3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (enabled by default).
12 (S) A severe warning (enabled by default).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
19 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
21 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
22 category is included with the classification letter in the description
23 below. E.g. C<(W closed)> means a warning in the C<closed> category.
25 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
26 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Severe warnings are always enabled, unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %x
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '%c' allowed only after types %s in %s
59 (F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only
60 after certain types. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
76 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
79 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
81 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
82 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
83 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
84 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
86 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
88 (S ambiguous) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
89 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
90 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
92 =item Ambiguous use of -%s resolved as -&%s()
94 (S ambiguous) You wrote something like C<-foo>, which might be the
95 string C<"-foo">, or a call to the function C<foo>, negated. If you meant
96 the string, just write C<"-foo">. If you meant the function call,
99 =item Ambiguous use of %c resolved as operator %c
101 (S ambiguous) C<%>, C<&>, and C<*> are both infix operators (modulus,
102 bitwise and, and multiplication) I<and> initial special characters
103 (denoting hashes, subroutines and typeglobs), and you said something
104 like C<*foo * foo> that might be interpreted as either of them. We
105 assumed you meant the infix operator, but please try to make it more
106 clear -- in the example given, you might write C<*foo * foo()> if you
107 really meant to multiply a glob by the result of calling a function.
109 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s} resolved to %c%s
111 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<@{foo}>, which might be
112 asking for the variable C<@foo>, or it might be calling a function
113 named foo, and dereferencing it as an array reference. If you wanted
114 the variable, you can just write C<@foo>. If you wanted to call the
115 function, write C<@{foo()}> ... or you could just not have a variable
116 and a function with the same name, and save yourself a lot of trouble.
118 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s[...]} resolved to %c%s[...]
120 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s{...}} resolved to %c%s{...}
122 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<${foo[2]}> (where foo represents
123 the name of a Perl keyword), which might be looking for element number
124 2 of the array named C<@foo>, in which case please write C<$foo[2]>, or you
125 might have meant to pass an anonymous arrayref to the function named
126 foo, and then do a scalar deref on the value it returns. If you meant
127 that, write C<${foo([2])}>.
129 In regular expressions, the C<${foo[2]}> syntax is sometimes necessary
130 to disambiguate between array subscripts and character classes.
131 C</$length[2345]/>, for instance, will be interpreted as C<$length> followed
132 by the character class C<[2345]>. If an array subscript is what you
133 want, you can avoid the warning by changing C</${length[2345]}/> to the
134 unsightly C</${\$length[2345]}/>, by renaming your array to something
135 that does not coincide with a built-in keyword, or by simply turning
136 off warnings with C<no warnings 'ambiguous';>.
138 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
140 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
141 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
142 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
144 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
146 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
147 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
148 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
149 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
150 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
152 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
159 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
161 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
162 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
163 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
164 a scalar value (the length of an array, or the population info of a
165 hash) and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
166 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
169 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
171 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
173 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
175 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
176 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
177 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
179 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
181 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O
182 system you forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers
183 take care of transforming data between external and internal
184 representations.) Perl stopped parsing the layer list at this
185 point and did not attempt to push this layer. If your program
186 didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the
187 result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
189 =item Argument "%s" treated as 0 in increment (++)
191 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to the C<++>
192 operator which expects either a number or a string matching
193 C</^[a-zA-Z]*[0-9]*\z/>. See L<perlop/Auto-increment and
194 Auto-decrement> for details.
196 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
198 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
199 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
201 =item A sequence of multiple spaces in a charnames alias definition is deprecated
203 (D deprecated) You defined a character name which had multiple space
204 characters in a row. Change them to single spaces. Usually these
205 names are defined in the C<:alias> import argument to C<use charnames>, but
206 they could be defined by a translator installed into C<$^H{charnames}>.
207 See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
209 =item assertion botched: %s
211 (X) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
213 =item Assertion %s failed: file "%s", line %d
215 (X) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
217 =item Assigning non-zero to $[ is no longer possible
219 (F) When the "array_base" feature is disabled (e.g., under C<use v5.16;>)
220 the special variable C<$[>, which is deprecated, is now a fixed zero value.
222 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
224 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
225 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
226 know which context to supply to the right side.
228 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
230 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
231 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
233 =item Attempt to bless into a freed package
235 (F) You wrote C<bless $foo> with one argument after somehow causing
236 the current package to be freed. Perl cannot figure out what to
237 do, so it throws up in hands in despair.
239 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
241 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
242 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
243 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
249 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
251 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
252 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
255 bless $self, "$proto";
257 =item Attempt to clear deleted array
259 (S debugging) An array was assigned to when it was being freed.
260 Freed values are not supposed to be visible to Perl code. This
261 can also happen if XS code calls C<av_clear> from a custom magic
262 callback on the array.
264 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
266 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
267 which is not in its key set.
269 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
271 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
272 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
274 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%x
276 (S internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
277 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
278 outside any of those arenas.
280 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string '%s'%s
282 (S internal) Perl maintains a reference-counted internal table of
283 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
284 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
285 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
287 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely: SV 0x%x
289 (S debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
290 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
291 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
292 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
295 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
297 (S internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
299 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar: SV 0x%x
301 (S internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
302 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
303 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
304 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
305 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
306 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
309 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
311 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
312 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
313 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
314 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
315 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
318 =item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
320 (F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
321 compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
322 unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
325 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
327 (W misc) You tried to set the length of an array which has
328 been freed. You can do this by storing a reference to the
329 scalar representing the last index of an array and later
330 assigning through that reference. For example
332 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
335 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
337 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
338 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
339 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
341 =item Attribute "locked" is deprecated
343 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the
344 "locked" attribute on a code reference. The :locked attribute is
345 obsolete, has had no effect since 5005 threads were removed, and
346 will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
348 =item Attribute prototype(%s) discards earlier prototype attribute in same sub
350 (W misc) A sub was declared as sub foo : prototype(A) : prototype(B) {}, for
351 example. Since each sub can only have one prototype, the earlier
352 declaration(s) are discarded while the last one is applied.
354 =item Attribute "unique" is deprecated
356 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify
357 the "unique" attribute on an array, hash or scalar reference.
358 The :unique attribute has had no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and
359 will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
361 =item av_reify called on tied array
363 (S debugging) This indicates that something went wrong and Perl got I<very>
364 confused about C<@_> or C<@DB::args> being tied.
366 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
368 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
369 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
370 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
371 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
373 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
375 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
376 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
377 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
379 =item Bad filehandle: %s
381 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
382 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
383 open(), or did it in another package.
385 =item Bad free() ignored
387 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
388 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
389 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
391 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
392 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
393 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
397 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
399 =item Badly placed ()'s
401 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
402 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
405 =item Bad name after %s
407 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
408 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
417 $sym = "mypack::$var";
419 =item Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
421 (F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the
424 =item Bad realloc() ignored
426 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that
427 had never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can
428 be disabled by setting the environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
430 =item Bad symbol for array
432 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
433 wasn't a symbol table entry.
435 =item Bad symbol for dirhandle
437 (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
438 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
440 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
442 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
443 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
445 =item Bad symbol for hash
447 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
448 wasn't a symbol table entry.
450 =item Bareword found in conditional
452 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
453 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
454 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
458 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
461 use constant TYPO => 1;
462 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
464 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
466 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
468 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
469 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
470 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
472 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
474 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
475 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
476 you need to predeclare a package?
478 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
480 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
481 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
484 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
486 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
487 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
488 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
489 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
490 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
492 =item \%d better written as $%d
494 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
495 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
496 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
497 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
498 there are more than 9 backreferences.
500 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
502 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
503 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
504 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
506 =item bind() on closed socket %s
508 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
509 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
511 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
513 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
514 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
516 =item "\b{" is deprecated; use "\b\{" or "\b[{]" instead in regex; marked
517 by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
519 =item "\B{" is deprecated; use "\B\{" or "\B[{]" instead in regex; marked
520 by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
522 (D deprecated) Use of an unescaped "{" immediately following
523 a C<\b> or C<\B> is now deprecated so as to reserve its use for Perl
524 itself in a future release. You can either precede the brace
525 with a backslash, or enclose it in square brackets; the latter
526 is the way to go if the pattern delimiters are C<{}>.
528 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
530 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
532 =item Bizarre copy of %s
534 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
537 =item Bizarre SvTYPE [%d]
539 (P) When starting a new thread or returning values from a thread, Perl
540 encountered an invalid data type.
542 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
544 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
545 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
546 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
548 =item Callback called exit
550 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
551 exited by calling exit.
553 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
555 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
556 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
557 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
558 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
559 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
560 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
561 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
562 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
564 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
566 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
567 compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
568 attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
569 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
571 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
573 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
574 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
576 =item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
578 (F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference
579 in it, then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax.
580 The access triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is
581 no legal conversion from that type of reference to a typeglob.
583 =item Cannot copy to %s
585 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
586 be directly assigned to.
588 =item Cannot find encoding "%s"
590 (S io) You tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to a filehandle,
591 either with open() or binmode().
593 =item Cannot set tied @DB::args
595 (F) C<caller> tried to set C<@DB::args>, but found it tied. Tying C<@DB::args>
596 is not supported. (Before this error was added, it used to crash.)
598 =item Cannot tie unreifiable array
600 (P) You somehow managed to call C<tie> on an array that does not
601 keep a reference count on its arguments and cannot be made to
602 do so. Such arrays are not even supposed to be accessible to
603 Perl code, but are only used internally.
605 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
607 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
608 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
609 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
611 =item Can't bless non-reference value
613 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
614 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
616 =item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
618 (F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
619 a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
621 =item Can't "break" outside a given block
623 (F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
625 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
627 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
628 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
629 like this will reproduce the error:
632 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
633 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
635 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
637 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
638 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
639 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
640 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
642 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
644 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
645 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
646 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
647 Something like this will reproduce the error:
650 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
651 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
653 =item Can't call mro_isa_changed_in() on anonymous symbol table
655 (P) Perl got confused as to whether a hash was a plain hash or a
656 symbol table hash when trying to update @ISA caches.
658 =item Can't call mro_method_changed_in() on anonymous symbol table
660 (F) An XS module tried to call C<mro_method_changed_in> on a hash that was
661 not attached to the symbol table.
663 =item Can't chdir to %s
665 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but F</foo/bar> is not a directory
666 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
668 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
670 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
673 =item Can't coerce %s to %s in %s
675 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
676 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
686 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
688 =item Can't "continue" outside a when block
690 (F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
693 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
695 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
696 quotas or other plumbing problems.
