(LABEL). Leaving that way a subroutine called from
2732 an XSUB will lead very probably to a crash of the interpreter. This is
2733 a bug that will hopefully one day get fixed.
2737 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
2738 it wasn't an eval context.
2740 =item panic: do_subst
2742 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
2745 =item panic: do_trans_%s
2747 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
2752 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
2756 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
2757 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
2759 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
2761 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
2763 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
2765 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
2767 =item panic: kid popen errno read
2769 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
2773 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
2774 it wasn't a block context.
2776 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
2778 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
2781 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
2783 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
2784 invalid enum on the top of it.
2786 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
2788 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
2789 references to an object.
2793 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
2795 =item panic: mapstart
2797 (P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
2799 =item panic: memory wrap
2801 (P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
2803 =item panic: null array
2805 (P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV pointer.
2807 =item panic: pad_alloc
2809 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2810 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2812 =item panic: pad_free curpad
2814 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2815 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2817 =item panic: pad_free po
2819 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2821 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
2823 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2824 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2826 =item panic: pad_sv po
2828 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2830 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
2832 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
2833 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
2835 =item panic: pad_swipe po
2837 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
2839 =item panic: pp_iter
2841 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
2843 =item panic: pp_match%s
2845 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
2848 =item panic: pp_split
2850 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
2852 =item panic: realloc
2854 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
2856 =item panic: restartop
2858 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
2859 didn't supply the destination.
2863 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
2864 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
2866 =item panic: scan_num
2868 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
2870 =item panic: sv_insert
2872 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
2875 =item panic: top_env
2877 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
2879 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
2881 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
2882 to even) byte length.
2886 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
2888 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
2890 (W parenthesis) You said something like
2896 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
2898 Remember that "my", "our", and "local" bind tighter than comma.
2900 =item C<-p> destination: %s
2902 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
2903 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
2904 redirected it with select().)
2906 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
2908 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2909 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
2910 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
2912 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
2914 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
2915 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
2916 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
2918 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
2920 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
2921 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
2923 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
2925 See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
2927 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2929 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
2931 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
2932 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
2935 are supported and installed on your system.
2936 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
2938 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
2939 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
2940 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
2941 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
2942 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
2943 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
2944 Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before you really fix
2945 the problem, however, you will get the same error message each time
2946 you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
2947 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
2949 =item Permission denied
2951 (F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
2953 =item pid %x not a child
2955 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
2956 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
2957 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
2959 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
2961 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
2963 =item B<-P> not allowed for setuid/setgid script
2965 (F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by name,
2966 which provides a race condition that breaks security.
2968 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2970 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
2971 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2972 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
2973 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
2974 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
2976 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
2978 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
2979 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
2981 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2983 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
2984 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
2985 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
2986 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
2987 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
2988 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2990 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2992 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
2993 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
2994 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
2995 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
2996 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
2997 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2999 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3001 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
3002 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
3003 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
3004 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
3005 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3006 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3008 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
3010 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
3011 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
3012 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
3013 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
3015 You probably wrote something like this:
3022 when you should have written this:
3029 If you really want comments, build your list the
3030 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
3034 'b', # another comment
3037 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
3039 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
3040 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
3041 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
3044 You probably wrote something like this:
3048 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
3049 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
3053 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
3055 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
3056 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
3057 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
3058 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
3060 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
3062 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
3063 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
3065 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
3067 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
3068 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
3069 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
3070 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
3072 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
3074 (W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
3075 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
3076 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
3077 to the array you apparently lost track of.
3079 =item Possible Y2K bug: %s
3081 (W y2k) You are concatenating the number 19 with another number, which
3082 could be a potential Year 2000 problem.
3084 =item pragma "attrs" is deprecated, use "sub NAME : ATTRS" instead
3086 (D deprecated) You have written something like this:
3090 use attrs qw(locked);
3093 You should use the new declaration syntax instead.
3099 The C<use attrs> pragma is now obsolete, and is only provided for
3100 backward-compatibility. See L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes">.
3102 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
3104 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
3108 is now misinterpreted as
3112 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
3113 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
3114 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
3117 =item Premature end of script headers
3121 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
3123 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3124 before now. Check your control flow.
