3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (enabled by default).
12 (S) A severe warning (enabled by default).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
19 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
21 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
22 category is included with the classification letter in the description
25 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
26 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Severe warnings are always enabled, unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %x
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '%c' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only
60 after certain types. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
76 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
79 =item Ambiguous overloaded argument to %s resolved as %s
81 (W ambiguous) You called C<keys>, C<values> or C<each> on an object that had
82 overloading of C<%{}> or C<@{}> or both. In such a case, the object is
83 dereferenced according to its overloading, not its underlying reference type.
84 The warning is issued when C<%{}> overloading exists on a blessed arrayref,
85 when C<@{}> overloading exists on a blessed hashref, or when both overloadings
86 are defined (in which case C<%{}> is used). You can force the interpretation
87 of the object by explicitly dereferencing it as an array or hash instead of
88 passing the object itself to C<keys>, C<values> or C<each>.
90 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
92 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
93 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
94 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
95 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
97 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
99 (W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
100 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
101 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
103 =item Ambiguous use of %c resolved as operator %c
105 (W ambiguous) C<%>, C<&>, and C<*> are both infix operators (modulus,
106 bitwise and, and multiplication) I<and> initial special characters
107 (denoting hashes, subroutines and typeglobs), and you said something
108 like C<*foo * foo> that might be interpreted as either of them. We
109 assumed you meant the infix operator, but please try to make it more
110 clear -- in the example given, you might write C<*foo * foo()> if you
111 really meant to multiply a glob by the result of calling a function.
113 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s} resolved to %c%s
115 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<@{foo}>, which might be
116 asking for the variable C<@foo>, or it might be calling a function
117 named foo, and dereferencing it as an array reference. If you wanted
118 the varable, you can just write C<@foo>. If you wanted to call the
119 function, write C<@{foo()}> ... or you could just not have a variable
120 and a function with the same name, and save yourself a lot of trouble.
122 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s%s} resolved to %c%s%s
124 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<${foo[2]}> (where foo
125 represents the name of a Perl keyword), which might be looking for
126 element number 2 of the array named C<@foo>, in which case please write
127 C<$foo[2]>, or you might have meant to pass an anonymous arrayref to
128 the function named foo, and then do a scalar deref on the value it
129 returns. If you meant that, write C<${foo([2])}>.
131 In regular expressions, the C<${foo[2]}> syntax is sometimes necessary
132 to disambiguate between array subscripts and character classes.
133 C</$length[2345]/>, for instance, will be interpreted as C<$length>
134 followed by the character class C<[2345]>. If an array subscript is what
135 you want, you can avoid the warning by changing C</${length[2345]}/>
136 to the unsightly C</${\$length[2345]}/>, by renaming your array to
137 something that does not coincide with a built-in keyword, or by
138 simply turning off warnings with C<no warnings 'ambiguous';>.
140 =item Ambiguous use of -%s resolved as -&%s()
142 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<-foo>, which might be the
143 string C<"-foo">, or a call to the function C<foo>, negated. If you meant
144 the string, just write C<"-foo">. If you meant the function call,
147 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
149 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
150 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
151 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
153 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
155 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
156 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
157 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
158 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
159 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
161 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
168 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
170 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
171 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
172 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
173 a scalar value (the length of an array, or the population info of a
174 hash) and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
175 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
178 =item Args must match #! line
180 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
181 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
182 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
183 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
185 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
187 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
189 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
191 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element or a
192 subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
198 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
200 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
206 or a hash or array slice, such as:
208 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
209 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
211 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
213 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
214 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
217 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
219 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
220 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
221 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
223 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
225 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you
226 forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take care of transforming
227 data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing
228 the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer.
229 If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be
230 the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
232 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
234 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
235 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
237 =item assertion botched: %s
239 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
241 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
243 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
245 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
247 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
248 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
249 know which context to supply to the right side.
251 =item A thread exited while %d threads were running
253 (W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily the main
254 thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
255 Usually it's a good idea first to collect the return values of the
256 created threads by joining them, and only then to exit from the main
257 thread. See L<threads>.
259 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
261 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
262 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
264 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
266 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
267 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
268 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
274 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
276 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
277 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
280 bless $self, "$proto";
282 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
284 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
285 which is not in its key set.
287 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
289 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
290 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
292 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%x
294 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
295 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
296 outside any of those arenas.
298 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
300 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference-counted internal table of
301 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
302 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
303 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
305 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
307 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
308 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
309 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
310 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
313 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
315 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
317 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
319 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
320 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
321 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
322 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
323 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
324 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
327 =item Attempt to join self
329 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
330 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
331 to move the join() to some other thread.
333 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
335 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
336 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
337 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
338 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
339 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
342 =item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
344 (F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
345 compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
346 unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
349 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
351 (W) You tried to set the length of an array which has been freed. You
352 can do this by storing a reference to the scalar representing the last index
353 of an array and later assigning through that reference. For example
355 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
358 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
360 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
361 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
362 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
364 =item Attribute "locked" is deprecated
366 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the "locked"
367 attribute on a code reference. The :locked attribute is obsolete, has had no
368 effect since 5005 threads were removed, and will be removed in a future
371 =item Attribute "unique" is deprecated
373 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the "unique"
374 attribute on an array, hash or scalar reference. The :unique attribute has
375 had no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and will be removed in a future release
378 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
380 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
381 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
382 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
383 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
385 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
387 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
388 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
389 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
391 =item Bad filehandle: %s
393 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
394 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
395 open(), or did it in another package.
397 =item Bad free() ignored
399 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
400 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
401 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
403 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
404 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
405 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
409 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
411 =item Badly placed ()'s
413 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
414 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
417 =item Bad name after %s::
419 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
420 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
429 $sym = "mypack::$var";
431 =item Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
433 (F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the
436 =item Bad realloc() ignored
438 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
439 never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
440 by setting the environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
442 =item Bad symbol for array
444 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
445 wasn't a symbol table entry.
447 =item Bad symbol for dirhandle
449 (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
450 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
453 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
455 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
456 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
458 =item Bad symbol for hash
460 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
461 wasn't a symbol table entry.
463 =item Bareword found in conditional
465 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
466 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
467 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
471 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
474 use constant TYPO => 1;
475 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
477 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
479 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
481 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
482 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
483 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
485 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
487 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
488 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
489 you need to predeclare a package?
491 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
493 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
494 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
497 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
499 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
500 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
501 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
502 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
503 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
505 =item \1 better written as $1
507 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
508 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
509 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
510 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
511 there are more than 9 backreferences.
513 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
515 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
516 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
517 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
519 =item bind() on closed socket %s
521 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
522 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
524 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
526 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
527 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
529 =item "\b{" is deprecated; use "\b\{" instead
531 =item "\B{" is deprecated; use "\B\{" instead
533 (W deprecated, regexp) Use of an unescaped "{" immediately following a
534 C<\b> or C<\B> is now deprecated so as to reserve its use for Perl
535 itself in a future release.
537 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
539 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
541 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
543 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
546 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
548 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
549 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
550 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
552 =item Callback called exit
554 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
555 exited by calling exit.
557 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
559 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
560 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
561 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
562 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
563 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
564 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
565 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
566 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
568 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
570 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
571 compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
572 attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
573 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
575 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
577 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
578 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
580 =item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
582 (F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference in it,
583 then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax. The access
584 triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is no legal conversion
585 from that type of reference to a typeglob.
587 =item Cannot copy to %s in %s
589 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
590 be directly assigned to.