698 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
700 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
701 "state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
703 =item Can't "default" outside a topicalizer
705 (F) You have used a C<default> block that is neither inside a
706 C<foreach> loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is
707 issued on exit from the C<default> block, so you won't get the
708 error if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
710 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
712 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
713 a file in /dev, a FIFO or an uneditable directory. The file was ignored.
715 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
717 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
720 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
722 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
723 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
724 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
726 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
728 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
729 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
730 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
732 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
734 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
735 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
737 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
739 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
740 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
743 =item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
745 (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
746 or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
747 little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
748 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
750 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
752 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
753 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
754 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
755 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
756 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
757 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
762 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
763 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
764 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
766 =item Can't execute %s
768 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
769 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
771 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
773 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
774 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
776 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
778 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
779 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property?
780 See L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
781 for a complete list of available official properties.
783 =item Can't find label %s
785 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
786 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
788 =item Can't find %s on PATH
790 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
793 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
795 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
796 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
797 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
799 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
801 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
802 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
803 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
805 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
807 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
808 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag or there
809 may not be a linebreak after it. A good programmer's editor will have
810 a way to help you find these characters (or lack of characters). See
811 L<perlop> for the full details on here-documents.
813 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
815 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode
816 property (for example C<\p{Lu}> matches all uppercase
817 letters). If you did mean to use a Unicode property, see
818 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
819 for a complete list of available properties. If you didn't
820 mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either by
821 C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, or
826 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
829 =item Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
831 (W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be retried
834 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
836 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
837 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
838 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
839 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
840 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
841 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
842 the access-checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
843 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
844 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
845 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
846 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access-checking routine gave up
847 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access-checking
848 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
849 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
850 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
852 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
854 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
855 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
857 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
859 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
860 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
862 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
864 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
865 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
867 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
869 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
870 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
871 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
872 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
874 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
876 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
879 =item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
881 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
882 comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
883 as the reduce() function in List::Util).
885 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
887 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
888 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
889 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
890 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
892 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
894 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
895 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
896 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
897 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
898 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
899 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
901 =item Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
903 (F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a fatal error to
904 attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise non-numeric
907 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
909 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
910 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
911 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
912 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
913 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
914 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
917 =item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
919 (F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
920 package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
922 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
924 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension.
925 This may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one
926 that is incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known
927 to happen between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your
928 dynamic extension was built against an older version of the library
929 that is installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old
932 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
934 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
935 lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you
936 want to localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with
939 =item Can't localize through a reference
941 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
942 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
943 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
944 that $ref will still be a reference.
946 =item Can't locate %s
948 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be found.
949 Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC, unless
950 the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
951 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the
952 extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
953 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
954 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
956 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
958 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
959 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
960 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
961 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
963 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
965 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
966 for example, F<foo.so> or F<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
967 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
969 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
971 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
972 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
973 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
975 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
977 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
978 doesn't seem to exist.
980 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
982 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
983 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
985 =item Can't make list assignment to %ENV on this system
987 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
990 =item Can't make loaded symbols global on this platform while loading %s
992 (S) A module passed the flag 0x01 to DynaLoader::dl_load_file() to request
993 that symbols from the stated file are made available globally within the
994 process, but that functionality is not available on this platform. Whilst
995 the module likely will still work, this may prevent the perl interpreter
996 from loading other XS-based extensions which need to link directly to
997 functions defined in the C or XS code in the stated file.
999 =item Can't modify %s in %s
1001 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
1002 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
1004 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
1006 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
1009 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
1011 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
1012 such. See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1014 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
1016 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
1019 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
1021 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
1022 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1023 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
1024 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1025 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
1026 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
1030 (F) You tried to run a perl built with MAD support with
1031 the PERL_XMLDUMP environment variable set, but the file
1032 named by that variable could not be opened.
1034 =item Can't open %s: %s
1036 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
1037 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
1038 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually
1039 this is because you don't have read permission for a file which
1040 you named on the command line.
1042 (F) You tried to call perl with the B<-e> switch, but F</dev/null> (or
1043 your operating system's equivalent) could not be opened.
1045 =item Can't open a reference
1047 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
1048 using the 3-arg open() syntax:
1052 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
1053 open is not supported.
1055 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
1057 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
1058 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
1059 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
1060 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
1062 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
1064 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1065 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
1066 the command line for writing.
1068 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
1070 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1071 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
1072 command line for reading.
1074 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
1076 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1077 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
1078 the command line for writing.
1080 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
1082 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1083 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
1086 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
1088 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
1090 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
1091 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1092 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1094 =item Can't read CRTL environ
1096 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1097 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1098 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1099 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1102 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1104 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1105 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1106 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1107 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1108 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1109 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1111 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1113 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1114 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1115 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1117 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1119 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1120 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1122 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1124 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1125 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1127 =item Can't reset %ENV on this system
1129 (F) You called C<reset('E')> or similar, which tried to reset
1130 all variables in the current package beginning with "E". In
1131 the main package, that includes %ENV. Resetting %ENV is not
1132 supported on some systems, notably VMS.
1134 =item Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
1136 (F)(P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1137 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1138 package. If the method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1140 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1142 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1143 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1146 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1148 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1149 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1151 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1153 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue
1154 subroutine, but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl
1155 think you meant to return only one value. You probably meant to
1156 write parentheses around the call to the subroutine, which tell
1157 Perl that the call should be in list context.
1159 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1161 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1162 open already. Bizarre.
1164 =item Can't take log of %g
1166 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1167 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1168 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1171 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1173 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1174 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1175 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1177 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1179 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1180 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1181 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1183 =item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1185 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1186 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1187 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1188 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1190 =item Can't use '%c' after -mname
1192 (F) You tried to call perl with the B<-m> switch, but you put something
1193 other than "=" after the module name.
1195 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1197 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1198 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1199 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1201 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1203 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1204 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1206 =item Can't use bareword ("%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 %! because Errno.pm is not available
1213 (F) The first time the C<%!> hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1214 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1215 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1217 =item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1219 (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1220 byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1221 allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1223 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1225 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1228 =item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1230 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1231 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1232 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1233 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1236 =item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1238 (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1239 that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1240 For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1241 is inside a big-endian group.
1243 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1245 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1246 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1247 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1248 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1251 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1253 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1254 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1255 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1257 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1259 =item Can't use string ("%s"...) as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1261 (F) You've told Perl to dereference a string, something which
1262 C<use strict> blocks to prevent it happening accidentally. See
1263 L<perlref/"Symbolic references">. This can be triggered by an C<@> or C<$>
1264 in a double-quoted string immediately before interpolating a variable,
1265 for example in C<"user @$twitter_id">, which says to treat the contents
1266 of C<$twitter_id> as an array reference; use a C<\> to have a literal C<@>
1267 symbol followed by the contents of C<$twitter_id>: C<"user \@$twitter_id">.
1269 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1271 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1272 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1273 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1275 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1277 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1278 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1279 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1280 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1281 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1284 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1286 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1287 references can be weakened.
1289 =item Can't "when" outside a topicalizer
1291 (F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1292 loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1293 from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1294 or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1296 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1298 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1299 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1300 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1302 =item Character following "\c" must be ASCII
1304 (F)(D deprecated, syntax) In C<\cI<X>>, I<X> must be an ASCII character.
1305 It is planned to make this fatal in all instances in Perl v5.20. In
1306 the cases where it isn't fatal, the character this evaluates to is
1307 derived by exclusive or'ing the code point of this character with 0x40.
1309 Note that non-alphabetic ASCII characters are discouraged here as well,
1310 and using non-printable ones will be deprecated starting in v5.18.
1312 =item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1318 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1319 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1320 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1324 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1327 =item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1333 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1334 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1335 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1337 pack("c", $x & 255);
1339 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1342 =item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1344 (W unpack) You tried something like
1346 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1348 where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1349 below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the
1350 value modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1352 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1354 =item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1360 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode
1361 expects all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved
1364 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1366 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1368 (W pack) You tried something like
1370 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1372 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1373 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1374 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1376 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1378 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1380 (W unpack) You tried something like
1382 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1384 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1385 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1386 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1388 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1390 =item "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"
1392 (W syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way to specify
1393 non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which is better
1394 written as simply itself, perhaps preceded by a backslash for non-word
1397 =item Cloning substitution context is unimplemented
1399 (F) Creating a new thread inside the C<s///> operator is not supported.
1401 =item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1403 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1404 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1406 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1408 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1410 =item Closure prototype called
1412 (F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to an attribute
1413 handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure is created.
1414 This subroutine cannot be called.
1416 =item Code missing after '/'
1418 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be
1419 another template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1421 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
1423 (S non_unicode) You had a code point above the Unicode maximum
1426 Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code points, up
1427 to the limit of what is storable in an unsigned integer on your system,
1428 but these may not be accepted by other languages/systems. At one time,
1429 it was legal in some standards to have code points up to 0x7FFF_FFFF,
1430 but not higher. Code points above 0xFFFF_FFFF require larger than a
1433 =item %s: Command not found
1435 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> or another shell
1436 shell instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
1437 into Perl yourself. The #! line at the top of your file could look like
1441 =item Compilation failed in require
1443 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1444 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1445 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1447 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1449 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1450 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1451 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1452 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1453 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1454 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1455 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1456 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1457 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1459 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1461 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1462 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1463 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1465 =item Constant(%s): Call to &{$^H{%s}} did not return a defined value
1467 (F) The subroutine registered to handle constant overloading
1468 (see L<overload>) or a custom charnames handler (see
1469 L<charnames/CUSTOM TRANSLATORS>) returned an undefined value.
1471 =item Constant(%s): $^H{%s} is not defined
1473 (F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to define an
1474 overloaded constant. Perhaps you forgot to load the corresponding
1475 L<overload> pragma?.
1477 =item Constant is not %s reference
1479 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1480 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1481 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1482 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1483 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1485 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1487 (W redefine)(S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously
1488 been eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions">
1489 for commentary and workarounds.
1491 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1493 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1494 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1497 =item Constant(%s) unknown
1499 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting
1500 to define an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the
1501 character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you
1502 forgot to load the corresponding L<overload> pragma?.