3126 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
3128 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
3129 before now. Check your control flow.
3131 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3133 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3134 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3135 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3136 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
3139 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
3141 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
3142 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
3144 =item Prototype not terminated
3146 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
3149 =item Pseudo-hashes are deprecated
3151 (D deprecated) Pseudo-hashes were deprecated in Perl 5.8.0 and they
3152 will be removed in Perl 5.10.0, see L<perl58delta> for more details.
3153 You can continue to use the C<fields> pragma.
3155 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3157 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
3158 meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3159 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3161 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3163 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
3164 {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
3165 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3167 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3169 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
3170 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
3171 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
3172 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
3173 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
3175 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3178 =item Range iterator outside integer range
3180 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
3181 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
3182 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
3183 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
3185 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
3187 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
3188 before now. Check your control flow.
3190 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
3192 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
3194 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
3196 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
3198 =item Reallocation too large: %lx
3200 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
3202 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
3204 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
3207 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
3209 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
3210 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
3211 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
3213 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
3215 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indicates
3216 an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
3218 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
3220 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking
3221 a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance
3224 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
3226 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
3227 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
3228 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
3229 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
3231 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
3232 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
3233 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
3234 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
3236 =item Reference is already weak
3238 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
3239 Doing so has no effect.
3241 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
3243 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
3244 a reference count of other than 1.
3246 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3248 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
3249 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If you
3250 wanted to have the character with value 7 inserted into the regular expression,
3251 prepend a zero to make the number at least two digits: C<\07>
3253 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3256 =item regexp memory corruption
3258 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
3259 expression compiler gave it.
3261 =item Regexp out of space
3263 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
3266 =item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompatible)
3268 (F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
3269 numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
3270 terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
3272 =item Reversed %s= operator
3274 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
3275 always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
3277 =item Runaway format
3279 (F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but it
3280 produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly like the
3281 199th line. Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to exhaust
3282 themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for scalar variables), or by
3283 shifting or popping (for array variables). See L<perlform>.
3285 =item Scalars leaked: %d
3287 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
3288 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
3289 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
3290 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
3292 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
3294 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
3295 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
3296 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
3297 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3298 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3299 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3300 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3302 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
3303 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
3304 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3307 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
3309 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
3310 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
3311 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
3312 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
3313 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
3314 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
3315 if you're expecting only one subscript.
3317 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
3318 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
3319 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
3322 =item Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
3324 (F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a setuid
3325 or setgid bit set. This doesn't make much sense.
3327 =item Search pattern not terminated
3329 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
3330 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3331 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
3333 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
3334 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
3335 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
3336 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
3338 =item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
3340 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
3343 The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
3344 C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
3345 parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
3346 the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
3348 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
3350 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
3351 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
3353 =item select not implemented
3355 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
3357 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
3359 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
3360 the current implementation.
3362 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
3364 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
3365 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
3367 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
3369 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
3370 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
3372 =item sem%s not implemented
3374 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
3376 =item send() on closed socket %s
3378 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
3379 before now. Check your control flow.
3381 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3383 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <-- HERE
3384 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3387 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3389 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
3390 has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3391 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3393 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3395 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
3396 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3397 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3399 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3401 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
3402 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
3403 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3406 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3408 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains braces, they must balance
3409 for Perl to properly detect the end of the clause. The <-- HERE shows in
3410 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
3413 =item 500 Server error
3419 This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
3420 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
3421 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
3422 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
3423 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
3424 produce a valid header".
3426 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
3428 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
3429 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
3430 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
3431 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
3432 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
3433 Please see the following for more information:
3435 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
3436 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
3437 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
3439 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
3441 =item setegid() not implemented
3443 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
3444 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3447 =item seteuid() not implemented
3449 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
3450 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3453 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
3455 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
3456 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
3459 =item setrgid() not implemented
3461 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
3462 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3465 =item setruid() not implemented
3467 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
3468 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
3471 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
3473 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
3474 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
3475 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
3477 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
3479 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the
3480 world, because the world might have written on it already.
3482 =item Setuid script not plain file
3484 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that isn't read from a file,
3485 but from a socket, a pipe or another device.