592 =item Cannot find encoding "%s"
594 (S io) You tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to a filehandle,
595 either with open() or binmode().
597 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
599 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
600 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
601 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
603 =item Can't bless non-reference value
605 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
606 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
608 =item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
610 (F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
611 a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
613 =item Can't "break" outside a given block
615 (F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
617 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
619 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
620 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
621 like this will reproduce the error:
624 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
625 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
627 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
629 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
630 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
631 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
632 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
634 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
636 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
637 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
638 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
639 Something like this will reproduce the error:
642 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
643 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
645 =item Can't chdir to %s
647 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
648 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
650 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
652 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
655 =item Can't coerce %s to %s in %s
657 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
658 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
668 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
670 =item Can't "continue" outside a when block
672 (F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
675 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
677 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
678 quotas or other plumbing problems.
680 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
682 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
683 "state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
685 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
687 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
688 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
690 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
692 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
695 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
697 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
698 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
699 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
701 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
703 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
704 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
705 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
707 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
709 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
710 regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the
711 regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
713 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
715 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
716 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
718 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
720 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
721 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
724 =item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
726 (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
727 or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
728 little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
729 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
731 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
733 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
734 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
735 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
736 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
737 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
738 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
743 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
744 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
745 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
747 =item Can't execute %s
749 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
750 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
752 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
754 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
755 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
757 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
759 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
760 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property?
761 See L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
762 for a complete list of available properties.
764 =item Can't find label %s
766 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
767 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
769 =item Can't find %s on PATH
771 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
774 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
776 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
777 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
778 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
780 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
782 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
783 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
784 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
786 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
788 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
789 unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
790 editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
792 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
794 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode
795 property (for example C<\p{Lu}> matches all uppercase
796 letters). If you did mean to use a Unicode property, see
797 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
798 for a complete list of available properties. If you didn't
799 mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either by C<\\p>
800 (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, or
805 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
808 =item Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
810 (W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be retried
813 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
815 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
816 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
817 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
818 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
819 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
820 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
821 the access-checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
822 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
823 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
824 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
825 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access-checking routine gave up
826 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access-checking
827 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
828 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
829 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
831 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
833 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
834 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
836 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
838 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
839 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
841 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
843 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
844 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
846 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
848 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
849 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
850 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
851 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
853 =item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
855 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
856 comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
857 as the reduce() function in List::Util).
859 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
861 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
864 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
866 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
867 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
868 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
869 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
871 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
873 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
874 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
875 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
876 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
877 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
878 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
880 =item Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
882 (F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a fatal error to
883 attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise non-numeric
886 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
888 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
889 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
890 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
891 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
892 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
893 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
896 =item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
898 (F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
899 package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
901 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
903 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension. This
904 may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one that is
905 incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known to happen
906 between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your dynamic
907 extension was built against an older version of the library that is
908 installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old dynamic
911 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
913 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
914 lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you want to
915 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
918 =item Can't localize through a reference
920 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
921 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
922 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
923 that $ref will still be a reference.
925 =item Can't locate %s
927 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
928 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
929 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
930 need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
931 the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
932 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
933 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
935 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
937 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
938 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
939 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
940 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
942 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
944 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
945 for example, C<foo.so> or C<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
946 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
948 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
950 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
951 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
952 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
954 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
956 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
957 doesn't seem to exist.
959 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
961 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
962 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
964 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
966 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
969 =item Can't modify %s in %s
971 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
972 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
974 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
976 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
979 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
981 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
982 such. See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
984 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
986 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
989 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
991 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
992 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
993 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
994 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
995 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
996 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
998 =item Can't open %s: %s
1000 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
1001 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
1002 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
1003 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
1006 =item Can't open a reference
1008 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
1009 using the 3-arg open() syntax:
1013 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
1014 open is not supported.
1016 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
1018 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
1019 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
1020 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
1021 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
1023 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
1025 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1026 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
1027 the command line for writing.
1029 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
1031 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1032 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
1033 command line for reading.
1035 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
1037 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1038 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
1039 the command line for writing.
1041 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
1043 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1044 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
1047 =item Can't open perl script%s
1049 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
1051 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
1052 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1053 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1055 =item Can't read CRTL environ
1057 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1058 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1059 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1060 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1063 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1065 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1066 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1067 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1068 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1069 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1070 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1072 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1074 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1075 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1076 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1078 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1080 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1081 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1083 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1085 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1086 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1088 =item Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
1090 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
1091 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
1092 the method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1094 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1096 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1097 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1100 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1102 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1103 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1105 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1107 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
1108 but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
1109 to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
1110 the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
1113 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1115 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1116 open already. Bizarre.
1118 =item Can't take log of %g
1120 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1121 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1122 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1125 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1127 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1128 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1129 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1131 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1133 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1134 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1135 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1137 =item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1139 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1140 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1141 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1142 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1144 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1146 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1147 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1148 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1150 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1152 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1153 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1155 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1157 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1158 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1160 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1162 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1163 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1164 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1166 =item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1168 (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1169 byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1170 allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1172 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1174 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1177 =item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1179 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1180 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1181 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1182 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1185 =item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1187 (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1188 that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1189 For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1190 is inside a big-endian group.
1192 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1194 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1195 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1196 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1197 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1200 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1202 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1203 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1204 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1206 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1208 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1209 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1211 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1213 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1214 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1215 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1217 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1219 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1220 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1221 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1222 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1223 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1226 =item Can't use "when" outside a topicalizer
1228 (F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1229 loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1230 from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1231 or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1233 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1235 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1236 references can be weakened.
1238 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1240 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1241 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1242 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1244 =item Character following "\c" must be ASCII
1246 (F|W deprecated, syntax) In C<\cI<X>>, I<X> must be an ASCII character.
1247 It is planned to make this fatal in all instances in Perl 5.16. In the
1248 cases where it isn't fatal, the character this evaluates to is
1249 derived by exclusive or'ing the code point of this character with 0x40.
1251 Note that non-alphabetic ASCII characters are discouraged here as well.
1253 =item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1259 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1260 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1261 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1265 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1268 =item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1274 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode expects
1275 all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved as if you
1278 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1280 =item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1286 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1287 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1288 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1290 pack("c", $x & 255);
1292 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1295 =item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1297 (W unpack) You tried something like
1299 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1301 where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1302 below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the value
1303 modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1305 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1307 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1309 (W pack) You tried something like
1311 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1313 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1314 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1315 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1317 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1319 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1321 (W unpack) You tried something like
1323 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1325 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1326 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1327 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1329 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1331 =item "\c{" is deprecated and is more clearly written as ";"
1333 (D deprecated, syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way
1334 to specify non-printable characters. You used it with a "{" which
1335 evaluates to ";", which is printable. It is planned to remove the
1336 ability to specify a semi-colon this way in Perl 5.16. Just use a
1337 semi-colon or a backslash-semi-colon without the "\c".
1339 =item "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"
1341 (W syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way to specify
1342 non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which is better
1343 written as simply itself, perhaps preceded by a backslash for non-word
1346 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1348 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1350 =item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1352 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1353 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1355 =item Closure prototype called
1357 (F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to an attribute
1358 handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure is created.
1359 This subroutine cannot be called.
1361 =item Code missing after '/'
1363 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be another
1364 template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1366 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
1368 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, no properties match it; all inverse properties do
1370 (W utf8) You had a code point above the Unicode maximum of U+10FFFF.
1372 Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code
1373 points, up to the limit of what is storable in an unsigned integer on
1374 your system, but these may not be accepted by other languages/systems.