1504 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1506 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1507 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1509 =item &CORE::%s cannot be called directly
1511 (F) You tried to call a subroutine in the C<CORE::> namespace
1512 with C<&foo> syntax or through a reference. Some subroutines
1513 in this package cannot yet be called that way, but must be
1514 called as barewords. Something like this will work:
1516 BEGIN { *shove = \&CORE::push; }
1517 shove @array, 1,2,3; # pushes on to @array
1519 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1521 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1523 =item Corrupted regexp opcode %d > %d
1525 (P) This is either an error in Perl, or, if you're using
1526 one, your L<custom regular expression engine|perlreapi>. If not the
1527 latter, report the problem through the L<perlbug> utility.
1529 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1531 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1532 expression compiler gave it.
1534 =item corrupted regexp program
1536 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1539 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
1541 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1543 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1545 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1546 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1550 The following are used in lib/diagnostics.t for testing two =items that
1551 share the same description. Changes here need to be propagated to there
1553 =item Deep recursion on anonymous subroutine
1555 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1557 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1558 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1559 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1560 which case it indicates something else.
1562 This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the F<perl> binary,
1563 setting the C pre-processor macro C<PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN> to the desired value.
1565 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1567 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1568 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1569 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1571 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1573 (D deprecated) C<defined()> is not usually right on hashes and has been
1574 discouraged since 5.004.
1576 Although C<defined %hash> is false on a plain not-yet-used hash, it
1577 becomes true in several non-obvious circumstances, including iterators,
1578 weak references, stash names, even remaining true after C<undef %hash>.
1579 These things make C<defined %hash> fairly useless in practice.
1581 If a check for non-empty is what you wanted then just put it in boolean
1582 context (see L<perldata/Scalar values>):
1588 If you had C<defined %Foo::Bar::QUUX> to check whether such a package
1589 variable exists then that's never really been reliable, and isn't
1590 a good way to enquire about the features of a package, or whether
1594 =item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by
1595 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
1597 (F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
1598 most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
1599 of the C<....> part.
1601 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
1604 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1606 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1607 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1609 =item delete argument is index/value array slice, use array slice
1611 (F) You used index/value array slice syntax (C<%array[...]>) as
1612 the argument to C<delete>. You probably meant C<@array[...]> with
1613 an @ symbol instead.
1615 =item delete argument is key/value hash slice, use hash slice
1617 (F) You used key/value hash slice syntax (C<%hash{...}>) as the argument to
1618 C<delete>. You probably meant C<@hash{...}> with an @ symbol instead.
1620 =item delete argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
1622 (F) The argument to C<delete> must be either a hash or array element,
1628 or a hash or array slice, such as:
1630 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
1631 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
1633 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1635 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1636 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1637 that triggers this error.
1639 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1641 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>. There
1642 has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1643 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1644 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1645 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1646 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1647 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1649 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1653 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1655 Beginning with perl 5.9.4, you can also use C<state> variables to have
1656 lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1658 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1660 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1662 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1663 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather
1664 than to create a dangling reference.
1666 =item Did not produce a valid header
1670 =item %s did not return a true value
1672 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1673 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1674 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1675 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1677 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1679 (W misc) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or
1682 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1684 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1685 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1688 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1690 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1691 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1696 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1697 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
1699 =item Document contains no data
1703 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1705 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1706 define a C<$VERSION>.
1708 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1710 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1711 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1713 =item Don't know how to get file name
1715 (P) C<PerlIO_getname>, a perl internal I/O function specific to VMS, was
1716 somehow called on another platform. This should not happen.
1718 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type \%o
1720 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1722 =item do_study: out of memory
1724 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1726 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1728 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1729 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1730 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1731 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1732 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1733 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1734 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1735 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1737 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1739 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1740 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1742 =item dump is not supported
1744 (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1746 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1748 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1751 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1753 (W unpack) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a
1754 type in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1756 =item each on reference is experimental
1758 (S experimental::autoderef) C<each> with a scalar argument is experimental
1759 and may change or be removed in a future Perl version. If you want to
1760 take the risk of using this feature, simply disable this warning:
1762 no warnings "experimental::autoderef";
1764 =item elseif should be elsif
1766 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks
1767 it's ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1768 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1769 unlikely to be what you want.
1771 =item Empty \%c{} in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
1773 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1774 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1775 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1777 =item entering effective %s failed
1779 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1780 effective uids or gids failed.
1782 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1784 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1785 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1786 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1788 =item Error converting file specification %s
1790 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1791 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1792 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1793 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1794 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1796 =item Escape literal pattern white space under /x
1798 (D deprecated) You compiled a regular expression pattern with C</x> to
1799 ignore white space, and you used, as a literal, one of the characters
1800 that Perl plans to eventually treat as white space. The character must
1801 be escaped somehow, or it will work differently on a future Perl that
1802 does treat it as white space. The easiest way is to insert a backslash
1803 immediately before it, or to enclose it with square brackets. This
1804 change is to bring Perl into conformance with Unicode recommendations.
1805 Here are the five characters that generate this warning:
1807 U+200E LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK,
1808 U+200F RIGHT-TO-LEFT MARK,
1809 U+2028 LINE SEPARATOR,
1811 U+2029 PARAGRAPH SEPARATOR.
1813 =item Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1815 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1816 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1817 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1819 =item Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
1821 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1822 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1823 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk,
1824 it is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by using the
1825 C<re 'eval'> pragma or by explicitly building the pattern from an
1826 interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval(). See
1827 L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1829 =item Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
1831 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1832 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1833 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1835 =item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by
1836 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
1838 (F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
1839 any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
1841 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
1844 =item Excessively long <> operator
1846 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1847 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1848 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1849 variable and glob that.
1851 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1853 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented on some systems, e.g., Symbian
1854 OS. See L<perlport>.
1856 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
1858 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1860 =item exists argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
1862 (F) The argument to C<exists> must be a hash or array element or a
1863 subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
1869 =item exists argument is not a subroutine name
1871 (F) The argument to C<exists> for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine name,
1872 and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this error.
1874 =item Exiting eval via %s
1876 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1877 goto, or a loop control statement.
1879 =item Exiting format via %s
1881 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1882 goto, or a loop control statement.
1884 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1886 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1887 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1888 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1890 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1892 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1893 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1895 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1897 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1898 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1900 =item Expecting close bracket in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
1902 (F) You wrote something like
1906 to denote a capturing group of the form
1907 L<C<(?I<PARNO>)>|perlre/(?PARNO) (?-PARNO) (?+PARNO) (?R) (?0)>,
1908 but omitted the C<")">.
1910 =item Expecting '(?flags:(?[...' in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
1912 (F) The C<(?[...])> extended character class regular expression construct
1913 only allows character classes (including character class escapes like
1914 C<\d>), operators, and parentheses. The one exception is C<(?flags:...)>
1915 containing at least one flag and exactly one C<(?[...])> construct.
1916 This allows a regular expression containing just C<(?[...])> to be
1917 interpolated. If you see this error message, then you probably
1918 have some other C<(?...)> construct inside your character class. See
1919 L<perlrecharclass/Extended Bracketed Character Classes>.
1921 =item Experimental subroutine signatures not enabled
1923 (F) To use subroutine signatures, you must first enable them:
1925 no warnings "experimental:signatures";
1926 use feature "signatures";
1927 sub foo ($left, $right) { ... }
1929 =item Experimental "%s" subs not enabled
1931 (F) To use lexical subs, you must first enable them:
1933 no warnings 'experimental::lexical_subs';
1934 use feature 'lexical_subs';
1937 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1939 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1940 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1941 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1942 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1944 =item %s: Expression syntax
1946 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1947 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1949 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1951 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
1952 CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
1953 queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
1955 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
1957 (W regexp)(F) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1958 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1959 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". In a C<(?[...])>
1960 construct, this is an error, rather than a warning. Consider quoting
1961 the "-", "\-". The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression
1962 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1964 =item Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
1966 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1967 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1968 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1969 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1971 =item fcntl is not implemented
1973 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1974 PDP-11 or something?
1976 =item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
1978 (F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
1981 =item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1983 (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string starts with a length indicator
1984 which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1985 a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1986 C<u63> as the format.
1988 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1990 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1991 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1992 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1993 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1995 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1997 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1998 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1999 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with ">". If you intended only to
2000 read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>. Another possibility
2001 is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0 (also known as STDIN) for
2002 output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
2004 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
2006 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
2007 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
2010 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
2012 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
2013 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
2015 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
2017 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
2018 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
2019 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
2022 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
2024 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
2025 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
2026 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
2029 =item Format not terminated
2031 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
2032 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
2034 =item Format %s redefined
2036 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
2039 no warnings 'redefine';
2040 eval "format NAME =...";
2043 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
2053 (or something like that).
2055 =item %s found where operator expected
2057 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
2058 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
2059 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
2060 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
2062 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
2064 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
2066 =item gethostent not implemented
2068 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
2069 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
2072 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
2074 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
2075 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
2077 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
2079 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
2080 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
2082 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
2084 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
2085 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2086 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
2088 =item given is experimental
2090 (S experimental::smartmatch) C<given> depends on smartmatch, which
2091 is experimental, so its behavior may change or even be removed
2092 in any future release of perl. See the explanation under
2093 L<perlsyn/Experimental Details on given and when>.
2095 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
2097 (F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
2098 that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
2099 declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
2100 which package the global variable is in (using "::").
2102 =item glob failed (%s)
2104 (S glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used
2105 for C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
2106 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
2107 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
2108 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell)
2109 is broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables
2110 in config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as
2111 if it were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them
2112 all empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
2113 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
2114 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
2116 =item Glob not terminated
2118 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
2119 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
2120 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
2121 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
2123 =item gmtime(%f) too large
2125 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was larger than
2126 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
2127 date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2128 not-a-number value).
2130 =item gmtime(%f) too small
2132 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was smaller than
2133 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong date.
2135 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
2137 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
2138 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
2140 =item goto must have label
2142 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
2143 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
2145 =item Goto undefined subroutine%s
2147 (F) You tried to call a subroutine with C<goto &sub> syntax, but
2148 the indicated subroutine hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2149 has since been undefined.
2151 =item Group name must start with a non-digit word character in regex; marked by
2152 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2154 (F) Group names must follow the rules for perl identifiers, meaning
2155 they must start with a non-digit word character. A common cause of
2156 this error is using (?&0) instead of (?0). See L<perlre>.
2158 =item ()-group starts with a count
2160 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is supposed to follow
2161 something: a template character or a ()-group. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2163 =item %s had compilation errors.