3487 =item shm%s not implemented
3489 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
3491 =item <> should be quotes
3493 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
3496 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
3498 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
3499 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
3500 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
3501 probably not what you had in mind.
3503 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
3505 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
3508 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
3510 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
3511 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
3513 =item sort is now a reserved word
3515 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
3516 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
3518 =item Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
3520 (F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably blew
3521 it by not using C<< <=> >> or C<cmp>, or by not using them correctly.
3522 See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3524 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
3526 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
3527 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3529 =item splice() offset past end of array
3531 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
3532 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the end
3533 of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want, try
3534 explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset. See
3539 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
3540 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
3541 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
3543 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
3545 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
3546 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
3547 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
3548 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
3551 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
3553 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
3554 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3556 =item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s"
3558 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
3559 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
3560 C<can> may break this.
3562 =item Subroutine %s redefined
3564 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
3567 no warnings 'redefine';
3568 eval "sub name { ... }";
3571 =item Substitution loop
3573 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
3574 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
3575 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
3576 L<perlop/"Quote and Quote-like Operators">.
3578 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
3580 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3581 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3582 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3584 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
3586 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
3587 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
3588 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
3590 =item substr outside of string
3592 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
3593 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
3594 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
3595 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
3596 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
3598 =item suidperl is no longer needed since %s
3600 (F) Your Perl was compiled with B<-D>SETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but
3601 a version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
3603 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3605 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
3606 branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
3607 contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
3608 clustering parentheses:
3610 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
3612 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3613 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3615 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3617 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is a
3618 number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3619 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3621 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
3623 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
3624 and effective uids or gids.
3628 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
3632 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
3634 A keyword is misspelled.
3635 A semicolon is missing.
3637 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
3638 An opening or closing brace is missing.
3639 A closing quote is missing.
3641 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
3642 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
3643 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
3644 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
3645 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
3646 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
3647 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
3648 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
3649 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
3652 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
3654 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3655 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3658 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
3660 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
3661 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
3662 or "my $var" or "our $var".
3664 =item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
3666 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
3668 =item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
3670 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
3672 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
3674 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
3675 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
3676 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
3677 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
3679 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
3681 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3682 before now. Check your control flow.
3684 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
3686 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
3687 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
3689 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
3691 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
3692 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
3694 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
3696 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
3697 was either never opened or has since been closed.
3699 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
3701 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
3702 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
3711 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
3712 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
3714 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
3716 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
3717 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
3718 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
3719 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
3722 =item The %s function is unimplemented
3724 The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
3725 to the probings of Configure.
3727 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
3729 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
3730 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
3731 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
3734 =item The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
3736 (F) Currently this attribute is not supported on C<my> or C<sub>
3737 declarations. See L<perlfunc/our>.
3739 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
3741 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
3743 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
3744 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
3745 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
3746 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
3747 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
3748 target of the change to
3749 %ENV which produced the warning.
3751 =item thread failed to start: %s
3753 (W threads)(S) The entry point function of threads->create() failed for some reason.
3755 =item 5.005 threads are deprecated
3757 (D deprecated) The 5.005-style threads (activated by C<use Thread;>)
3758 are deprecated and one should use the new ithreads instead,
3759 see L<perl58delta> for more details.
3761 =item times not implemented
3763 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
3764 suspect you're not running on Unix.
3766 =item "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
3768 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3769 B<-T> option, but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
3770 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
3771 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
3774 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
3775 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
3776 editing the #! line so that the B<-T> option is a part of Perl's first
3777 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -T> to C<perl -T -n>.
3779 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
3780 B<-T> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -T scriptname>.
3782 =item To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
3784 (F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
3785 uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
3786 specified an illegal mapping.
3787 See L<perlunicode/"User-Defined Character Properties">.
3789 =item Too deeply nested ()-groups
3791 (F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level.
3793 =item Too few args to syscall
3795 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
3796 system call to call, silly dilly.
3798 =item Too late for "-%s" option
3800 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
3801 B<-M> or B<-m> option. This is an error because B<-M> and B<-m> options
3802 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
3804 =item Too late to run %s block
3806 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
3807 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
3808 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
3809 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
3812 =item Too many args to syscall
3814 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
3816 =item Too many arguments for %s
3818 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
3822 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3823 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3827 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3828 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3830 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
3832 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
3833 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
3835 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
3837 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
3838 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
3839 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
3841 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
3843 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][],
3844 y/// or y[][] construct.