1375 At one time, it was legal in some standards to have code points up to
1376 0x7FFF_FFFF, but not higher. Code points above 0xFFFF_FFFF require
1377 larger than a 32 bit word.
1379 None of the Unicode or Perl-defined properties will match a non-Unicode
1380 code point. For example,
1382 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\p{Any}/
1384 will not match, because the code point is not in Unicode. But
1386 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\P{Any}/
1390 =item %s: Command not found
1392 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1393 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1395 =item Compilation failed in require
1397 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1398 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1399 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1401 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1403 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1404 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1405 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1406 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1407 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1408 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1409 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1410 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1411 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1413 =item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1415 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1416 cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_broadcast()
1417 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1418 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1419 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread
1420 first to wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1421 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1424 =item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1426 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1427 cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_signal()
1428 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1429 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1430 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread
1431 first to wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1432 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1435 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1437 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1438 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1439 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1441 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1443 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1444 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1445 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1446 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1449 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1451 (F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to find
1452 the character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you
1453 forgot to load the corresponding C<charnames> pragma?
1457 =item Constant is not %s reference
1459 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1460 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1461 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1462 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1463 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1465 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1467 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1468 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1469 commentary and workarounds.
1471 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1473 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1474 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1477 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1479 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1480 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1482 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1484 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1486 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1488 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1489 expression compiler gave it.
1491 =item corrupted regexp program
1493 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1496 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
1498 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1500 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1502 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1503 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1506 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1508 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1509 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1510 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1511 which case it indicates something else.
1513 This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the F<perl> binary,
1514 setting the C pre-processor macro C<PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN> to the desired value.
1516 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1518 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1519 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1520 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1522 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1524 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1525 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1526 is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1528 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1530 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1531 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1533 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1535 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1536 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1537 that triggers this error.
1539 =item Deprecated character in \N{...}; marked by <-- HERE in \N{%s<-- HERE %s
1541 (D deprecated) Just about anything is legal for the C<...> in C<\N{...}>.
1542 But starting in 5.12, non-reasonable ones that don't look like names
1543 are deprecated. A reasonable name begins with an alphabetic character
1544 and continues with any combination of alphanumerics, dashes, spaces,
1545 parentheses or colons.
1547 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1549 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>.
1550 There has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1551 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1552 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1553 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1554 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1555 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1557 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1561 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1563 Beginning with perl 5.9.4, you can also use C<state> variables to
1564 have lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1566 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1568 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1570 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1571 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather than
1572 to create a dangling reference.
1574 =item Did not produce a valid header
1578 =item %s did not return a true value
1580 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1581 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1582 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1583 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1585 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1587 (W misc) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or
1590 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1592 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1593 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1596 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1598 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1599 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1604 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1605 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
1607 =item Document contains no data
1611 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1613 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1614 define a C<$VERSION.>
1616 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1618 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1619 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1621 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1623 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1625 =item do_study: out of memory
1627 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1629 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1631 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1632 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1633 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1634 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1635 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1636 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1637 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1638 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1640 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1642 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1643 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1645 =item dump is not supported
1647 (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1649 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1651 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1654 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1656 (W) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a type
1657 in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1659 =item elseif should be elsif
1661 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1662 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1663 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1664 unlikely to be what you want.
1668 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1669 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1670 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1672 =item entering effective %s failed
1674 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1675 effective uids or gids failed.
1677 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1679 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1680 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1681 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1683 =item Error converting file specification %s
1685 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1686 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1687 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1688 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1689 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1691 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1693 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1694 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1695 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1697 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval'
1699 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1700 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1701 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk,
1702 it is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by using the
1703 C<re 'eval'> pragma or by explicitly building the pattern from an
1704 interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval(). See
1705 L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1707 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1709 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1710 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1711 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1713 =item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1715 (F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
1716 any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
1718 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1721 =item Excessively long <> operator
1723 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1724 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1725 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1726 variable and glob that.
1728 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1730 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented on some systems, e.g., Symbian
1731 OS. See L<perlport>.
1733 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
1735 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1737 =item Exiting eval via %s
1739 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1740 goto, or a loop control statement.
1742 =item Exiting format via %s
1744 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1745 goto, or a loop control statement.
1747 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1749 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1750 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1751 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1753 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1755 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1756 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1758 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1760 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1761 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1763 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1765 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1766 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1767 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1768 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1770 =item %s: Expression syntax
1772 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1773 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1775 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1777 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
1778 CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
1779 queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
1781 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1783 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1784 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1785 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1786 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1787 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1789 =item Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
1791 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1792 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1793 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1794 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1796 =item fcntl is not implemented
1798 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1799 PDP-11 or something?
1801 =item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
1803 (F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
1806 =item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1808 (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string start with a length indicator
1809 which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1810 a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1811 C<u63> as the format.
1813 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1815 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1816 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1817 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1818 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1820 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1822 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1823 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1824 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with ">". If you intended only to
1825 read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>. Another possibility
1826 is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0 (also known as STDIN) for
1827 output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
1829 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1831 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1832 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
1835 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
1837 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1838 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
1840 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1842 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1843 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1844 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1847 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1849 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1850 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1851 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1854 =item Format not terminated
1856 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1857 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1859 =item Format %s redefined
1861 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1864 no warnings 'redefine';
1865 eval "format NAME =...";
1868 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1878 (or something like that).
1880 =item %s found where operator expected
1882 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
1883 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1884 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1885 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1887 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1889 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1891 =item gethostent not implemented
1893 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1894 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1897 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1899 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1900 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1902 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1904 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1905 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1907 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1909 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1910 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1911 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1913 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1915 (F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
1916 that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
1917 declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
1918 which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1920 =item glob failed (%s)
1922 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1923 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1924 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1925 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1926 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1927 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1928 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1929 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1930 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1931 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1932 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1934 =item Glob not terminated
1936 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1937 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1938 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1939 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1941 =item gmtime(%f) too large
1943 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was larger than
1944 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
1945 date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
1946 not-a-number value).
1948 =item gmtime(%f) too small
1950 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was smaller than
1951 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
1952 date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
1953 not-a-number value).
1955 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1957 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1958 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1960 =item goto must have label
1962 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1963 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1965 =item ()-group starts with a count
1967 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is supposed to follow
1968 something: a template character or a ()-group. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1970 =item %s had compilation errors.
1972 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1974 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1976 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1977 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1978 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1980 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1982 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1983 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
1985 =item %s has too many errors
1987 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1988 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1990 =item Having no space between pattern and following word is deprecated
1994 You had a word that isn't a regex modifier immediately following a pattern
1995 without an intervening space. For example, the two constructs:
1997 $a =~ m/$foo/sand $bar
1998 $a =~ m/$foo/s and $bar
2000 both currently mean the same thing, but it is planned to disallow the first
2001 form in Perl 5.16. And,
2003 $a =~ m/$foo/and $bar
2005 will be disallowed too.
2007 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
2009 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2010 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2011 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2013 =item Identifier too long
2015 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
2016 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
2017 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
2018 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
2020 =item Ignoring zero length \N{} in character class
2022 (W) Named Unicode character escapes (\N{...}) may return a
2023 zero length sequence. When such an escape is used in a character class
2024 its behaviour is not well defined. Check that the correct escape has
2025 been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
2027 =item Illegal binary digit %s
2029 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
2031 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
2033 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
2034 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
2037 =item Illegal character \%o (carriage return)
2039 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
2040 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
2041 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
2042 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
2043 to your Perl administrator.