2165 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
2167 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
2169 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
2170 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
2171 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
2173 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
2175 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
2176 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
2178 =item %s has too many errors
2180 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
2181 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
2183 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
2185 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2186 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2187 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2189 =item Identifier too long
2191 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
2192 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
2193 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
2194 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
2196 =item Ignoring zero length \N{} in character class in regex; marked by
2197 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2199 (W regexp) Named Unicode character escapes C<(\N{...})> may return a
2200 zero-length sequence. When such an escape is used in a character class
2201 its behaviour is not well defined. Check that the correct escape has
2202 been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
2204 =item Illegal binary digit %s
2206 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
2208 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
2210 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
2211 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
2214 =item Illegal character after '_' in prototype for %s : %s
2216 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype
2217 declaration. The '_' in a prototype must be followed by a ';',
2218 indicating the rest of the parameters are optional, or one of '@'
2219 or '%', since those two will accept 0 or more final parameters.
2221 =item Illegal character \%o (carriage return)
2223 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
2224 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
2225 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
2226 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
2227 to your Perl administrator.
2229 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
2231 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2232 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2233 Perhaps you were trying to write a subroutine signature but didn't enable
2234 that feature first (C<use feature 'signatures'>), so your signature was
2235 instead interpreted as a bad prototype.
2237 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
2239 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
2240 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
2242 =item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
2244 (F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
2246 =item Illegal division by zero
2248 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
2249 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
2252 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
2254 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
2255 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
2256 number stopped before the illegal character.
2258 =item Illegal modulus zero
2260 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
2261 numbers don't take to this kindly.
2263 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
2265 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
2266 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
2268 =item Illegal octal digit %s
2270 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2272 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
2274 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2275 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
2277 =item Illegal pattern in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2279 (F) You wrote something like
2283 The C<"+"> is valid only when followed by digits, indicating a
2284 capturing group. See
2285 L<C<(?I<PARNO>)>|perlre/(?PARNO) (?-PARNO) (?+PARNO) (?R) (?0)>.
2287 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: -%c
2289 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
2290 following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtw]>.
2292 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
2294 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
2295 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
2296 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
2298 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
2300 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
2301 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
2302 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
2305 =item (in cleanup) %s
2307 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
2308 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
2309 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
2310 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
2311 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
2313 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
2314 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
2316 =item Incomplete expression within '(?[ ])' in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE>
2319 (F) There was a syntax error within the C<(?[ ])>. This can happen if the
2320 expression inside the construct was completely empty, or if there are
2321 too many or few operands for the number of operators. Perl is not smart
2322 enough to give you a more precise indication as to what is wrong.
2324 =item Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on
2327 (F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not
2328 C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See the C3
2329 documentation in L<mro> for more information.
2331 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
2333 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
2334 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
2335 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
2337 =item Infinite recursion in regex
2339 (F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input
2340 text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive patterns
2341 either consume text or fail.
2343 =item Initialization of state variables in list context currently forbidden
2345 (F) Currently the implementation of "state" only permits the
2346 initialization of scalar variables in scalar context. Re-write
2347 C<state ($a) = 42> as C<state $a = 42> to change from list to scalar
2348 context. Constructions such as C<state (@a) = foo()> will be
2349 supported in a future perl release.
2351 =item %%s[%s] in scalar context better written as $%s[%s]
2353 (W syntax) In scalar context, you've used an array index/value slice
2354 (indicated by %) to select a single element of an array. Generally
2355 it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $). The difference
2356 is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a scalar, both in the value it
2357 returns and when evaluating its argument, while C<%foo[&bar]> provides
2358 a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things if you're
2359 expecting only one subscript. When called in list context, it also
2360 returns the index (what C<&bar> returns) in addition to the value.
2362 =item %%s{%s} in scalar context better written as $%s{%s}
2364 (W syntax) In scalar context, you've used a hash key/value slice
2365 (indicated by %) to select a single element of a hash. Generally it's
2366 better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $). The difference
2367 is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both in the value
2368 it returns and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> and
2369 provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
2370 if you're expecting only one subscript. When called in list context,
2371 it also returns the key in addition to the value.
2373 =item Insecure dependency in %s
2375 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
2376 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
2377 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
2378 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
2379 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
2380 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
2381 L<perlsec> for more information.
2383 =item Insecure directory in %s
2385 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2386 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
2387 the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
2390 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
2392 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2393 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
2394 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
2395 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
2396 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
2398 =item Insecure user-defined property %s
2400 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
2401 expression that contains a call to a user-defined character property
2402 function, i.e. C<\p{IsFoo}> or C<\p{InFoo}>.
2403 See L<perlunicode/User-Defined Character Properties> and L<perlsec>.
2405 =item In '(?...)', splitting the initial '(?' is deprecated in regex;
2406 marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2408 (D regexp, deprecated) The two-character sequence C<"(?"> in
2409 this context in a regular expression pattern should be an
2410 indivisible token, with nothing intervening between the C<"(">
2411 and the C<"?">, but you separated them. Due to an accident of
2412 implementation, this prohibition was not enforced, but we do
2413 plan to forbid it in a future Perl version. This message
2414 serves as giving you fair warning of this pending change.
2416 =item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2418 (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2419 or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2420 integers for your architecture.
2422 =item Integer overflow in %s number
2424 (S overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2425 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2426 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2427 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2428 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
2429 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2430 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2431 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2434 =item Integer overflow in srand
2436 (S overflow) The number you have passed to srand is too big to fit
2437 in your architecture's integer representation. The number has been
2438 replaced with the largest integer supported (0xFFFFFFFF on 32-bit
2439 architectures). This means you may be getting less randomness than
2440 you expect, because different random seeds above the maximum will
2441 return the same sequence of random numbers.
2443 =item Integer overflow in version
2445 =item Integer overflow in version %d
2447 (W overflow) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for
2448 the size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
2449 because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use an
2450 element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by trying
2451 to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like 100/9.
2453 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2455 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
2456 The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
2459 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2461 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2462 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2463 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2464 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2465 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2466 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
2468 =item internal %<num>p might conflict with future printf extensions
2470 (S internal) Perl's internal routine that handles C<printf> and C<sprintf>
2471 formatting follows a slightly different set of rules when called from
2472 C or XS code. Specifically, formats consisting of digits followed
2473 by "p" (e.g., "%7p") are reserved for future use. If you see this
2474 message, then an XS module tried to call that routine with one such
2477 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2479 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2480 S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
2483 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
2485 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
2486 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
2487 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
2488 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
2490 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2492 (F) The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2493 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2495 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2497 (F) The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2498 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2500 =item Invalid character in charnames alias definition; marked by
2503 (F) You tried to create a custom alias for a character name, with
2504 the C<:alias> option to C<use charnames> and the specified character in
2505 the indicated name isn't valid. See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
2507 =item Invalid \0 character in %s for %s: %s\0%s
2509 (W syscalls) Embedded \0 characters in pathnames or other system call
2510 arguments produce a warning as of 5.20. The parts after the \0 were
2511 formerly ignored by system calls.
2513 =item Invalid character in \N{...}; marked by S<<-- HERE> in \N{%s}
2515 (F) Only certain characters are valid for character names. The
2516 indicated one isn't. See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
2518 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2520 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2521 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
2523 =item Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by
2524 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2526 (W regexp)(F) The numeric escape (for example C<\xHH>) of value < 256
2527 didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion
2528 from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma.
2529 The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD)
2530 instead, except within S<C<(?[ ])>>, where it is a fatal error.
2531 The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
2532 escape was discovered.
2534 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
2536 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...} in regex; marked by
2537 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2539 (F) The character constant represented by C<...> is not a valid hexadecimal
2540 number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use a character other than
2541 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
2543 =item Invalid module name %s with -%c option: contains single ':'
2545 (F) The module argument to perl's B<-m> and B<-M> command-line options
2546 cannot contain single colons in the module name, but only in the
2547 arguments after "=". In other words, B<-MFoo::Bar=:baz> is ok, but
2548 B<-MFoo:Bar=baz> is not.
2550 =item Invalid mro name: '%s'
2552 (F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")> or C<use mro 'foo'>,
2553 where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO). Currently,
2554 the only valid ones supported are C<dfs> and C<c3>, unless you have loaded
2555 a module that is a MRO plugin. See L<mro> and L<perlmroapi>.
2557 =item Invalid negative number (%s) in chr
2559 (W utf8) You passed a negative number to C<chr>. Negative numbers are
2560 not valid characters numbers, so it return the Unicode replacement
2563 =item invalid option -D%c, use -D'' to see choices
2565 (S debugging) Perl was called with invalid debugger flags. Call perl
2566 with the B<-D> option with no flags to see the list of acceptable values.
2567 See also L<perlrun/-Dletters>.
2569 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2571 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2572 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2573 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2574 up to C<ff>. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
2575 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2577 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2579 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2580 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2582 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2584 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2585 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2586 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2589 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2591 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other
2592 than a colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2593 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2594 list was terminated too soon.
2596 =item Invalid strict version format (%s)
2598 (F) A version number did not meet the "strict" criteria for versions.
2599 A "strict" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2600 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2601 v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least three components.
2602 The parenthesized text indicates which criteria were not met.
2603 See the L<version> module for more details on allowed version formats.
2605 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2607 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2608 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2610 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2613 =item Invalid version format (%s)
2615 (F) A version number did not meet the "lax" criteria for versions.
2616 A "lax" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2617 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2618 v-string. If the v-string has fewer than three components, it
2619 must have a leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading 'v' is
2620 optional. Both decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a
2621 trailing "alpha" component separated by an underscore character
2622 after a fractional or dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized
2623 text indicates which criteria were not met. See the L<version> module
2624 for more details on allowed version formats.
2626 =item Invalid version object
2628 (F) The internal structure of the version object was invalid.
2629 Perhaps the internals were modified directly in some way or
2630 an arbitrary reference was blessed into the "version" class.
2632 =item In '(*VERB...)', splitting the initial '(*' is deprecated in regex;
2633 marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2635 (D regexp, deprecated) The two-character sequence C<"(*"> in
2636 this context in a regular expression pattern should be an
2637 indivisible token, with nothing intervening between the C<"(">
2638 and the C<"*">, but you separated them. Due to an accident of
2639 implementation, this prohibition was not enforced, but we do
2640 plan to forbid it in a future Perl version. This message
2641 serves as giving you fair warning of this pending change.
2643 =item ioctl is not implemented
2645 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2646 strange for a machine that supports C.