3846 =item '%s' trapped by operation mask
3848 (F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's
3849 disallowed. See L<Safe>.
3851 =item truncate not implemented
3853 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
3854 Configure knows about.
3856 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
3858 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
3859 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
3860 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
3861 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
3863 =item umask not implemented
3865 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
3866 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
3868 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
3870 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
3872 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
3874 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3875 many execution contexts were entered and left.
3877 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
3879 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3880 many values were temporarily localized.
3882 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
3884 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3885 many blocks were entered and left.
3887 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
3889 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
3890 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
3892 =item Undefined format "%s" called
3894 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3895 another package? See L<perlform>.
3897 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
3899 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
3900 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3902 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
3904 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
3905 since been undefined.
3907 =item Undefined subroutine called
3909 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
3910 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
3912 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
3914 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
3915 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
3917 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
3919 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
3920 another package? See L<perlform>.
3922 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
3924 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
3925 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
3928 =item %s: Undefined variable
3930 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
3931 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
3933 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
3935 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
3936 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
3938 =item Unicode character %s is illegal
3940 (W utf8) Certain Unicode characters have been designated off-limits by
3941 the Unicode standard and should not be generated. If you really know
3942 what you are doing you can turn off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
3944 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
3946 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
3949 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
3951 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
3952 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
3953 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->, C<< <& >>, C<< >& >>.
3955 =item Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
3957 (W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
3958 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
3959 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
3960 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
3961 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
3962 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
3964 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
3966 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
3967 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
3968 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
3969 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
3971 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
3973 You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
3975 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%.2s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3977 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
3978 is not known. The condition may be lookahead or lookbehind (the condition
3979 is true if the lookahead or lookbehind is true), a (?{...}) construct (the
3980 condition is true if the code evaluates to a true value), or a number (the
3981 condition is true if the set of capturing parentheses named by the number
3984 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3985 discovered. See L<perlre>.
3987 =item Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
3989 You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
3990 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
3992 =item Unknown Unicode option value %x
3994 You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
3995 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
3997 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
3999 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
4000 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
4002 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a module
4003 (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have imported this module
4006 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4008 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
4009 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
4010 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
4011 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4013 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4015 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
4016 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
4017 matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4018 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4020 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
4022 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
4023 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
4024 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
4025 you were last editing.
4027 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
4029 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
4030 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
4031 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
4034 =item Unrecognized character %s
4036 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
4037 in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a compressed
4038 script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
4040 =item /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through
4042 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4043 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
4044 understood literally.
4046 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
4048 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4051 =item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4053 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4054 recognized by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or
4055 a C<'>-delimited regular expression. The character was understood
4056 literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4057 escape was discovered.
4059 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
4061 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
4062 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
4065 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
4067 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
4068 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
4069 bad switch on your behalf.)
4071 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
4073 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
4074 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
4075 PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
4077 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
4079 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
4081 =item Unsupported function %s
4083 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
4084 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
4086 =item Unsupported function fork
4088 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
4090 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
4091 of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
4092 changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
4094 =item Unsupported script encoding %s
4096 (F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
4097 declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot read.
4099 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
4101 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
4102 least that's what Configure thought.
4104 =item Unterminated attribute list
4106 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
4107 start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
4108 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
4109 attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
4111 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
4113 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
4114 an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
4115 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
4116 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
4118 =item Unterminated compressed integer
4120 (F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
4121 compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
4122 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4124 =item Unterminated <> operator
4126 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
4127 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
4128 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
4129 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
4131 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
4133 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
4134 still valid when C<untie> was called.
4136 =item Usage: POSIX::%s(%s)
4138 (F) You called a POSIX function with incorrect arguments.
4139 See L<POSIX/FUNCTIONS> for more information.
4141 =item Usage: Win32::%s(%s)
4143 (F) You called a Win32 function with incorrect arguments.