2045 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
2047 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2048 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2050 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
2052 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
2053 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
2055 =item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
2057 (F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
2059 =item Illegal division by zero
2061 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
2062 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
2065 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
2067 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
2068 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
2069 number stopped before the illegal character.
2071 =item Illegal modulus zero
2073 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
2074 numbers don't take to this kindly.
2076 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
2078 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
2079 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
2081 =item Illegal octal digit %s
2083 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2085 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
2087 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2088 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
2090 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: -%c
2092 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
2093 following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtw]>.
2095 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
2097 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
2098 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
2099 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
2101 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
2103 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
2104 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
2105 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
2108 =item (in cleanup) %s
2110 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
2111 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
2112 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
2113 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
2114 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
2116 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
2117 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
2119 =item Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on parent '%s'
2121 (F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not
2122 C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See the C3
2123 documentation in L<mro> for more information.
2125 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
2127 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
2128 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
2129 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
2131 =item Infinite recursion in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2133 (F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input
2134 text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive patterns
2135 either consume text or fail.
2137 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2140 =item Initialization of state variables in list context currently forbidden
2142 (F) Currently the implementation of "state" only permits the initialization
2143 of scalar variables in scalar context. Re-write C<state ($a) = 42> as
2144 C<state $a = 42> to change from list to scalar context. Constructions such
2145 as C<state (@a) = foo()> will be supported in a future perl release.
2147 =item Insecure dependency in %s
2149 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
2150 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
2151 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
2152 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
2153 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
2154 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
2155 L<perlsec> for more information.
2157 =item Insecure directory in %s
2159 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2160 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
2161 the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
2164 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
2166 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2167 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
2168 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
2169 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
2170 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
2172 =item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2174 (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2175 or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2176 integers for your architecture.
2178 =item Integer overflow in %s number
2180 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2181 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2182 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2183 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2184 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
2185 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2186 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2187 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2190 =item Integer overflow in version
2192 (F) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for the
2193 size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
2194 because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use a
2195 element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by
2196 trying to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like
2199 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2201 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
2202 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2205 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2207 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2208 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2209 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2210 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2211 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2212 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
2214 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2216 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2217 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2220 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
2222 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
2223 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
2224 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
2225 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
2227 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2229 (F) The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2230 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2232 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2234 (F) The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2235 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2237 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2239 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2240 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
2242 =item Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2244 (W regexp) The numeric escape (for example C<\xHH>) of value < 256
2245 didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion
2246 from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma.
2247 The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD) instead.
2248 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2249 escape was discovered.
2251 =item Invalid mro name: '%s'
2253 (F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")> or C<use mro 'foo'>,
2254 where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO). Currently,
2255 the only valid ones supported are C<dfs> and C<c3>, unless you have loaded
2256 a module that is a MRO plugin. See L<mro> and L<perlmroapi>.
2258 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2260 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2261 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2262 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2263 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2264 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2266 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2268 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2269 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2271 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2273 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2274 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2275 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2278 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2280 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other
2281 than a colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2282 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2283 list was terminated too soon.
2285 =item Invalid strict version format (%s)
2287 (F) A version number did not meet the "strict" criteria for versions.
2288 A "strict" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2289 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2290 v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least three components.
2291 The parenthesized text indicates which criteria were not met.
2292 See the L<version> module for more details on allowed version formats.
2294 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2296 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2297 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2298 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2301 =item Invalid version format (%s)
2303 (F) A version number did not meet the "lax" criteria for versions.
2304 A "lax" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2305 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2306 v-string. If the v-string has fewer than three components, it must
2307 have a leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading 'v' is optional.
2308 Both decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a trailing "alpha"
2309 component separated by an underscore character after a fractional or
2310 dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized text indicates which
2311 criteria were not met. See the L<version> module for more details on
2312 allowed version formats.
2314 =item Invalid version object
2316 (F) The internal structure of the version object was invalid. Perhaps
2317 the internals were modified directly in some way or an arbitrary reference
2318 was blessed into the "version" class.
2320 =item ioctl is not implemented
2322 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2323 strange for a machine that supports C.
2325 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
2327 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2328 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
2330 =item IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
2332 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2333 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO, Perl must be configured
2336 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2338 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2339 neither as a system call nor an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2341 =item $* is no longer supported
2343 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older
2344 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. In
2345 previous versions of perl the use of C<$*> enabled or disabled multi-line
2346 matching within a string.
2348 Instead of using C<$*> you should use the C</m> (and maybe C</s>) regexp
2349 modifiers. You can enable C</m> for a lexical scope (even a whole file)
2350 with C<use re '/m'>. (In older versions: when C<$*> was set to a true value
2351 then all regular expressions behaved as if they were written using C</m>.)
2353 =item $# is no longer supported
2355 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older
2356 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported. You
2357 should use the printf/sprintf functions instead.
2359 =item `%s' is not a code reference
2361 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant
2362 needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
2365 =item `%s' is not an overloadable type
2367 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2370 =item junk on end of regexp
2372 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2374 =item Label not found for "last %s"
2376 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2377 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2380 =item Label not found for "next %s"
2382 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2383 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2386 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
2388 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2389 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2392 =item leaving effective %s failed
2394 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2395 effective uids or gids failed.
2397 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
2399 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2400 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2401 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2403 =item Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
2405 (F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse
2406 (using L<lex_stuff_pvn_flags|perlapi/lex_stuff_pvn_flags> or similar), but tried to insert a character
2407 that couldn't be part of the current input. This is an inherent pitfall
2408 of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the reasons to avoid it. Where it
2409 is necessary to stuff, stuffing only plain ASCII is recommended.
2411 =item Lexing code internal error (%s)
2413 (F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a
2416 =item listen() on closed socket %s
2418 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2419 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2422 =item localtime(%f) too large
2424 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was larger
2425 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2426 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
2427 not-a-number value).
2429 =item localtime(%f) too small
2431 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was smaller
2432 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2433 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
2434 not-a-number value).
2436 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
2438 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2439 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2441 =item Lost precision when %s %f by 1
2443 (W) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by one is too large
2444 for the underlying floating point representation to store accurately,
2445 hence the target of C<++> or C<--> is unchanged. Perl issues this warning
2446 because it has already switched from integers to floating point when values
2447 are too large for integers, and now even floating point is insufficient.
2448 You may wish to switch to using L<Math::BigInt> explicitly.
2450 =item lstat() on filehandle %s
2452 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2453 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2454 instead on the filehandle.)
2456 =item lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined
2458 (W misc) Making a subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it has been defined
2459 by declaring the subroutine with an lvalue attribute is not
2460 possible. To make the subroutine an lvalue subroutine add the
2461 lvalue attribute to the definition, or put the declaration before
2464 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
2466 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
2467 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
2468 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
2470 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2472 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2473 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2475 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2477 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2478 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2480 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2482 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2489 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2490 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2491 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2492 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2494 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2496 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2497 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2498 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2499 when the function is called.
2501 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2503 (S utf8) (F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2504 encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
2506 One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2507 you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
2508 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2510 If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2511 sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2512 set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2515 See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
2517 =item Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N
2519 (F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
2521 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2523 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2524 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2526 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2528 (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2529 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2531 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2533 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2534 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2536 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2538 (F) Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2539 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2541 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2543 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2544 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
2545 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2548 =item Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded
2550 (F) Perl aborted due to too high a number of signals pending. This
2551 usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
2552 too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
2553 resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
2554 safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
2556 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2558 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2559 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2562 =item % may not be used in pack
2564 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2565 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2566 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2568 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2570 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2571 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2573 =item Method %s not permitted
2577 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2579 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2580 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2581 ended earlier on the current line.