2648 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
2650 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2651 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
2653 =item IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
2655 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2656 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO, Perl must be configured
2659 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2661 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2662 neither as a system call nor an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2664 =item $* is no longer supported
2666 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older
2667 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. In
2668 previous versions of perl the use of C<$*> enabled or disabled multi-line
2669 matching within a string.
2671 Instead of using C<$*> you should use the C</m> (and maybe C</s>) regexp
2672 modifiers. You can enable C</m> for a lexical scope (even a whole file)
2673 with C<use re '/m'>. (In older versions: when C<$*> was set to a true value
2674 then all regular expressions behaved as if they were written using C</m>.)
2676 =item $# is no longer supported
2678 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older
2679 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported. You
2680 should use the printf/sprintf functions instead.
2682 =item '%s' is not a code reference
2684 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of
2685 overload::constant needs to be a code reference. Either
2686 an anonymous subroutine, or a reference to a subroutine.
2688 =item '%s' is not an overloadable type
2690 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2693 =item -i used with no filenames on the command line, reading from STDIN
2695 (S inplace) The C<-i> option was passed on the command line, indicating
2696 that the script is intended to edit files in place, but no files were
2697 given. This is usually a mistake, since editing STDIN in place doesn't
2698 make sense, and can be confusing because it can make perl look like
2699 it is hanging when it is really just trying to read from STDIN. You
2700 should either pass a filename to edit, or remove C<-i> from the command
2701 line. See L<perlrun> for more details.
2703 =item Junk on end of regexp in regex m/%s/
2705 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2707 =item keys on reference is experimental
2709 (S experimental::autoderef) C<keys> with a scalar argument is experimental
2710 and may change or be removed in a future Perl version. If you want to
2711 take the risk of using this feature, simply disable this warning:
2713 no warnings "experimental::autoderef";
2715 =item Label not found for "last %s"
2717 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2718 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2721 =item Label not found for "next %s"
2723 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2724 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2727 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
2729 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2730 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2733 =item leaving effective %s failed
2735 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2736 effective uids or gids failed.
2738 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
2740 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2741 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2742 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2744 =item length() used on %s (did you mean "scalar(%s)"?)
2746 (W syntax) You used length() on either an array or a hash when you
2747 probably wanted a count of the items.
2749 Array size can be obtained by doing:
2753 The number of items in a hash can be obtained by doing:
2757 =item Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
2759 (F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse
2760 (using L<lex_stuff_pvn|perlapi/lex_stuff_pvn> or similar), but tried to insert a character that
2761 couldn't be part of the current input. This is an inherent pitfall
2762 of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the reasons to avoid it. Where
2763 it is necessary to stuff, stuffing only plain ASCII is recommended.
2765 =item Lexing code internal error (%s)
2767 (F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a
2770 =item listen() on closed socket %s
2772 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2773 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2776 =item List form of piped open not implemented
2778 (F) On some platforms, notably Windows, the three-or-more-arguments
2779 form of C<open> does not support pipes, such as C<open($pipe, '|-', @args)>.
2780 Use the two-argument C<open($pipe, '|prog arg1 arg2...')> form instead.
2782 =item localtime(%f) too large
2784 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was larger
2785 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2786 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2787 not-a-number value).
2789 =item localtime(%f) too small
2791 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was smaller
2792 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2795 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
2797 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2798 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2800 =item Lost precision when %s %f by 1
2802 (W imprecision) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by one
2803 is too large for the underlying floating point representation to store
2804 accurately, hence the target of C<++> or C<--> is unchanged. Perl issues this
2805 warning because it has already switched from integers to floating point
2806 when values are too large for integers, and now even floating point is
2807 insufficient. You may wish to switch to using L<Math::BigInt> explicitly.
2809 =item lstat() on filehandle%s
2811 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2812 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2813 instead on the filehandle.)
2815 =item lvalue attribute %s already-defined subroutine
2817 (W misc) Although L<attributes.pm|attributes> allows this, turning the lvalue
2818 attribute on or off on a Perl subroutine that is already defined
2819 does not always work properly. It may or may not do what you
2820 want, depending on what code is inside the subroutine, with exact
2821 details subject to change between Perl versions. Only do this
2822 if you really know what you are doing.
2824 =item lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined
2826 (W misc) Using the C<:lvalue> declarative syntax to make a Perl
2827 subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it has been defined is
2828 not permitted. To make the subroutine an lvalue subroutine,
2829 add the lvalue attribute to the definition, or put the C<sub
2830 foo :lvalue;> declaration before the definition.
2832 See also L<attributes.pm|attributes>.
2834 =item Magical list constants are not supported
2836 (F) You assigned a magical array to a stash element, and then tried
2837 to use the subroutine from the same slot. You are asking Perl to do
2838 something it cannot do, details subject to change between Perl versions.
2840 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2842 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2843 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2845 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2847 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2848 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2850 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2852 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2859 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2860 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2861 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2862 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2864 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2866 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2867 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2868 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2869 when the function is called.
2870 Perhaps the function's author was trying to write a subroutine signature
2871 but didn't enable that feature first (C<use feature 'signatures'>),
2872 so the signature was instead interpreted as a bad prototype.
2874 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2876 (S utf8)(F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2877 encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
2879 One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2880 you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
2881 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2883 If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2884 sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2885 set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2888 See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
2890 =item Malformed UTF-8 character immediately after '%s'
2892 (F) You said C<use utf8>, but the program file doesn't comply with UTF-8
2893 encoding rules. The message prints out the properly encoded characters
2894 just before the first bad one. If C<utf8> warnings are enabled, a
2895 warning is generated that gives more details about the type of
2898 =item Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N{%s} immediately after '%s'
2900 (F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
2902 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2904 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2905 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2907 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2909 (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2910 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2912 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2914 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2915 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2917 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2919 (F) Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2920 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2922 =item Mandatory parameter follows optional parameter
2924 (F) In a subroutine signature, you wrote something like "$a = undef,
2925 $b", making an earlier parameter optional and a later one mandatory.
2926 Parameters are filled from left to right, so it's impossible for the
2927 caller to omit an earlier one and pass a later one. If you want to act
2928 as if the parameters are filled from right to left, declare the rightmost
2929 optional and then shuffle the parameters around in the subroutine's body.
2931 =item Matched non-Unicode code point 0x%X against Unicode property; may
2934 (S non_unicode) Perl allows strings to contain a superset of
2935 Unicode code points; each code point may be as large as what is storable
2936 in an unsigned integer on your system, but these may not be accepted by
2937 other languages/systems. This message occurs when you matched a string
2938 containing such a code point against a regular expression pattern, and
2939 the code point was matched against a Unicode property, C<\p{...}> or
2940 C<\P{...}>. Unicode properties are only defined on Unicode code points,
2941 so the result of this match is undefined by Unicode, but Perl (starting
2942 in v5.20) treats non-Unicode code points as if they were typical
2943 unassigned Unicode ones, and matched this one accordingly. Whether a
2944 given property matches these code points or not is specified in
2945 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>.
2947 This message is suppressed (unless it has been made fatal) if it is
2948 immaterial to the results of the match if the code point is Unicode or
2949 not. For example, the property C<\p{ASCII_Hex_Digit}> only can match
2950 the 22 characters C<[0-9A-Fa-f]>, so obviously all other code points,
2951 Unicode or not, won't match it. (And C<\P{ASCII_Hex_Digit}> will match
2952 every code point except these 22.)
2954 Getting this message indicates that the outcome of the match arguably
2955 should have been the opposite of what actually happened. If you think
2956 that is the case, you may wish to make the C<non_unicode> warnings
2957 category fatal; if you agree with Perl's decision, you may wish to turn
2960 See L<perlunicode/Beyond Unicode code points> for more information.
2962 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
2965 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2966 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The S<<-- HERE>
2967 shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
2970 =item Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded
2972 (F) Perl aborted due to too high a number of signals pending. This
2973 usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
2974 too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
2975 resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
2976 safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
2978 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2980 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2981 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2984 =item '%' may not be used in pack
2986 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2987 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2988 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2990 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2992 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2993 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2995 =item Method %s not permitted
2999 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
3001 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
3002 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
3003 ended earlier on the current line.
3005 =item Misplaced _ in number
3007 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
3008 separate two digits.
3010 =item Missing argument in %s
3012 (W uninitialized) A printf-type format required more arguments than were
3015 =item Missing argument to -%c
3017 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
3018 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
3020 =item Missing braces on \N{}
3022 =item Missing braces on \N{} in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3024 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
3025 double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space
3026 (or comment) between the C<\N> and the C<{> in a regex with the C</x> modifier.
3027 This modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately
3030 =item Missing braces on \o{}
3032 (F) A C<\o> must be followed immediately by a C<{> in double-quotish context.
3034 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
3036 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
3037 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
3039 =item Missing command in piped open
3041 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
3042 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
3045 =item Missing control char name in \c
3047 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
3050 =item Missing ']' in prototype for %s : %s
3052 (W illegalproto) A grouping was started with C<[> but never closed with C<]>.
3054 =item Missing name in "%s sub"
3056 (F) The syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
3057 they have a name with which they can be found.
3059 =item Missing $ on loop variable
3061 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
3062 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
3063 can vary from one line to the next.
3065 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
3067 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3068 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
3070 =item Missing right brace on \%c{} in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3072 (F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}>, C<\P{...}>, or C<\N{...}>.
3074 =item Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N
3076 (F) C<\N> has two meanings.
3078 The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed in braces,
3079 meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that
3080 name. Thus C<\N{ASTERISK}> is another way of writing C<*>, valid in both
3081 double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns,
3082 it doesn't have the meaning an unescaped C<*> does.
3084 Starting in Perl 5.12.0, C<\N> also can have an additional meaning (only)
3085 in patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short
3086 for C<[^\n]>, and like C<.> but is not affected by the C</s> regex modifier.)
3088 This can lead to some ambiguities. When C<\N> is not followed immediately
3089 by a left brace, Perl assumes the C<[^\n]> meaning. Also, if the braces
3090 form a valid quantifier such as C<\N{3}> or C<\N{5,}>, Perl assumes that this
3091 means to match the given quantity of non-newlines (in these examples,
3092 3; and 5 or more, respectively). In all other case, where there is a
3093 C<\N{> and a matching C<}>, Perl assumes that a character name is desired.
3095 However, if there is no matching C<}>, Perl doesn't know if it was
3096 mistakenly omitted, or if C<[^\n]{> was desired, and raises this error.
3097 If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant the latter,
3098 escape the brace with a backslash, like so: C<\N\{>
3100 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
3102 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
3103 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
3106 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
3108 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3109 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
3110 the previous line just because you saw this message.