4144 See L<Win32> for more information.
4146 =item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4148 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
4149 meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
4151 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
4155 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
4157 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4158 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4160 =item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4162 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
4163 meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
4165 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
4169 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
4171 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4172 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4174 =item Useless use of %s in void context
4176 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
4177 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
4178 value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
4179 often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
4180 to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
4181 get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
4186 when you meant to say
4188 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
4190 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
4191 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
4196 when you should have said
4200 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
4201 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
4202 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
4203 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
4204 L<perlref> for more on this.
4206 This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
4207 since they are often used in statements like
4209 1 while sub_with_side_effects();
4211 String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
4214 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
4216 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
4218 =item Useless use of sort in scalar context
4220 (W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
4224 This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
4226 =item Useless use of %s with no values
4228 (W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
4229 apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
4230 usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
4231 possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
4232 if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
4233 you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
4235 =item "use" not allowed in expression
4237 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
4238 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
4240 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
4242 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted form
4243 if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
4245 =item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
4247 (D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
4248 $ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
4249 behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
4252 Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
4253 blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
4255 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
4257 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution. The /c
4258 modifier is not presently meaningful in substitutions.
4260 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
4262 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't
4263 use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is
4264 used. (This may change in the future.)
4266 =item Use of freed value in iteration
4268 (F) Perhaps you modified the iterated array within the loop?
4269 This error is typically caused by code like the following:
4272 @a = () for (1,2,@a);
4274 You are not supposed to modify arrays while they are being iterated over.
4275 For speed and efficiency reasons, Perl internally does not do full
4276 reference-counting of iterated items, hence deleting such an item in the
4277 middle of an iteration causes Perl to see a freed value.
4279 =item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
4281 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
4282 to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
4284 =item Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
4286 (W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a C<split>
4287 operator. Since C<split> always tries to match the pattern
4288 repeatedly, the C</g> has no effect.
4290 =item Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
4292 (D deprecated) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you clobber
4293 a subroutine's argument list, so it's better if you assign the results
4294 of a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
4296 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
4298 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines
4299 are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the
4300 subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g.
4301 C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<<
4304 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
4305 methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
4306 code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
4307 currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
4310 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
4311 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
4312 to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
4313 named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
4316 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
4317 you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
4318 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
4320 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
4322 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
4323 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
4325 =item Use of $* is deprecated
4327 (D deprecated) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern
4328 matching, both for you and for any luckless subroutine that you happen
4329 to call. You should use the new C<//m> and C<//s> modifiers now to do
4330 that without the dangerous action-at-a-distance effects of C<$*>.
4332 =item Use of $# is deprecated
4334 (D deprecated) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly
4335 defined B<awk> feature. Use an explicit printf() or sprintf() instead.
4337 =item Use of %s is deprecated
4339 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
4340 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
4341 old way has bad side effects.
4343 =item Use of -l on filehandle %s
4345 (W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
4346 it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
4347 The operation returned C<undef>. Use a filename instead.
4349 =item Use of "package" with no arguments is deprecated
4351 (D deprecated) You used the C<package> keyword without specifying a package
4352 name. So no namespace is current at all. Using this can cause many
4353 otherwise reasonable constructs to fail in baffling ways. C<use strict;>
4356 =item Use of reference "%s" as array index
4358 (W misc) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
4359 isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
4360 to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
4362 If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
4363 C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
4364 either, because you can overload the numification and stringification
4365 operators and then you assumedly know what you are doing.
4367 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
4369 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
4370 versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
4371 explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
4372 use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
4373 suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
4374 a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
4376 =item Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
4378 (W taint, deprecated) You have supplied C<system()> or C<exec()> with multiple
4379 arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used to be allowed
4380 but will become a fatal error in a future version of perl. Untaint your
4381 arguments. See L<perlsec>.
4383 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
4385 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
4386 defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
4387 To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
4389 To help you figure out what was undefined, perl tells you what operation
4390 you used the undefined value in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your
4391 program and the operation displayed in the warning may not necessarily
4392 appear literally in your program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is
4393 usually optimized into C<"that " . $foo>, and the warning will refer to
4394 the C<concatenation (.)> operator, even though there is no C<.> in your
4397 =item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
4399 (D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
4400 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
4401 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will
4402 be removed in a future version.