2583 =item Misplaced _ in number
2585 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2586 separate two digits.
2588 =item Missing argument in %s
2590 (W uninitialized) A printf-type format required more arguments than were
2593 =item Missing argument to -%c
2595 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2596 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2598 =item Missing braces on \N{}
2600 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2601 double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space
2602 (or comment) between the C<\N> and the C<{> in a regex with the C</x> modifier.
2603 This modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately
2606 =item Missing braces on \o{}
2608 (F) A C<\o> must be followed immediately by a C<{> in double-quotish context.
2610 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2612 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2613 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2615 =item Missing command in piped open
2617 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2618 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2621 =item Missing control char name in \c
2623 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2626 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2628 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2629 they have a name with which they can be found.
2631 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2633 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2634 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2635 can vary from one line to the next.
2637 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2639 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2640 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2642 =item Missing right brace on %s
2644 (F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}>, C<\P{...}>, or C<\N{...}>.
2646 =item Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N
2649 C<\N> has two meanings.
2651 The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed
2652 in braces, meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that name.
2653 Thus C<\N{ASTERISK}> is another way of writing C<*>, valid in both
2654 double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns, it doesn't
2655 have the meaning an unescaped C<*> does.
2657 Starting in Perl 5.12.0, C<\N> also can have an additional meaning (only) in
2658 patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short for
2659 C<[^\n]>, and like C<.> but is not affected by the C</s> regex modifier.)
2661 This can lead to some ambiguities. When C<\N> is not followed immediately by a
2662 left brace, Perl assumes the C<[^\n]> meaning. Also, if
2663 the braces form a valid quantifier such as C<\N{3}> or C<\N{5,}>, Perl assumes
2664 that this means to match the given quantity of non-newlines (in these examples,
2665 3; and 5 or more, respectively). In all other case, where there is a C<\N{>
2666 and a matching C<}>, Perl assumes that a character name is desired.
2668 However, if there is no matching C<}>, Perl doesn't know if it was mistakenly
2669 omitted, or if C<[^\n]{> was desired, and
2670 raises this error. If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant
2671 the latter, escape the brace with a backslash, like so: C<\N\{>
2673 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2675 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2676 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2679 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2681 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2682 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2683 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2685 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2687 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2688 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2689 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2691 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2694 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2696 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2697 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2700 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2701 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
2704 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2706 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2707 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2710 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2712 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2713 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2715 =item Module name must be constant
2717 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2719 =item Module name required with -%c option
2721 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2722 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2723 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2725 =item More than one argument to '%s' open
2727 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2728 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2729 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2730 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2732 =item msg%s not implemented
2734 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2736 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2738 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2739 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2741 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
2743 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
2744 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
2745 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2747 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2749 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2752 =item "%s" variable %s can't be in a package
2754 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2755 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2756 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2758 =item \N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...}
2760 (F) The new (5.12) meaning of C<\N> as C<[^\n]> is not valid in a bracketed
2761 character class, for the same reason that C<.> in a character class loses its
2762 specialness: it matches almost everything, which is probably not what you want.
2764 =item \N{NAME} must be resolved by the lexer
2766 (F) When compiling a regex pattern, an unresolved named character or sequence
2767 was encountered. This can happen in any of several ways that bypass the lexer,
2768 such as using single-quotish context, or an extra backslash in double quotish:
2770 $re = '\N{SPACE}'; # Wrong!
2771 $re = "\\N{SPACE}"; # Wrong!
2774 Instead, use double-quotes with a single backslash:
2776 $re = "\N{SPACE}"; # ok
2779 The lexer can be bypassed as well by creating the pattern from smaller
2783 /${re}{SPACE}/; # Wrong!
2785 It's not a good idea to split a construct in the middle like this, and it
2786 doesn't work here. Instead use the solution above.
2788 Finally, the message also can happen under the C</x> regex modifier when the
2789 C<\N> is separated by spaces from the C<{>, in which case, remove the spaces.
2791 /\N {SPACE}/x; # Wrong!
2794 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2796 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2797 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2798 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2799 provided for this purpose.
2801 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
2802 %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
2803 the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
2804 will not trigger this warning.
2806 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
2808 (F) The character constant represented by C<...> is not a valid hexadecimal
2809 number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use a character other than 0 - 9
2810 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
2812 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
2814 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
2815 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2817 =item Negative length
2819 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2820 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2822 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
2824 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
2825 greater than or equal to zero.
2827 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2829 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
2830 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
2831 expression about where the problem was discovered.
2833 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2834 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
2836 =item %s never introduced
2838 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2839 scope before it could possibly have been used.
2841 =item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
2843 (F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
2844 real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
2847 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
2849 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2850 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2851 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2852 securable. See L<perlsec>.
2854 =item No comma allowed after %s
2856 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2857 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2858 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2860 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2861 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2862 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2863 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2864 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
2865 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2866 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2867 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2868 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2869 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2870 this error was triggered?
2872 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
2874 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2875 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2876 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
2878 =item No DB::DB routine defined
2880 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2881 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2882 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
2885 =item No dbm on this machine
2887 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
2888 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
2890 =item No DB::sub routine defined
2892 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2893 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2894 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
2895 of each ordinary subroutine call.
2897 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
2899 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
2901 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2903 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2904 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2905 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2907 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
2909 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
2910 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2912 =item No input file after < on command line
2914 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2915 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2916 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2920 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2921 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2923 =item No next::method '%s' found for %s
2925 (F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
2926 in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
2927 it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
2928 or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
2930 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2932 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2933 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2935 =item No output file after > on command line
2937 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2938 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2939 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2941 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2943 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2944 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2945 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2947 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2949 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2950 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2951 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2953 =item No Perl script found in input
2955 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2956 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2958 =item No setregid available
2960 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2963 =item No setreuid available
2965 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2968 =item No %s specified for -%c
2970 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2971 you haven't specified one.
2972 =item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2974 (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed variable
2975 but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type. The indicated
2976 package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the L<fields> pragma.
2978 =item No such class %s
2980 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state" declaration, but
2981 this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
2983 =item No such hook: %s
2985 (F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl. Currently, Perl
2986 accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks
2988 =item No such pipe open
2990 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2991 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2992 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2994 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2996 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
2997 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
2998 names on your system.
3000 =item Not a CODE reference
3002 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3003 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3004 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3007 =item Not a format reference
3009 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
3010 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
3012 =item Not a GLOB reference
3014 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
3015 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
3016 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
3017 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3019 =item Not a HASH reference
3021 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
3022 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
3023 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3025 =item Not an ARRAY reference
3027 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
3028 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3029 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3031 =item Not a perl script
3033 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
3034 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
3037 =item Not a SCALAR reference
3039 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
3040 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3041 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3043 =item Not a subroutine reference
3045 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3046 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3047 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3050 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
3052 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
3053 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
3055 =item Not enough arguments for %s
3057 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
3059 =item Not enough format arguments
3061 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
3062 supplied. See L<perlform>.
3066 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3067 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3070 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
3072 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
3073 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
3074 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
3075 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
3076 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
3078 =item Non-octal character '%c'. Resolved as "%s"
3080 (W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character was unexpectedly
3081 encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value is as indicated.
3083 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
3085 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
3086 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
3087 select. See L<perlfunc/select>
3089 =item Null filename used
3091 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
3092 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
3094 =item NULL OP IN RUN
3096 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
3099 =item Null picture in formline
3101 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
3102 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
3103 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
3107 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
3109 =item NULL regexp argument
3111 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
3113 =item NULL regexp parameter
3115 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
3117 =item Number too long
3119 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
3120 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
3121 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
3122 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
3125 =item Number with no digits
3127 (F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like a number.