3112 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
3114 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
3115 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
3116 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
3118 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
3121 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
3123 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
3124 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
3127 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
3128 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to
3131 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
3133 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
3134 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
3137 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
3139 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
3140 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
3142 =item Module name must be constant
3144 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
3146 =item Module name required with -%c option
3148 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
3149 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
3150 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
3152 =item More than one argument to '%s' open
3154 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
3155 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
3156 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
3157 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
3159 =item mprotect for COW string %p %u failed with %d
3161 (S) You compiled perl with B<-D>PERL_DEBUG_READONLY_COW (see
3162 L<perlguts/"Copy on Write">), but a shared string buffer
3163 could not be made read-only.
3165 =item mprotect for %p %u failed with %d
3167 (S) You compiled perl with B<-D>PERL_DEBUG_READONLY_OPS (see L<perlhacktips>),
3168 but an op tree could not be made read-only.
3170 =item mprotect RW for COW string %p %u failed with %d
3172 (S) You compiled perl with B<-D>PERL_DEBUG_READONLY_COW (see
3173 L<perlguts/"Copy on Write">), but a read-only shared string
3174 buffer could not be made mutable.
3176 =item mprotect RW for %p %u failed with %d
3178 (S) You compiled perl with B<-D>PERL_DEBUG_READONLY_OPS (see
3179 L<perlhacktips>), but a read-only op tree could not be made
3180 mutable before freeing the ops.
3182 =item msg%s not implemented
3184 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
3186 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
3188 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
3189 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
3191 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
3193 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
3194 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
3195 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3197 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
3199 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
3202 =item "my %s" used in sort comparison
3204 (W syntax) The package variables $a and $b are used for sort comparisons.
3205 You used $a or $b in as an operand to the C<< <=> >> or C<cmp> operator inside a
3206 sort comparison block, and the variable had earlier been declared as a
3207 lexical variable. Either qualify the sort variable with the package
3208 name, or rename the lexical variable.
3210 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
3212 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
3213 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
3214 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
3216 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
3218 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable
3219 names. If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then
3220 just mention it again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our>
3221 declaration is provided for this purpose.
3223 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once
3224 so $c, @c, %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or
3225 format) are considered the same; if a program uses $c only once
3226 but also uses any of the others it will not trigger this warning.
3227 Symbols beginning with an underscore and symbols using special
3228 identifiers (q.v. L<perldata>) are exempt from this warning.
3230 =item Need exactly 3 octal digits in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3232 (F) Within S<C<(?[ ])>>, all constants interpreted as octal need to be
3233 exactly 3 digits long. This helps catch some ambiguities. If your
3234 constant is too short, add leading zeros, like
3236 (?[ [ \078 ] ]) # Syntax error!
3237 (?[ [ \0078 ] ]) # Works
3238 (?[ [ \007 8 ] ]) # Clearer
3240 The maximum number this construct can express is C<\777>. If you
3241 need a larger one, you need to use L<\o{}|perlrebackslash/Octal escapes> instead. If you meant
3242 two separate things, you need to separate them:
3244 (?[ [ \7776 ] ]) # Syntax error!
3245 (?[ [ \o{7776} ] ]) # One meaning
3246 (?[ [ \777 6 ] ]) # Another meaning
3247 (?[ [ \777 \006 ] ]) # Still another
3249 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
3251 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
3252 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3254 =item Negative length
3256 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
3257 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
3259 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
3261 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
3262 greater than or equal to zero.
3264 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3266 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses.
3267 So things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The S<<-- HERE> shows
3268 whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
3270 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
3271 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
3273 =item %s never introduced
3275 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
3276 scope before it could possibly have been used.
3278 =item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
3280 (F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
3281 real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
3284 =item \N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...} in regex;
3285 marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3287 (F) The new (as of Perl 5.12) meaning of C<\N> as C<[^\n]> is not valid in a
3288 bracketed character class, for the same reason that C<.> in a character
3289 class loses its specialness: it matches almost everything, which is
3290 probably not what you want.
3292 =item \N{} in character class restricted to one character in regex; marked
3293 by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3295 (F) Named Unicode character escapes C<(\N{...})> may return a
3296 multi-character sequence. Such an escape may not be used in
3297 a character class, because character classes always match one
3298 character of input. Check that the correct escape has been used,
3299 and the correct charname handler is in scope. The S<<-- HERE> shows
3300 whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
3302 =item \N{NAME} must be resolved by the lexer in regex; marked by
3303 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3305 (F) When compiling a regex pattern, an unresolved named character or
3306 sequence was encountered. This can happen in any of several ways that
3307 bypass the lexer, such as using single-quotish context, or an extra
3308 backslash in double-quotish:
3310 $re = '\N{SPACE}'; # Wrong!
3311 $re = "\\N{SPACE}"; # Wrong!
3314 Instead, use double-quotes with a single backslash:
3316 $re = "\N{SPACE}"; # ok
3319 The lexer can be bypassed as well by creating the pattern from smaller
3323 /${re}{SPACE}/; # Wrong!
3325 It's not a good idea to split a construct in the middle like this, and
3326 it doesn't work here. Instead use the solution above.
3328 Finally, the message also can happen under the C</x> regex modifier when the
3329 C<\N> is separated by spaces from the C<{>, in which case, remove the spaces.
3331 /\N {SPACE}/x; # Wrong!
3334 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
3336 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
3337 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
3338 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
3339 securable. See L<perlsec>.
3341 =item No code specified for -%c
3343 (F) Perl's B<-e> and B<-E> command-line options require an argument. If
3344 you want to run an empty program, pass the empty string as a separate
3345 argument or run a program consisting of a single 0 or 1:
3351 =item No comma allowed after %s
3353 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is
3354 not allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
3355 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
3357 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported
3358 a constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
3359 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating
3360 system does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did
3361 use an explicit import list for the constants you expect to see;
3362 please see L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an
3363 explicit import list would probably have caught this error earlier
3364 it naturally does not remedy the fact that your operating system
3365 still does not support that constant. Maybe you have a typo in
3366 the constants of the symbol import list of B<use> or B<import> or in the
3367 constant name at the line where this error was triggered?
3369 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
3371 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3372 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
3373 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
3375 =item No DB::DB routine defined
3377 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3378 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3379 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
3382 =item No dbm on this machine
3384 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
3385 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
3387 =item No DB::sub routine defined
3389 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3390 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3391 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
3392 of each ordinary subroutine call.
3394 =item No directory specified for -I
3396 (F) The B<-I> command-line switch requires a directory name as part of the
3397 I<same> argument. Use B<-Ilib>, for instance. B<-I lib> won't work.
3399 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
3401 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3402 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
3403 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
3405 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
3407 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
3408 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3410 =item No input file after < on command line
3412 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3413 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
3414 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
3416 =item No next::method '%s' found for %s
3418 (F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
3419 in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
3420 it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
3421 or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
3423 =item Non-hex character in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3425 (F) In a regular expression, there was a non-hexadecimal character where
3426 a hex one was expected, like
3431 =item Non-octal character in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3433 (F) In a regular expression, there was a non-octal character where
3434 an octal one was expected, like
3438 =item Non-octal character '%c'. Resolved as "%s"
3440 (W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character was
3441 unexpectedly encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value
3444 =item "no" not allowed in expression
3446 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
3447 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
3449 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
3451 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
3452 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
3453 select. See L<perlfunc/select>.
3455 =item No output file after > on command line
3457 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3458 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
3459 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
3461 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
3463 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3464 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
3465 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
3467 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
3469 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
3470 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
3471 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
3473 =item No Perl script found in input
3475 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
3476 with #! and containing the word "perl".
3478 =item No setregid available
3480 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
3483 =item No setreuid available
3485 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
3488 =item No such class %s
3490 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state"
3491 declaration, but this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
3493 =item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
3495 (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed
3496 variable but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type.
3497 The indicated package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the
3500 =item No such hook: %s
3502 (F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl.
3503 Currently, Perl accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks.
3505 =item No such pipe open
3507 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
3508 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
3509 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
3511 =item No such signal: SIG%s
3513 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
3514 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
3515 names on your system.
3517 =item Not a CODE reference
3519 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3520 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3521 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3524 =item Not a GLOB reference
3526 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
3527 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
3528 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
3529 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3531 =item Not a HASH reference
3533 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
3534 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
3535 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3537 =item Not an ARRAY reference
3539 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
3540 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3541 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3543 =item Not an unblessed ARRAY reference
3545 (F) You passed a reference to a blessed array to C<push>, C<shift> or
3546 another array function. These only accept unblessed array references
3547 or arrays beginning explicitly with C<@>.
3549 =item Not a SCALAR reference
3551 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
3552 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3553 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3555 =item Not a subroutine reference
3557 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3558 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3559 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3562 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
3564 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
3565 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
3567 =item Not enough arguments for %s
3569 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
3571 =item Not enough format arguments
3573 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
3574 supplied. See L<perlform>.
3578 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3579 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3582 =item (?[...]) not valid in locale in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3584 (F) C<(?[...])> cannot be used within the scope of a C<S<use locale>> or with
3585 an C</l> regular expression modifier, as that would require deferring
3586 to run-time the calculation of what it should evaluate to, and it is
3587 regex compile-time only.
3589 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
3591 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
3592 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
3593 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
3594 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
3595 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
3597 =item Null filename used
3599 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
3600 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
3602 =item NULL OP IN RUN
3604 (S debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
3607 =item Null picture in formline
3609 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
3610 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
3611 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
3615 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
3617 =item NULL regexp argument
3619 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
3621 =item NULL regexp parameter
3623 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
3625 =item Number too long
3627 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
3628 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
3629 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
3630 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
3633 =item Number with no digits
3635 (F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like
3636 a number. This happens, for example with C<\o{}>, with no number between
3639 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
3641 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
3642 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
3643 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
3645 =item Odd name/value argument for subroutine
3647 (F) A subroutine using a slurpy hash parameter in its signature
3648 received an odd number of arguments to populate the hash. It requires
3649 the arguments to be paired, with the same number of keys as values.