4404 =item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
4406 (D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
4407 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
4408 allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will be
4409 removed in a future version.
4411 =item UTF-16 surrogate %s
4413 (W utf8) You tried to generate half of an UTF-16 surrogate by
4414 requesting a Unicode character between the code points 0xD800 and
4415 0xDFFF (inclusive). That range is reserved exclusively for the use of
4416 UTF-16 encoding (by having two 16-bit UCS-2 characters); but Perl
4417 encodes its characters in UTF-8, so what you got is a very illegal
4418 character. If you really know what you are doing you can turn off
4419 this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4421 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
4423 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
4424 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
4425 can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
4426 false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
4427 constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
4428 C<defined> operator.
4430 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
4432 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
4433 %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
4434 longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
4437 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
4439 (F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable that
4440 you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
4441 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
4442 that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
4443 front of your variable.
4445 =item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4447 (F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
4448 known at compile time. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4449 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4451 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
4453 (W misc) A "my" or "our" variable has been redeclared in the current
4454 scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the previous
4455 instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note that the
4456 earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope or until
4457 all closure referents to it are destroyed.
4459 =item Variable "%s" may be unavailable
4461 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<anonymous> subroutine is inside a
4462 I<named> subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the
4463 anonymous (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable
4464 defined in the outermost subroutine. For example:
4466 sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
4468 If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
4469 indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the variable as
4470 you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is called or
4471 referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see the
4472 value of the shared variable as it was before and during the *first*
4473 call to the outermost subroutine, which is probably not what you want.
4475 In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle subroutine
4476 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. Perl has specific support for
4477 shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a named subroutine in
4478 between interferes with this feature.
4480 =item Variable syntax
4482 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
4483 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
4486 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
4488 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
4489 lexical variable defined in an outer subroutine.
4491 When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value of
4492 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
4493 call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
4494 outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
4495 longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
4496 variable will no longer be shared.
4498 Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
4499 lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subroutines
4500 will I<never> share the given variable.
4502 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
4503 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
4504 reference variables in outer subroutines are called or referenced, they
4505 are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
4507 =item Version number must be a constant number
4509 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
4510 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
4513 =item Warning: something's wrong
4515 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
4516 you called it with no args and C<$_> was empty.
4518 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
4520 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
4521 the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
4524 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
4526 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
4527 looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
4528 term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
4529 function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
4533 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
4537 but in actual fact, you got
4541 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
4543 =item Wide character in %s
4545 (W utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting
4546 one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print). The easiest
4547 way to quiet this warning is simply to add the C<:utf8> layer to the
4548 output, e.g. C<binmode STDOUT, ':utf8'>. Another way to turn off the
4549 warning is to add C<no warnings 'utf8';> but that is often closer to
4550 cheating. In general, you are supposed to explicitly mark the
4551 filehandle with an encoding, see L<open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>.
4553 =item Within []-length '%c' not allowed
4555 (F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by C<[TEMPLATE]> only if
4556 C<TEMPLATE> always matches the same amount of packed bytes that can be
4557 determined from the template alone. This is not possible if it contains an
4558 of the codes @, /, U, u, w or a *-length. Redesign the template.
4560 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
4562 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4563 before now. Check your control flow.
4565 =item %s "\x%s" does not map to Unicode
4567 When reading in different encodings Perl tries to map everything
4568 into Unicode characters. The bytes you read in are not legal in
4569 this encoding, for example
4571 utf8 "\xE4" does not map to Unicode
4573 if you try to read in the a-diaereses Latin-1 as UTF-8.
4575 =item 'X' outside of string
4577 (F) You had a (un)pack template that specified a relative position before
4578 the beginning of the string being (un)packed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4580 =item 'x' outside of string in unpack
4582 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
4583 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4585 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
4587 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
4588 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
4589 about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
4592 =item You need to quote "%s"
4594 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
4595 Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
4596 which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
4597 assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
4598 what you want, put an & in front.)
4600 =item Your random numbers are not that random
4602 (F) When trying to initialise the random seed for hashes, Perl could
4603 not get any randomness out of your system. This usually indicates
4604 Something Very Wrong.