3128 This happens, for example with C<\o{}>, with no number between the braces.
3130 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
3132 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
3133 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
3136 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
3138 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
3139 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
3140 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
3142 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
3144 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
3146 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
3147 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
3149 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
3151 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3152 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3154 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
3156 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3157 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3159 =item Offset outside string
3161 (F|W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
3162 with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
3163 imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
3164 take place when going past the end of the string when either
3165 C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
3166 for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
3169 =item %s() on unopened %s
3171 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
3172 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
3173 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
3175 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
3177 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
3178 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3182 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3186 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3188 =item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
3190 (W io, deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
3191 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
3192 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3195 =item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
3197 (W io, deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
3198 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
3199 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3202 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
3204 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
3205 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
3206 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
3207 C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
3209 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
3211 (W) You performed an operation requiring Unicode semantics on a Unicode
3212 surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use of surrogates for anything but
3213 storing strings in UTF-16, but semantics are (reluctantly) defined for
3214 the surrogates, and they are to do nothing for this operation. Because
3215 the use of surrogates can be dangerous, Perl warns.
3217 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3218 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3220 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3221 C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
3223 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for non-Unicode code point 0x%X
3225 (W) You performed an operation requiring Unicode semantics on a code
3226 point that is not in Unicode, so what it should do is not defined. Perl
3227 has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn you.
3229 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3230 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3232 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3233 C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
3235 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
3237 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
3238 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
3239 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
3240 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
3243 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
3245 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
3246 in the current lexical scope.
3248 =item Out of memory!
3250 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3251 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
3252 no option but to exit immediately.
3254 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
3255 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
3256 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
3257 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
3258 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
3260 =item Out of memory during %s extend
3262 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
3263 the largest possible memory allocation.
3265 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
3267 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3268 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
3269 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
3270 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
3272 =item Out of memory during request for %s
3274 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
3275 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
3278 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
3279 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
3280 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
3281 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
3282 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
3283 where the failed request happened.
3285 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
3287 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
3288 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
3289 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
3291 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
3293 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
3294 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
3297 =item '.' outside of string in pack
3299 (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
3300 position to before the start of the packed string being built.
3302 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
3304 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3305 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3307 =item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
3309 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3310 the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
3311 UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3313 =item Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
3315 (F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was dereferenced,
3316 but the overloaded operation did not return a reference. See
3319 =item Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
3321 (F) An object with a C<qr> overload was used as part of a match, but the
3322 overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See L<overload>.
3324 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
3326 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
3327 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
3328 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
3329 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
3331 =item \p{} uses Unicode rules, not locale rules
3333 (W) You compiled a regular expression that contained a Unicode property
3334 match (C<\p> or C<\P>), but the regular expression is also being told to
3335 use the run-time locale, not Unicode. Instead, use a POSIX character
3336 class, which should know about the locale's rules.
3337 (See L<perlrecharclass/POSIX Character Classes>.)
3339 Even if the run-time locale is ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), which is a subset of
3340 Unicode, some properties will give results that are not valid for that
3343 Here are a couple of examples to help you see what's going on. If the
3344 locale is ISO 8859-7, the character at code point 0xD7 is the "GREEK
3345 CAPITAL LETTER CHI". But in Unicode that code point means the
3346 "MULTIPLICATION SIGN" instead, and C<\p> always uses the Unicode
3347 meaning. That means that C<\p{Alpha}> won't match, but C<[[:alpha:]]>
3348 should. Only in the Latin1 locale are all the characters in the same
3349 positions as they are in Unicode. But, even here, some properties give
3350 incorrect results. An example is C<\p{Changes_When_Uppercased}> which
3351 is true for "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS", but since the upper
3352 case of that character is not in Latin1, in that locale it doesn't
3353 change when upper cased.
3355 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
3357 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3358 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3362 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
3363 page. See L<perlform>.
3367 (P) An internal error.
3369 =item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
3371 (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
3372 an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
3373 platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
3374 enter this branch on this platform.
3376 =item panic: ck_grep
3378 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
3380 =item panic: ck_split
3382 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
3384 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
3386 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
3387 there are in the savestack.
3389 =item panic: del_backref
3391 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
3394 =item panic: Devel::DProf inconsistent subroutine return
3396 (P) Devel::DProf called a subroutine that exited using goto(LABEL),
3397 last(LABEL) or next(LABEL). Leaving that way a subroutine called from
3398 an XSUB will lead very probably to a crash of the interpreter. This is
3399 a bug that will hopefully one day get fixed.
3403 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
3404 it wasn't an eval context.
3406 =item panic: do_subst
3408 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
3411 =item panic: do_trans_%s
3413 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
3416 =item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
3418 (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
3423 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
3427 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
3428 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
3430 =item panic: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
3432 (P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries tried
3433 repeatedly, but each time something re-created entries in the glob. Most
3434 likely the glob contains an object with a reference back to the glob and a
3435 destructor that adds a new object to the glob.
3437 =item panic: hfreeentries failed to free hash
3439 (P) The internal routine used to clear a hash's entries tried repeatedly,
3440 but each time something added more entries to the hash. Most likely the hash
3441 contains an object with a reference back to the hash and a destructor that
3442 adds a new object to the hash.
3444 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
3446 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
3448 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
3450 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
3452 =item panic: kid popen errno read
3454 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
3458 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
3459 it wasn't a block context.
3461 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
3463 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
3466 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
3468 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
3469 invalid enum on the top of it.
3471 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
3473 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
3474 references to an object.
3478 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
3480 =item panic: memory wrap
3482 (P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
3484 =item panic: pad_alloc
3486 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3487 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3489 =item panic: pad_free curpad
3491 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3492 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3494 =item panic: pad_free po
3496 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3498 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
3500 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3501 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3503 =item panic: pad_sv po
3505 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3507 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
3509 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3510 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3512 =item panic: pad_swipe po
3514 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3516 =item panic: pp_iter
3518 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
3520 =item panic: pp_match%s
3522 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
3525 =item panic: pp_split
3527 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
3529 =item panic: realloc
3531 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
3533 =item panic: restartop
3535 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
3536 didn't supply the destination.
3540 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
3541 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
3543 =item panic: scan_num
3545 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
3547 =item panic: sv_chop %s
3549 (P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the
3550 scalar's string buffer.
3552 =item panic: sv_insert
3554 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
3557 =item panic: top_env
3559 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
3561 =item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
3563 (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't permitted
3566 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
3568 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
3569 to even) byte length.
3571 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
3573 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an odd (as opposed
3574 to even) byte length.
3578 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
3580 =item Parsing code internal error (%s)
3582 (F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API in
3585 =item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3587 (F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
3588 consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before the
3589 nesting limit is exceeded.
3591 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3594 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
3596 (W parenthesis) You said something like
3602 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
3604 Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
3606 =item C<-p> destination: %s
3608 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
3609 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
3610 redirected it with select().)
3612 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
3614 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3615 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
3616 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
3618 =item Perl_my_%s() not available
3620 (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
3621 so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
3622 conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
3623 '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3625 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
3627 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
3628 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
3629 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
3631 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3633 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3634 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
3636 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
3638 See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
3640 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3642 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3644 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3645 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3648 are supported and installed on your system.
3649 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3651 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3652 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3653 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
3654 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
3655 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
3656 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
3657 Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before you really fix
3658 the problem, however, you will get the same error message each time
3659 you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
3660 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3662 =item pid %x not a child
3664 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
3665 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
3666 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
3668 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
3670 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
3672 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3674 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
3675 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
3676 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
3677 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
3678 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
3680 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
3682 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
3683 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
3685 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3687 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
3688 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
3689 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
3690 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
3691 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3692 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3694 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3696 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
3697 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
3698 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
3699 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
3700 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3701 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3703 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3705 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
3706 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
3707 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
3708 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
3709 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3710 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3712 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
3714 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
3715 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
3716 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
3717 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
3719 You probably wrote something like this:
3726 when you should have written this:
3733 If you really want comments, build your list the
3734 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
3738 'b', # another comment
3741 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
3743 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
3744 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
3745 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
3748 You probably wrote something like this:
3752 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
3753 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
3757 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
3759 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
3760 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
3761 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
3762 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
3764 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
3766 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
3767 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
3769 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
3771 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
3772 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
3773 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
3774 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
3776 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
3778 (W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
3779 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
3780 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
3781 to the array you apparently lost track of.
3783 =item Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
3785 (W ambiguous) You said something like C<m/$\/> in a regex.
3786 The regex C<m/foo$\s+bar/m> translates to: match the word 'foo', the output
3787 record separator (see L<perlvar/$\>) and the letter 's' (one time or more)
3788 followed by the word 'bar'.
3790 If this is what you intended then you can silence the warning by using
3791 C<m/${\}/> (for example: C<m/foo${\}s+bar/>).
3793 If instead you intended to match the word 'foo' at the end of the line
3794 followed by whitespace and the word 'bar' on the next line then you can use
3795 C<m/$(?)\/> (for example: C<m/foo$(?)\s+bar/>).
3797 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
3799 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
3803 is now misinterpreted as
3807 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
3808 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
3809 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
3812 =item Premature end of script headers
3816 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
3818 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3819 before now. Check your control flow.
3821 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
3823 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
3824 before now. Check your control flow.
3826 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3828 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3829 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3830 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3831 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
3834 =item Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
3836 (W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is useless,
3837 since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments.
3839 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
3841 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
3842 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
3844 =item Prototype not terminated
3846 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
3849 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3851 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
3852 meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3853 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3855 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3857 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
3858 {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
3859 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3861 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3863 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
3864 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
3865 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
3866 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
3867 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
3869 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3872 =item Range iterator outside integer range
3874 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
3875 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
3876 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
3877 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
3879 =item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
3881 (W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
3882 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
3884 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
3886 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
3887 before now. Check your control flow.
3889 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
3891 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
3893 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
3895 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
3897 =item Reallocation too large: %x
3899 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
3901 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
3903 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
3906 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
3908 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
3909 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
3910 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
3912 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
3914 (F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, Perl
3915 believes it found an infinite loop in the C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a
3916 crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth.
3918 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
3920 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking
3921 a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance
3924 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
3926 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
3927 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
3928 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
3929 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
3931 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
3932 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
3933 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
3934 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
3936 =item Reference is already weak
3938 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
3939 Doing so has no effect.
3941 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
3943 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
3944 a reference count of other than 1.
3946 =item Reference to invalid group 0
3948 (F) You used C<\g0> or similar in a regular expression. You may refer to
3949 capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers (normal
3950 backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
3951 backreferences), but using 0 does not make sense.
3953 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3955 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
3956 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If you
3957 wanted to have the character with ordinal 7 inserted into the regular expression,
3958 prepend zeroes to make it three digits long: C<\007>
3960 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3963 =item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3965 (F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there are
3966 not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the expression before
3967 where the C<\g{-7}> was located.
3969 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3972 =item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3974 (F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k<NAME> >> in your regular
3975 expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses such
3976 as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<(?<NAME>...). Check if the name has been spelled
3977 correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
3979 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3982 =item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3984 (F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
3985 most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
3986 of the C<....> part.
3988 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3991 =item regexp memory corruption
3993 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
3994 expression compiler gave it.
3996 =item Regexp out of space
3998 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
4001 =item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompatible)
4003 (F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
4004 numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
4005 terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
4007 =item Replacement list is longer than search list
4009 (W misc) You have used a replacement list that is longer than the
4010 search list. So the additional elements in the replacement list
4013 =item Reversed %s= operator
4015 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
4016 always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
4018 =item rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4020 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either closed or not
4021 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4023 =item Scalars leaked: %d
4025 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
4026 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
4027 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
4028 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
4030 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
4032 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
4033 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
4034 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
4035 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4036 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4037 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4038 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4040 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
4041 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
4042 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4045 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
4047 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
4048 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
4049 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
4050 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4051 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4052 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4053 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4055 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
4056 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
4057 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4060 =item Search pattern not terminated
4062 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
4063 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4064 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
4066 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
4067 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
4068 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
4069 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
4071 =item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
4073 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
4076 The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
4077 C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
4078 parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
4079 the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
4081 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
4083 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
4084 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
4086 =item seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4088 (W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed or not
4089 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4091 =item select not implemented
4093 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
4095 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
4097 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
4098 the current implementation.
4100 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
4102 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
4103 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
4105 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
4107 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
4108 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
4110 =item sem%s not implemented
4112 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
4114 =item send() on closed socket %s
4116 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
4117 before now. Check your control flow.
4119 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4121 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <-- HERE
4122 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4125 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4127 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
4128 has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4129 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4131 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4133 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
4134 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4135 discovered. This happens when using the C<(?^...)> construct to tell
4136 Perl to use the default regular expression modifiers, and you
4137 redundantly specify a default modifier; or having a modifier that can't
4138 be turned off (such as C<"p"> or C<"l">) after a minus; or specifying
4139 more than one of the C<"d">, C<"l">, or C<"u"> modifiers. For other
4140 causes, see L<perlre>.
4142 =item Sequence \%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4144 (F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument following the escape
4145 sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly written.
4147 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4149 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
4150 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
4151 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4154 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4156 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains braces, they must balance
4157 for Perl to properly detect the end of the clause. The <-- HERE shows in
4158 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4161 =item "500 Server error"
4167 (A) This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
4168 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
4169 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
4170 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
4171 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
4172 produce a valid header".
4174 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
4176 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
4177 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
4178 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
4179 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
4180 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
4181 Please see the following for more information:
4183 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
4184 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
4185 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
4187 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
4189 =item setegid() not implemented
4191 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
4192 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4195 =item seteuid() not implemented
4197 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
4198 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4201 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
4203 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
4204 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
4207 =item setrgid() not implemented
4209 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
4210 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4213 =item setruid() not implemented
4215 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
4216 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4219 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
4221 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
4222 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
4223 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
4225 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
4227 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the
4228 world, because the world might have written on it already.
4230 =item Setuid script not plain file
4232 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that isn't read from a file,
4233 but from a socket, a pipe or another device.
4235 =item shm%s not implemented
4237 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
4239 =item !=~ should be !~
4241 (W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
4242 interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
4243 operators: probably not what you intended.
4245 =item <> should be quotes
4247 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
4250 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
4252 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
4253 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
4254 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
4255 probably not what you had in mind.
4257 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
4259 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
4262 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
4264 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
4265 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
4267 =item Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks encapsulation
4269 (F) You should not use the C<~~> operator on an object that does not
4270 overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's underlying structure for
4273 =item sort is now a reserved word
4275 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
4276 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
4278 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
4280 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
4281 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4283 =item splice() offset past end of array
4285 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
4286 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the end
4287 of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want, try
4288 explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset. See
4293 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
4294 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
4295 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
4297 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
4299 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
4300 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
4301 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
4302 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
4305 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
4307 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
4308 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4310 =item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
4312 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
4313 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
4314 C<can> may break this.
4316 =item Subroutine %s redefined
4318 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
4321 no warnings 'redefine';
4322 eval "sub name { ... }";
4325 =item Substitution loop
4327 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
4328 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
4329 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
4330 L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
4332 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
4334 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4335 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4336 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4338 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
4340 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4341 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4342 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4344 =item substr outside of string
4346 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
4347 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
4348 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
4349 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
4350 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
4352 =item sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
4354 (P) Perl tried to force the upgrade an SV to a type which was actually
4355 inferior to its current type.
4357 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4359 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
4360 branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
4361 contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
4362 clustering parentheses:
4364 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
4366 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4367 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4369 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4371 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is a
4372 number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
4373 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4375 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
4377 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
4378 and effective uids or gids.
4382 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
4386 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
4388 A keyword is misspelled.
4389 A semicolon is missing.
4391 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
4392 An opening or closing brace is missing.
4393 A closing quote is missing.
4395 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
4396 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
4397 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
4398 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
4399 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
4400 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
4401 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
4402 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
4403 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
4406 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
4408 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
4409 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
4412 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
4414 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
4415 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
4416 or "my $var" or "our $var".
4418 =item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
4420 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4422 =item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
4424 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4426 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
4428 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
4429 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
4430 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
4431 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
4433 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
4435 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4436 before now. Check your control flow.
4438 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
4440 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
4441 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
4443 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
4445 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
4446 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
4448 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
4450 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
4451 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4453 =item telldir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4455 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to telldir() is either closed or not really
4456 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4458 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
4460 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
4461 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
4470 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
4471 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
4473 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
4475 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
4476 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
4477 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
4478 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
4481 =item The %s function is unimplemented
4483 (F) The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
4484 to the probings of Configure.
4486 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
4488 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
4489 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
4490 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
4493 =item The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
4495 (F) This attribute was never supported on C<my> or C<sub> declarations.
4497 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
4499 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
4501 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
4502 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
4503 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
4504 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
4505 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
4506 target of the change to
4507 %ENV which produced the warning.
4509 =item thread failed to start: %s
4511 (W threads)(S) The entry point function of threads->create() failed for some reason.
4513 =item times not implemented
4515 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
4516 suspect you're not running on Unix.
4518 =item "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
4520 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4521 B<-T> option (or the B<-t> option), but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
4522 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
4523 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
4526 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
4527 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
4528 editing the #! line so that the B<-%c> option is a part of Perl's first
4529 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -%c> to C<perl -%c -n>.
4531 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
4532 B<-%c> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -%c scriptname>.
4534 =item To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
4536 (F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
4537 uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
4538 specified an illegal mapping.
4539 See L<perlunicode/"User-Defined Character Properties">.
4541 =item Too deeply nested ()-groups
4543 (F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level.
4545 =item Too few args to syscall
4547 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
4548 system call to call, silly dilly.
4550 =item Too late for "-%s" option
4552 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4553 B<-M>, B<-m> or B<-C> option.
4555 In the case of B<-M> and B<-m>, this is an error because those options are
4556 not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
4558 The B<-C> option only works if it is specified on the command line as well
4559 (with the same sequence of letters or numbers following). Either specify
4560 this option on the command line, or, if your system supports it, make your
4561 script executable and run it directly instead of passing it to perl.
4563 =item Too late to run %s block
4565 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
4566 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
4567 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
4568 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
4571 =item Too many args to syscall
4573 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
4575 =item Too many arguments for %s
4577 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
4581 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4582 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4586 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4587 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4589 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
4591 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
4592 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
4594 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
4596 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
4597 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
4598 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
4600 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
4602 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][],
4603 y/// or y[][] construct.
4605 =item '%s' trapped by operation mask
4607 (F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's
4608 disallowed. See L<Safe>.
4610 =item truncate not implemented
4612 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
4613 Configure knows about.
4615 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
4617 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
4618 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
4619 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
4620 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
4622 =item Type of argument to %s must be hashref or arrayref
4624 (F) You called C<keys>, C<values> or C<each> with an argument that was
4625 expected to be a reference to a hash or a reference to an array.
4627 =item umask not implemented
4629 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
4630 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
4632 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
4634 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
4636 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
4638 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4639 many execution contexts were entered and left.
4641 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
4643 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4644 many values were temporarily localized.
4646 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
4648 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4649 many blocks were entered and left.
4651 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
4653 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4654 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
4656 =item Undefined format "%s" called
4658 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4659 another package? See L<perlform>.
4661 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
4663 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
4664 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4666 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
4668 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
4669 since been undefined.
4671 =item Undefined subroutine called
4673 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
4674 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
4676 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
4678 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
4679 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4681 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
4683 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4684 another package? See L<perlform>.
4686 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
4688 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
4689 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
4692 =item %s: Undefined variable
4694 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4695 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4697 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
4699 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
4700 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
4702 =item Unicode non-character U+%X is illegal for open interchange
4704 (W utf8) Certain codepoints, such as U+FFFE and U+FFFF, are defined by the
4705 Unicode standard to be non-characters. Those are legal codepoints, but are
4706 reserved for internal use; so, applications shouldn't attempt to exchange
4707 them. If you know what you are doing you can turn
4708 off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4710 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
4712 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
4715 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
4717 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
4718 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
4719 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->, C<< <& >>, C<< >& >>.
4721 =item Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
4723 (W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
4724 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
4725 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
4726 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
4727 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
4728 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
4730 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
4732 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
4733 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
4734 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
4735 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
4737 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
4739 (W) You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
4741 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4743 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
4744 is not known. The condition may be lookahead or lookbehind (the condition
4745 is true if the lookahead or lookbehind is true), a (?{...}) construct (the
4746 condition is true if the code evaluates to a true value), or a number (the
4747 condition is true if the set of capturing parentheses named by the number
4750 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4751 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4753 =item Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
4755 (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4756 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4758 =item Unknown Unicode option value %x
4760 (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4761 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4763 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
4765 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
4766 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
4768 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a module
4769 (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have imported this module
4771 =item Unknown verb pattern '%s' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4773 (F) You either made a typo or have incorrectly put a C<*> quantifier
4774 after an open brace in your pattern. Check the pattern and review
4775 L<perlre> for details on legal verb patterns.
4779 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4781 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
4782 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
4783 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
4784 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4786 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4788 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
4789 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
4790 matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4791 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4793 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
4795 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
4796 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
4797 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
4798 you were last editing.
4800 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
4802 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
4803 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
4804 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
4807 =item Unrecognized character %s; marked by <-- HERE after %s near column %d
4809 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
4810 in your Perl script (or eval) near the specified column. Perhaps you tried
4811 to run a compressed script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
4813 =item Unrecognized escape \%c in character class passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4815 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4816 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
4817 understood literally, but this may change in a future version of Perl.
4818 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4819 escape was discovered.
4821 =item Unrecognized escape \%c passed through
4823 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4824 recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally, but this may
4825 change in a future version of Perl.
4827 =item Unrecognized escape \%s passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4829 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4830 recognized by Perl. The character(s) were understood literally, but this may
4831 change in a future version of Perl.
4832 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4833 escape was discovered.
4835 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
4837 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
4838 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
4841 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
4843 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
4844 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
4845 bad switch on your behalf.)
4847 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
4849 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
4850 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
4851 PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
4853 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
4855 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().