3650 The caller of the subroutine is presumably at fault. Inconveniently,
3651 this error will be reported at the location of the subroutine, not that
3654 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
3656 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
3657 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
3659 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
3661 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3662 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3664 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
3666 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3667 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3669 =item Offset outside string
3671 (F)(W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
3672 with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
3673 imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
3674 take place when going past the end of the string when either
3675 C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
3676 for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
3679 =item %s() on unopened %s
3681 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
3682 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
3683 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
3685 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
3687 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
3688 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3692 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3696 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3698 =item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
3700 (D io, deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
3701 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
3702 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3705 =item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
3707 (D io, deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
3708 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
3709 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3712 =item Operand with no preceding operator in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
3715 (F) You wrote something like
3717 (?[ \p{Digit} \p{Thai} ])
3719 There are two operands, but no operator giving how you want to combine
3722 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
3724 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
3725 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
3726 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
3727 the C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
3729 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for non-Unicode code point 0x%X
3731 (S non_unicode) You performed an operation requiring Unicode semantics
3732 on a code point that is not in Unicode, so what it should do is not
3733 defined. Perl has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn you.
3735 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3736 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3738 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3739 C<no warnings 'non_unicode';>.
3741 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
3743 (S surrogate) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3744 semantics on a Unicode surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use
3745 of surrogates for anything but storing strings in UTF-16, but
3746 semantics are (reluctantly) defined for the surrogates, and
3747 they are to do nothing for this operation. Because the use of
3748 surrogates can be dangerous, Perl warns.
3750 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3751 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3753 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3754 C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
3756 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
3758 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
3759 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
3760 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
3761 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
3764 =item Optional parameter lacks default expression
3766 (F) In a subroutine signature, you wrote something like "$a =", making a
3767 named optional parameter without a default value. A nameless optional
3768 parameter is permitted to have no default value, but a named one must
3769 have a specific default. You probably want "$a = undef".
3771 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
3773 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
3774 in the current lexical scope.
3776 =item Out of memory!
3778 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3779 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
3780 no option but to exit immediately.
3782 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
3783 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
3784 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
3785 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
3786 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
3788 =item Out of memory during %s extend
3790 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
3791 the largest possible memory allocation.
3793 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
3795 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3796 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
3797 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
3798 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
3800 =item Out of memory during request for %s
3802 (X)(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
3803 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
3806 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
3807 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
3808 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
3809 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
3810 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
3811 where the failed request happened.
3813 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
3815 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
3816 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
3817 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
3819 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
3821 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
3822 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
3825 =item '.' outside of string in pack
3827 (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
3828 position to before the start of the packed string being built.
3830 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
3832 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3833 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3835 =item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
3837 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3838 the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
3839 UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3841 =item overload arg '%s' is invalid
3843 (W overload) The L<overload> pragma was passed an argument it did not
3844 recognize. Did you mistype an operator?
3846 =item Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
3848 (F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was dereferenced,
3849 but the overloaded operation did not return a reference. See
3852 =item Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
3854 (F) An object with a C<qr> overload was used as part of a match, but the
3855 overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See L<overload>.
3857 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
3859 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
3860 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
3861 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
3862 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
3864 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
3866 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3867 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3871 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
3872 page. See L<perlform>.
3876 (P) An internal error.
3878 =item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
3880 (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
3881 an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
3882 platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
3883 enter this branch on this platform.
3885 =item panic: child pseudo-process was never scheduled
3887 (P) A child pseudo-process in the ithreads implementation on Windows
3888 was not scheduled within the time period allowed and therefore was not
3889 able to initialize properly.
3891 =item panic: ck_grep, type=%u
3893 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
3895 =item panic: ck_split, type=%u
3897 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
3899 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index %ld
3901 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
3902 there are in the savestack.
3904 =item panic: del_backref
3906 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
3911 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
3912 it wasn't an eval context.
3914 =item panic: do_subst
3916 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
3919 =item panic: do_trans_%s
3921 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
3924 =item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
3926 (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
3931 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
3933 =item panic: goto, type=%u, ix=%ld
3935 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
3936 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
3938 =item panic: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
3940 (P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries tried
3941 repeatedly, but each time something re-created entries in the glob.
3942 Most likely the glob contains an object with a reference back to
3943 the glob and a destructor that adds a new object to the glob.
3945 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD, %s
3947 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
3949 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT, %s
3951 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
3953 =item panic: kid popen errno read
3955 (F) A forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
3957 =item panic: last, type=%u
3959 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
3960 it wasn't a block context.
3962 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
3964 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
3967 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency %u
3969 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
3970 invalid enum on the top of it.
3972 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
3974 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
3975 references to an object.
3977 =item panic: malloc, %s
3979 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
3981 =item panic: memory wrap
3983 (P) Something tried to allocate either more memory than possible or a
3986 =item panic: pad_alloc, %p!=%p
3988 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3989 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3991 =item panic: pad_free curpad, %p!=%p
3993 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3994 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3996 =item panic: pad_free po
3998 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
4000 =item panic: pad_reset curpad, %p!=%p
4002 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
4003 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
4005 =item panic: pad_sv po
4007 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
4009 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad, %p!=%p
4011 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
4012 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
4014 =item panic: pad_swipe po
4016 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
4018 =item panic: pp_iter, type=%u
4020 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
4022 =item panic: pp_match%s
4024 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
4027 =item panic: pp_split, pm=%p, s=%p
4029 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
4031 =item panic: realloc, %s
4033 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
4035 =item panic: reference miscount on nsv in sv_replace() (%d != 1)
4037 (P) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
4038 reference count other than 1.
4040 =item panic: restartop in %s
4042 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
4043 didn't supply the destination.
4045 =item panic: return, type=%u
4047 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
4048 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
4050 =item panic: scan_num, %s
4052 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
4054 =item panic: Sequence (?{...}): no code block found in regex m/%s/
4056 (P) While compiling a pattern that has embedded (?{}) or (??{}) code
4057 blocks, perl couldn't locate the code block that should have already been
4058 seen and compiled by perl before control passed to the regex compiler.
4060 =item panic: strxfrm() gets absurd - a => %u, ab => %u
4062 (P) The interpreter's sanity check of the C function strxfrm() failed.
4063 In your current locale the returned transformation of the string "ab"
4064 is shorter than that of the string "a", which makes no sense.
4066 =item panic: sv_chop %s
4068 (P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the
4069 scalar's string buffer.
4071 =item panic: sv_insert, midend=%p, bigend=%p
4073 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
4076 =item panic: top_env
4078 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
4080 =item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
4082 (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't
4083 permitted at run time.
4085 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
4087 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
4088 to even) byte length.
4090 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
4092 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an odd (as opposed
4093 to even) byte length.
4095 =item panic: yylex, %s
4097 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
4099 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
4101 (W parenthesis) You said something like
4107 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
4109 Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
4111 =item Parsing code internal error (%s)
4113 (F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API in
4116 =item Passing malformed UTF-8 to "%s" is deprecated
4118 (D deprecated, utf8) This message indicates a bug either in the Perl
4119 core or in XS code. Such code was trying to find out if a character,
4120 allegedly stored internally encoded as UTF-8, was of a given type, such
4121 as being punctuation or a digit. But the character was not encoded in
4122 legal UTF-8. The C<%s> is replaced by a string that can be used by
4123 knowledgeable people to determine what the type being checked against
4124 was. If C<utf8> warnings are enabled, a further message is raised,
4125 giving details of the malformation.
4127 =item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex
4129 (F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
4130 consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before
4131 the nesting limit is exceeded.
4133 =item C<-p> destination: %s
4135 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
4136 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
4137 redirected it with select().)
4139 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
4141 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
4142 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
4143 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
4145 =item Perl folding rules are not up-to-date for 0x%X; please use the perlbug
4146 utility to report; in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4148 (S regexp) You used a regular expression with case-insensitive matching,
4149 and there is a bug in Perl in which the built-in regular expression
4150 folding rules are not accurate. This may lead to incorrect results.
4151 Please report this as a bug using the L<perlbug> utility.
4153 =item Perl_my_%s() not available
4155 (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
4156 so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
4157 conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
4158 '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4160 =item Perl %s required (did you mean %s?)--this is only %s, stopped
4162 (F) The code you are trying to run has asked for a newer version of
4163 Perl than you are running. Perhaps C<use 5.10> was written instead
4164 of C<use 5.010> or C<use v5.10>. Without the leading C<v>, the number is
4165 interpreted as a decimal, with every three digits after the
4166 decimal point representing a part of the version number. So 5.10
4167 is equivalent to v5.100.
4169 =item Perl %s required--this is only %s, stopped
4171 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
4172 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
4173 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
4175 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
4177 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
4178 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
4180 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
4182 (X) See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
4184 =item Perls since %s too modern--this is %s, stopped
4186 (F) The code you are trying to run claims it will not run
4187 on the version of Perl you are using because it is too new.
4188 Maybe the code needs to be updated, or maybe it is simply
4189 wrong and the version check should just be removed.
4191 =item perl: warning: Non hex character in '$ENV{PERL_HASH_SEED}', seed only partially set
4193 (S) PERL_HASH_SEED should match /^\s*(?:0x)?[0-9a-fA-F]+\s*\z/ but it
4194 contained a non hex character. This could mean you are not using the
4195 hash seed you think you are.
4197 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
4199 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
4201 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
4202 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
4205 are supported and installed on your system.
4206 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
4208 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
4209 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
4210 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
4211 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
4212 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
4213 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
4214 Perl can and will use, and the script will be run. Before you really
4215 fix the problem, however, you will get the same error message each
4216 time you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
4217 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
4219 =item perl: warning: strange setting in '$ENV{PERL_PERTURB_KEYS}': '%s'
4221 (S) Perl was run with the environment variable PERL_PERTURB_KEYS defined
4222 but containing an unexpected value. The legal values of this setting
4225 Numeric | String | Result
4226 --------+---------------+-----------------------------------------
4227 0 | NO | Disables key traversal randomization
4228 1 | RANDOM | Enables full key traversal randomization
4229 2 | DETERMINISTIC | Enables repeatable key traversal
4232 Both numeric and string values are accepted, but note that string values are
4233 case sensitive. The default for this setting is "RANDOM" or 1.
4235 =item pid %x not a child
4237 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
4238 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
4239 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
4241 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
4243 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
4245 =item pop on reference is experimental
4247 (S experimental::autoderef) C<pop> with a scalar argument is experimental
4248 and may change or be removed in a future Perl version. If you want to
4249 take the risk of using this feature, simply disable this warning:
4251 no warnings "experimental::autoderef";
4253 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by S<< <-- HERE in m/%s/ >>
4255 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The S<<-- HERE>
4256 shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
4257 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
4258 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
4259 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
4261 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
4263 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
4264 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
4266 =item POSIX syntax [%c %c] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by
4267 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4269 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
4270 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
4271 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
4272 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and
4273 will cause fatal errors. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular
4274 expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4276 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by
4277 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4279 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
4280 with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
4281 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
4282 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[."
4283 and ".\]". The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
4284 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4286 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by
4287 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4289 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
4290 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
4291 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
4292 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
4293 and "=\]". The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
4294 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4296 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
4298 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
4299 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
4300 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
4301 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
4303 You probably wrote something like this:
4310 when you should have written this:
4317 If you really want comments, build your list the
4318 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
4322 'b', # another comment
4325 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
4327 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
4328 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
4329 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
4332 You probably wrote something like this:
4336 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
4337 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
4341 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
4343 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
4344 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
4345 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
4346 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
4348 =item Possible precedence issue with control flow operator
4350 (W syntax) There is a possible problem with the mixing of a control
4351 flow operator (e.g. C<return>) and a low-precedence operator like
4354 sub { return $a or $b; }
4358 sub { (return $a) or $b; }
4360 Which is effectively just:
4364 Either use parentheses or the high-precedence variant of the operator.
4366 Note this may be also triggered for constructs like:
4370 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
4372 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
4373 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
4375 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
4377 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
4378 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
4379 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
4380 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
4382 =item Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
4384 (W ambiguous) You said something like C<m/$\/> in a regex.
4385 The regex C<m/foo$\s+bar/m> translates to: match the word 'foo', the output
4386 record separator (see L<perlvar/$\>) and the letter 's' (one time or more)
4387 followed by the word 'bar'.
4389 If this is what you intended then you can silence the warning by using
4390 C<m/${\}/> (for example: C<m/foo${\}s+bar/>).
4392 If instead you intended to match the word 'foo' at the end of the line
4393 followed by whitespace and the word 'bar' on the next line then you can use
4394 C<m/$(?)\/> (for example: C<m/foo$(?)\s+bar/>).
4396 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
4398 (W ambiguous) You said something like '@foo' in a double-quoted string
4399 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
4400 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
4401 to the array you apparently lost track of.
4403 =item Postfix dereference is experimental
4405 (S experimental::postderef) This warning is emitted if you use
4406 the experimental postfix dereference syntax. Simply suppress the
4407 warning if you want to use the feature, but know that in doing
4408 so you are taking the risk of using an experimental feature which
4409 may change or be removed in a future Perl version:
4411 no warnings "experimental::postderef";
4412 use feature "postderef", "postderef_qq";
4418 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
4420 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
4424 is now misinterpreted as
4428 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
4429 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
4430 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
4433 =item Premature end of script headers
4437 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
4439 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4440 before now. Check your control flow.
4442 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
4444 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
4445 before now. Check your control flow.
4447 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
4449 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
4450 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
4451 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
4452 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
4455 =item Property '%s' is unknown in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4457 (F) The named property which you specified via C<\p> or C<\P> is not one
4458 known to Perl. Perhaps you misspelled the name? See
4459 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
4460 for a complete list of available official
4461 properties. If it is a L<user-defined property|perlunicode/User-Defined Character Properties>
4462 it must have been defined by the time the regular expression is
4465 =item Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
4467 (W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is
4468 useless, since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments.
4470 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
4472 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
4473 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
4475 =item Prototype not terminated
4477 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
4480 =item Prototype '%s' overridden by attribute 'prototype(%s)' in %s
4482 (W prototype) A prototype was declared in both the parentheses after
4483 the sub name and via the prototype attribute. The prototype in
4484 parentheses is useless, since it will be replaced by the prototype
4485 from the attribute before it's ever used.
4487 =item \p{} uses Unicode rules, not locale rules
4489 (W) You compiled a regular expression that contained a Unicode property
4490 match (C<\p> or C<\P>), but the regular expression is also being told to
4491 use the run-time locale, not Unicode. Instead, use a POSIX character
4492 class, which should know about the locale's rules.
4493 (See L<perlrecharclass/POSIX Character Classes>.)
4495 Even if the run-time locale is ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), which is a subset of
4496 Unicode, some properties will give results that are not valid for that
4499 Here are a couple of examples to help you see what's going on. If the
4500 locale is ISO 8859-7, the character at code point 0xD7 is the "GREEK
4501 CAPITAL LETTER CHI". But in Unicode that code point means the
4502 "MULTIPLICATION SIGN" instead, and C<\p> always uses the Unicode
4503 meaning. That means that C<\p{Alpha}> won't match, but C<[[:alpha:]]>
4504 should. Only in the Latin1 locale are all the characters in the same
4505 positions as they are in Unicode. But, even here, some properties give
4506 incorrect results. An example is C<\p{Changes_When_Uppercased}> which
4507 is true for "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS", but since the upper
4508 case of that character is not in Latin1, in that locale it doesn't
4509 change when upper cased.
4511 =item push on reference is experimental
4513 (S experimental::autoderef) C<push> with a scalar argument is experimental
4514 and may change or be removed in a future Perl version. If you want to
4515 take the risk of using this feature, simply disable this warning:
4517 no warnings "experimental::autoderef";
4519 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by S<< <-- HERE in m/%s/ >>
4521 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if
4522 you meant it literally. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular
4523 expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4525 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
4528 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of
4529 the {min,max} construct. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular
4530 expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4532 =item Quantifier {n,m} with n > m can't match in regex
4534 =item Quantifier {n,m} with n > m can't match in regex; marked by
4535 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4537 (W regexp) Minima should be less than or equal to maxima. If you really
4538 want your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}.
4540 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression in regex; marked by <--
4543 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
4544 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
4545 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
4546 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
4547 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
4549 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4552 =item Range iterator outside integer range
4554 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
4555 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
4556 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
4557 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
4559 =item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4561 (W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
4562 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4564 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
4566 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
4567 before now. Check your control flow.
4569 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
4571 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4573 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
4575 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4577 =item Reallocation too large: %x
4579 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
4581 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
4583 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
4586 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
4588 (S debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
4589 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
4590 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
4592 =item Recursive call to Perl_load_module in PerlIO_find_layer
4594 (P) It is currently not permitted to load modules when creating
4595 a filehandle inside an %INC hook. This can happen with C<open my
4596 $fh, '<', \$scalar>, which implicitly loads PerlIO::scalar. Try
4597 loading PerlIO::scalar explicitly first.
4599 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
4601 (F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, Perl
4602 believes it found an infinite loop in the C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a
4603 crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth.
4605 =item refcnt_dec: fd %d%s
4607 =item refcnt: fd %d%s
4609 =item refcnt_inc: fd %d%s
4611 (P) Perl's I/O implementation failed an internal consistency check. If
4612 you see this message, something is very wrong.
4614 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
4616 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
4617 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
4618 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
4619 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
4621 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
4622 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
4623 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
4624 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
4626 =item Reference is already weak
4628 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
4629 Doing so has no effect.
4631 =item Reference to invalid group 0 in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4633 (F) You used C<\g0> or similar in a regular expression. You may refer
4634 to capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers
4635 (normal backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
4636 backreferences). Using 0 does not make sense.
4638 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
4641 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
4642 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If
4643 you wanted to have the character with ordinal 7 inserted into the regular
4644 expression, prepend zeroes to make it three digits long: C<\007>
4646 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4649 =item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE>
4652 (F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k<NAME> >> in your regular
4653 expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses
4654 such as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<< (?<NAME>...) >>. Check if the name has been
4655 spelled correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
4657 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4660 =item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by
4661 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4663 (F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there
4664 are not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the
4665 expression before where the C<\g{-7}> was located.
4667 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4670 =item regexp memory corruption
4672 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
4673 expression compiler gave it.
4675 =item Regexp modifier "/%c" may appear a maximum of twice
4677 =item Regexp modifier "%c" may appear a maximum of twice in regex; marked
4678 by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4680 (F) The regular expression pattern had too many occurrences
4681 of the specified modifier. Remove the extraneous ones.
4683 =item Regexp modifier "%c" may not appear after the "-" in regex; marked by <--
4686 (F) Turning off the given modifier has the side effect of turning on
4687 another one. Perl currently doesn't allow this. Reword the regular
4688 expression to use the modifier you want to turn on (and place it before
4689 the minus), instead of the one you want to turn off.
4691 =item Regexp modifier "/%c" may not appear twice
4693 =item Regexp modifier "%c" may not appear twice in regex; marked by <--
4696 (F) The regular expression pattern had too many occurrences
4697 of the specified modifier. Remove the extraneous ones.
4699 =item Regexp modifiers "/%c" and "/%c" are mutually exclusive
4701 =item Regexp modifiers "%c" and "%c" are mutually exclusive in regex;
4702 marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4704 (F) The regular expression pattern had more than one of these
4705 mutually exclusive modifiers. Retain only the modifier that is
4706 supposed to be there.
4708 =item Regexp out of space in regex m/%s/
4710 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
4713 =item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @#)
4715 (F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
4716 numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
4717 terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
4719 =item Replacement list is longer than search list
4721 (W misc) You have used a replacement list that is longer than the
4722 search list. So the additional elements in the replacement list
4725 =item '%s' resolved to '\o{%s}%d'
4727 (W misc, regexp) You wrote something like C<\08>, or C<\179> in a
4728 double-quotish string. All but the last digit is treated as a single
4729 character, specified in octal. The last digit is the next character in
4730 the string. To tell Perl that this is indeed what you want, you can use
4731 the C<\o{ }> syntax, or use exactly three digits to specify the octal
4734 =item Reversed %s= operator
4736 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
4737 always come last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
4739 =item rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4741 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either closed or not
4742 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4744 =item Scalars leaked: %d
4746 (S internal) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping
4747 of scalars: not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time
4748 Perl exited. What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which
4749 is of course bad, especially if the Perl program is intended to be
4752 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
4754 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
4755 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
4756 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
4757 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4758 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4759 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4760 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4762 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
4763 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
4764 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4767 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
4769 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
4770 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
4771 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
4772 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4773 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4774 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4775 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4777 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
4778 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
4779 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4782 =item Search pattern not terminated
4784 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
4785 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4786 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
4788 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
4789 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
4790 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
4791 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
4793 =item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
4795 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
4798 The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
4799 C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
4800 parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
4801 the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
4803 =item seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4805 (W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed or not
4806 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4808 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
4810 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
4811 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
4813 =item select not implemented
4815 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
4817 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
4819 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
4820 the current implementation.
4822 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
4824 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
4825 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
4827 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
4829 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate