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 Aliasing via reference is experimental
55 (S experimental::refaliasing) This warning is emitted if you use
56 a reference constructor on the left-hand side of an assignment to
57 alias one variable to another. Simply suppress the warning if you
58 want to use the feature, but know that in doing so you are taking
59 the risk of using an experimental feature which may change or be
60 removed in a future Perl version:
62 no warnings "experimental::refaliasing";
63 use feature "refaliasing";
66 =item Allocation too large: %x
68 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
70 =item '%c' allowed only after types %s in %s
72 (F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only
73 after certain types. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
75 =item alpha->numify() is lossy
77 (W numeric) An alpha version can not be numified without losing
80 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
82 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
83 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
84 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
85 subroutine is not imported.
87 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
88 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
89 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
90 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
92 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
93 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
94 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
97 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
99 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
100 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
101 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
102 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
104 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
106 (S ambiguous) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
107 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
108 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
110 =item Ambiguous use of -%s resolved as -&%s()
112 (S ambiguous) You wrote something like C<-foo>, which might be the
113 string C<"-foo">, or a call to the function C<foo>, negated. If you meant
114 the string, just write C<"-foo">. If you meant the function call,
117 =item Ambiguous use of %c resolved as operator %c
119 (S ambiguous) C<%>, C<&>, and C<*> are both infix operators (modulus,
120 bitwise and, and multiplication) I<and> initial special characters
121 (denoting hashes, subroutines and typeglobs), and you said something
122 like C<*foo * foo> that might be interpreted as either of them. We
123 assumed you meant the infix operator, but please try to make it more
124 clear -- in the example given, you might write C<*foo * foo()> if you
125 really meant to multiply a glob by the result of calling a function.
127 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s} resolved to %c%s
129 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<@{foo}>, which might be
130 asking for the variable C<@foo>, or it might be calling a function
131 named foo, and dereferencing it as an array reference. If you wanted
132 the variable, you can just write C<@foo>. If you wanted to call the
133 function, write C<@{foo()}> ... or you could just not have a variable
134 and a function with the same name, and save yourself a lot of trouble.
136 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s[...]} resolved to %c%s[...]
138 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s{...}} resolved to %c%s{...}
140 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<${foo[2]}> (where foo represents
141 the name of a Perl keyword), which might be looking for element number
142 2 of the array named C<@foo>, in which case please write C<$foo[2]>, or you
143 might have meant to pass an anonymous arrayref to the function named
144 foo, and then do a scalar deref on the value it returns. If you meant
145 that, write C<${foo([2])}>.
147 In regular expressions, the C<${foo[2]}> syntax is sometimes necessary
148 to disambiguate between array subscripts and character classes.
149 C</$length[2345]/>, for instance, will be interpreted as C<$length> followed
150 by the character class C<[2345]>. If an array subscript is what you
151 want, you can avoid the warning by changing C</${length[2345]}/> to the
152 unsightly C</${\$length[2345]}/>, by renaming your array to something
153 that does not coincide with a built-in keyword, or by simply turning
154 off warnings with C<no warnings 'ambiguous';>.
156 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
158 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
159 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
160 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
162 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
164 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
165 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
166 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
167 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
168 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
170 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
177 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
179 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
180 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
181 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
182 a scalar value (the length of an array, or the population info of a
183 hash) and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
184 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
187 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
189 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
191 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
193 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
194 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
195 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
197 Note that for the C<Inf> and C<NaN> (infinity and not-a-number) the
198 definition of "numeric" is somewhat unusual: the strings themselves
199 (like "Inf") are considered numeric, and anything following them is
200 considered non-numeric.
202 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
204 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O
205 system you forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers
206 take care of transforming data between external and internal
207 representations.) Perl stopped parsing the layer list at this
208 point and did not attempt to push this layer. If your program
209 didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the
210 result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
212 =item Argument "%s" treated as 0 in increment (++)
214 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to the C<++>
215 operator which expects either a number or a string matching
216 C</^[a-zA-Z]*[0-9]*\z/>. See L<perlop/Auto-increment and
217 Auto-decrement> for details.
219 =item Array passed to stat will be coerced to a scalar%s
221 (W syntax) You called stat() on an array, but the array will be
222 coerced to a scalar - the number of elements in the array.
224 =item A signature parameter must start with '$', '@' or '%'
226 (F) Each subroutine signature parameter declaration must start with a valid
229 sub foo ($a, $, $b = 1, @c) {}
231 =item A slurpy parameter may not have a default value
233 (F) Only scalar subroutine signature parameters may have a default value;
236 sub foo ($a = 1) {} # legal
237 sub foo (@a = (1)) {} # invalid
238 sub foo (%a = (a => b)) {} # invalid
240 =item assertion botched: %s
242 (X) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
244 =item Assertion %s failed: file "%s", line %d
246 (X) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
248 =item Assigned value is not a reference
250 (F) You tried to assign something that was not a reference to an lvalue
251 reference (e.g., C<\$x = $y>). If you meant to make $x an alias to $y, use
254 =item Assigned value is not %s reference
256 (F) You tried to assign a reference to a reference constructor, but the
257 two references were not of the same type. You cannot alias a scalar to
258 an array, or an array to a hash; the two types must match.
263 \$x = $y; # error; did you mean \$y?
265 =item Assigning non-zero to $[ is no longer possible
267 (F) When the "array_base" feature is disabled (e.g., under C<use v5.16;>)
268 the special variable C<$[>, which is deprecated, is now a fixed zero value.
270 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
272 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
273 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
274 know which context to supply to the right side.
276 =item Assuming NOT a POSIX class since %s in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
278 (W regexp) You had something like these:
283 They look like they might have been meant to be the POSIX classes
284 C<[:alnum:]> or C<[:digit:]>. If so, they should be written:
289 Since these aren't legal POSIX class specifications, but are legal
290 bracketed character classes, Perl treats them as the latter. In the
291 first example, it matches the characters C<":">, C<"[">, C<"a">, C<"l">,
292 C<"m">, C<"n">, and C<"u">.
294 If these weren't meant to be POSIX classes, this warning message is
295 spurious, and can be suppressed by reordering things, such as
303 =item <> at require-statement should be quotes
305 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
308 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
310 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
311 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
313 =item Attempt to bless into a freed package
315 (F) You wrote C<bless $foo> with one argument after somehow causing
316 the current package to be freed. Perl cannot figure out what to
317 do, so it throws up in hands in despair.
319 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
321 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
322 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
323 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
329 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
331 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
332 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
335 bless $self, "$proto";
337 =item Attempt to clear deleted array
339 (S debugging) An array was assigned to when it was being freed.
340 Freed values are not supposed to be visible to Perl code. This
341 can also happen if XS code calls C<av_clear> from a custom magic
342 callback on the array.
344 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
346 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
347 which is not in its key set.
349 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
351 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
352 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
354 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%x
356 (S internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
357 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
358 outside any of those arenas.
360 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string '%s'%s
362 (S internal) Perl maintains a reference-counted internal table of
363 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
364 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
365 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
367 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely: SV 0x%x
369 (S debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
370 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
371 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
372 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
375 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
377 (S internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
379 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar: SV 0x%x
381 (S internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
382 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
383 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
384 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
385 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
386 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
389 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
391 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
392 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
393 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
394 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
395 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
398 =item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
400 (F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
401 compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
402 unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
405 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
407 (W misc) You tried to set the length of an array which has
408 been freed. You can do this by storing a reference to the
409 scalar representing the last index of an array and later
410 assigning through that reference. For example
412 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
415 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
417 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
418 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
419 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
421 =item Attribute "locked" is deprecated, and will disappear in Perl 5.28
423 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the
424 "locked" attribute on a code reference. The :locked attribute is
425 obsolete, has had no effect since 5005 threads were removed, and
426 will be removed in a Perl 5.28.
428 =item Attribute prototype(%s) discards earlier prototype attribute in same sub
430 (W misc) A sub was declared as sub foo : prototype(A) : prototype(B) {}, for
431 example. Since each sub can only have one prototype, the earlier
432 declaration(s) are discarded while the last one is applied.
434 =item Attribute "unique" is deprecated, and will disappear in Perl 5.28
436 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify
437 the "unique" attribute on an array, hash or scalar reference.
438 The :unique attribute has had no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and
439 will be removed in a Perl 5.28.
441 =item av_reify called on tied array
443 (S debugging) This indicates that something went wrong and Perl got I<very>
444 confused about C<@_> or C<@DB::args> being tied.
446 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
448 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
449 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
450 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
451 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
453 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
455 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
456 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
457 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
459 =item Bad filehandle: %s
461 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
462 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
463 open(), or did it in another package.
465 =item Bad free() ignored
467 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
468 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
469 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
471 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
472 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
473 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
477 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
479 =item Badly placed ()'s
481 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
482 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
485 =item Bad name after %s
487 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
488 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
497 $sym = "mypack::$var";
499 =item Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
501 (F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the
504 =item Bad realloc() ignored
506 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that
507 had never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can
508 be disabled by setting the environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
510 =item Bad symbol for array
512 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
513 wasn't a symbol table entry.
515 =item Bad symbol for dirhandle
517 (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
518 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
520 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
522 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
523 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
525 =item Bad symbol for hash
527 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
528 wasn't a symbol table entry.
530 =item Bad symbol for scalar
532 (P) An internal request asked to add a scalar entry to something that
533 wasn't a symbol table entry.
535 =item Bareword found in conditional
537 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
538 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
539 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
543 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
546 use constant TYPO => 1;
547 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
549 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
551 =item Bareword in require contains "%s"
553 =item Bareword in require maps to disallowed filename "%s"
555 =item Bareword in require maps to empty filename
557 (F) The bareword form of require has been invoked with a filename which could
558 not have been generated by a valid bareword permitted by the parser. You
559 shouldn't be able to get this error from Perl code, but XS code may throw it
560 if it passes an invalid module name to C<Perl_load_module>.
562 =item Bareword in require must not start with a double-colon: "%s"
564 (F) In C<require Bare::Word>, the bareword is not allowed to start with a
565 double-colon. Write C<require ::Foo::Bar> as C<require Foo::Bar> instead.
567 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
569 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
570 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
571 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
573 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
575 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
576 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
577 you need to predeclare a package?
579 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
581 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
582 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
585 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
587 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
588 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
589 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
590 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
591 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
593 =item \%d better written as $%d
595 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
596 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
597 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
598 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
599 there are more than 9 backreferences.
601 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
603 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
604 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
605 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
607 =item bind() on closed socket %s
609 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
610 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
612 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
614 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
615 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
617 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
619 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
621 =item Bizarre copy of %s
623 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
626 =item Bizarre SvTYPE [%d]
628 (P) When starting a new thread or returning values from a thread, Perl
629 encountered an invalid data type.
631 =item Both or neither range ends should be Unicode in regex; marked by
634 (W regexp) (only under C<S<use re 'strict'>> or within C<(?[...])>)
636 In a bracketed character class in a regular expression pattern, you
637 had a range which has exactly one end of it specified using C<\N{}>, and
638 the other end is specified using a non-portable mechanism. Perl treats
639 the range as a Unicode range, that is, all the characters in it are
640 considered to be the Unicode characters, and which may be different code
641 points on some platforms Perl runs on. For example, C<[\N{U+06}-\x08]>
642 is treated as if you had instead said C<[\N{U+06}-\N{U+08}]>, that is it
643 matches the characters whose code points in Unicode are 6, 7, and 8.
644 But that C<\x08> might indicate that you meant something different, so
645 the warning gets raised.
647 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
649 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
650 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
651 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
653 =item Callback called exit
655 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
656 exited by calling exit.
658 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
660 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
661 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
662 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
663 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
664 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
665 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
666 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
667 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
671 (F) You passed an invalid number (like an infinity or not-a-number) to C<chr>.
673 =item Cannot compress %f in pack
675 (F) You tried compressing an infinity or not-a-number as an unsigned
676 integer with BER, which makes no sense.
678 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
680 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress.
681 The BER compressed integer format can only be used with positive
682 integers, and you attempted to compress a very large number (> 1e308).
683 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
685 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
687 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
688 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
690 =item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
692 (F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference
693 in it, then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax.
694 The access triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is
695 no legal conversion from that type of reference to a typeglob.
697 =item Cannot copy to %s
699 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
700 be directly assigned to.
702 =item Cannot find encoding "%s"
704 (S io) You tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to a filehandle,
705 either with open() or binmode().
707 =item Cannot pack %f with '%c'
709 (F) You tried converting an infinity or not-a-number to an integer,
710 which makes no sense.
712 =item Cannot printf %f with '%c'
714 (F) You tried printing an infinity or not-a-number as a character (%c),
715 which makes no sense. Maybe you meant '%s', or just stringifying it?
717 =item Cannot set tied @DB::args
719 (F) C<caller> tried to set C<@DB::args>, but found it tied. Tying C<@DB::args>
720 is not supported. (Before this error was added, it used to crash.)
722 =item Cannot tie unreifiable array
724 (P) You somehow managed to call C<tie> on an array that does not
725 keep a reference count on its arguments and cannot be made to
726 do so. Such arrays are not even supposed to be accessible to
727 Perl code, but are only used internally.
729 =item Cannot yet reorder sv_catpvfn() arguments from va_list
731 (F) Some XS code tried to use C<sv_catpvfn()> or a related function with a
732 format string that specifies explicit indexes for some of the elements, and
733 using a C-style variable-argument list (a C<va_list>). This is not currently
734 supported. XS authors wanting to do this must instead construct a C array
735 of C<SV*> scalars containing the arguments.
737 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
739 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
740 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
741 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
743 =item Can't bless non-reference value
745 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
746 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
748 =item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
750 (F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
751 a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
753 =item Can't "break" outside a given block
755 (F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
757 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
759 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
760 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
761 like this will reproduce the error:
764 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
765 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
767 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
769 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
770 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
771 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
772 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
774 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
776 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
777 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
778 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
779 Something like this will reproduce the error:
782 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
783 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
785 =item Can't call mro_isa_changed_in() on anonymous symbol table
787 (P) Perl got confused as to whether a hash was a plain hash or a
788 symbol table hash when trying to update @ISA caches.
790 =item Can't call mro_method_changed_in() on anonymous symbol table
792 (F) An XS module tried to call C<mro_method_changed_in> on a hash that was
793 not attached to the symbol table.
795 =item Can't chdir to %s
797 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but F</foo/bar> is not a directory
798 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
800 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
802 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
805 =item Can't coerce %s to %s in %s
807 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
808 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
818 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
820 =item Can't "continue" outside a when block
822 (F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
825 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
827 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
828 quotas or other plumbing problems.
830 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
832 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
833 "state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
835 =item Can't "default" outside a topicalizer
837 (F) You have used a C<default> block that is neither inside a
838 C<foreach> loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is
839 issued on exit from the C<default> block, so you won't get the
840 error if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
842 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
844 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
845 a file in /dev, a FIFO or an uneditable directory. The file was ignored.
847 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
849 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
852 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
854 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
855 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
856 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
858 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
860 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
861 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
862 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
864 =item Can't do %s("%s") on non-UTF-8 locale; resolved to "%s".
866 (W locale) You are 1) running under "C<use locale>"; 2) the current
867 locale is not a UTF-8 one; 3) you tried to do the designated case-change
868 operation on the specified Unicode character; and 4) the result of this
869 operation would mix Unicode and locale rules, which likely conflict.
870 Mixing of different rule types is forbidden, so the operation was not
871 done; instead the result is the indicated value, which is the best
872 available that uses entirely Unicode rules. That turns out to almost
873 always be the original character, unchanged.
875 It is generally a bad idea to mix non-UTF-8 locales and Unicode, and
876 this issue is one of the reasons why. This warning is raised when
877 Unicode rules would normally cause the result of this operation to
878 contain a character that is in the range specified by the locale,
879 0..255, and hence is subject to the locale's rules, not Unicode's.
881 If you are using locale purely for its characteristics related to things
882 like its numeric and time formatting (and not C<LC_CTYPE>), consider
883 using a restricted form of the locale pragma (see L<perllocale/The "use
884 locale" pragma>) like "S<C<use locale ':not_characters'>>".
886 Note that failed case-changing operations done as a result of
887 case-insensitive C</i> regular expression matching will show up in this
888 warning as having the C<fc> operation (as that is what the regular
889 expression engine calls behind the scenes.)
891 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
893 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
894 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
896 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
898 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
899 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
902 =item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
904 (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
905 or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
906 little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
907 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
909 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
911 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
912 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
913 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
914 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
915 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
916 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
921 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
922 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
923 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
925 =item Can't execute %s
927 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
928 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
930 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
932 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
933 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
935 =item Can't find label %s
937 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
938 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
940 =item Can't find %s on PATH
942 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
945 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
947 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
948 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
949 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
951 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
953 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
954 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
955 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
957 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
959 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
960 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag or there
961 may not be a linebreak after it. A good programmer's editor will have
962 a way to help you find these characters (or lack of characters). See
963 L<perlop> for the full details on here-documents.
965 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
967 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
969 (F) The named property which you specified via C<\p> or C<\P> is not one
970 known to Perl. Perhaps you misspelled the name? See
971 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
972 for a complete list of available official
973 properties. If it is a
974 L<user-defined property|perlunicode/User-Defined Character Properties>
975 it must have been defined by the time the regular expression is
978 If you didn't mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either
979 by C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, or
984 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
987 =item Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
989 (W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be retried
992 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
994 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
995 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
996 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
997 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
998 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
999 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
1000 the access-checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
1001 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
1002 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
1003 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
1004 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access-checking routine gave up
1005 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access-checking
1006 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
1007 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
1008 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
1010 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
1012 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
1013 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
1015 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
1017 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
1018 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
1020 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
1022 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
1023 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1025 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
1027 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
1028 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
1029 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
1030 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1032 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
1034 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
1037 =item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
1039 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
1040 comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
1041 as the reduce() function in List::Util).
1043 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
1045 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
1046 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
1047 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
1048 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1050 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
1052 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
1053 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
1054 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
1055 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
1056 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
1057 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
1059 =item Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
1061 (F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a fatal error to
1062 attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise non-numeric
1065 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
1067 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
1068 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
1069 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
1070 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
1071 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
1072 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
1075 =item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
1077 (F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
1078 package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
1080 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
1082 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension.
1083 This may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one
1084 that is incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known
1085 to happen between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your
1086 dynamic extension was built against an older version of the library
1087 that is installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old
1090 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
1092 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
1093 lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you
1094 want to localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with
1097 =item Can't localize through a reference
1099 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
1100 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
1101 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
1102 that $ref will still be a reference.
1104 =item Can't locate %s
1106 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be found.
1107 Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC, unless
1108 the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
1109 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the
1110 extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
1111 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
1112 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
1114 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
1116 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
1117 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
1118 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
1119 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
1121 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
1123 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
1124 for example, F<foo.so> or F<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
1125 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
1127 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
1129 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
1130 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
1131 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
1133 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s" (perhaps you forgot
1136 (F) You called a method on a class that did not exist, and the method
1137 could not be found in UNIVERSAL. This often means that a method
1138 requires a package that has not been loaded.
1140 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
1142 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
1143 doesn't seem to exist.
1145 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
1147 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
1148 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
1150 =item Can't make list assignment to %ENV on this system
1152 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
1155 =item Can't make loaded symbols global on this platform while loading %s
1157 (S) A module passed the flag 0x01 to DynaLoader::dl_load_file() to request
1158 that symbols from the stated file are made available globally within the
1159 process, but that functionality is not available on this platform. Whilst
1160 the module likely will still work, this may prevent the perl interpreter
1161 from loading other XS-based extensions which need to link directly to
1162 functions defined in the C or XS code in the stated file.
1164 =item Can't modify %s in %s
1166 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
1167 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
1169 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
1171 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
1174 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call of &%s
1176 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
1177 such. See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1179 =item Can't modify reference to %s in %s assignment
1181 (F) Only a limited number of constructs can be used as the argument to a
1182 reference constructor on the left-hand side of an assignment, and what
1183 you used was not one of them. See L<perlref/Assigning to References>.
1185 =item Can't modify reference to localized parenthesized array in list
1188 (F) Assigning to C<\local(@array)> or C<\(local @array)> is not supported, as
1189 it is not clear exactly what it should do. If you meant to make @array
1190 refer to some other array, use C<\@array = \@other_array>. If you want to
1191 make the elements of @array aliases of the scalars referenced on the
1192 right-hand side, use C<\(@array) = @scalar_refs>.
1194 =item Can't modify reference to parenthesized hash in list assignment
1196 (F) Assigning to C<\(%hash)> is not supported. If you meant to make %hash
1197 refer to some other hash, use C<\%hash = \%other_hash>. If you want to
1198 make the elements of %hash into aliases of the scalars referenced on the
1199 right-hand side, use a hash slice: C<\@hash{@keys} = @those_scalar_refs>.
1201 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
1203 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
1206 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
1208 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
1209 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1210 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
1211 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1212 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
1213 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
1215 =item Can't open %s: %s
1217 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
1218 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
1219 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually
1220 this is because you don't have read permission for a file which
1221 you named on the command line.
1223 (F) You tried to call perl with the B<-e> switch, but F</dev/null> (or
1224 your operating system's equivalent) could not be opened.
1226 =item Can't open a reference
1228 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
1229 using the 3-arg open() syntax:
1233 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
1234 open is not supported.
1236 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
1238 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
1239 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
1240 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
1241 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
1243 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
1245 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1246 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
1247 the command line for writing.
1249 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
1251 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1252 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
1253 command line for reading.
1255 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
1257 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1258 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
1259 the command line for writing.
1261 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
1263 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1264 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
1267 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
1269 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
1271 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
1272 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1273 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1275 =item Can't read CRTL environ
1277 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1278 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1279 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1280 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1283 =item Can't redeclare "%s" in "%s"
1285 (F) A "my", "our" or "state" declaration was found within another declaration,
1286 such as C<my ($x, my($y), $z)> or C<our (my $x)>.
1288 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1290 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1291 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1292 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1293 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1294 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1295 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1297 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1299 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1300 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1301 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1303 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1305 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1306 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1308 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1310 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1311 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1313 =item Can't represent character for Ox%X on this platform
1315 (F) There is a hard limit to how big a character code point can be due
1316 to the fundamental properties of UTF-8, especially on EBCDIC
1317 platforms. The given code point exceeds that. The only work-around is
1318 to not use such a large code point.
1320 =item Can't reset %ENV on this system
1322 (F) You called C<reset('E')> or similar, which tried to reset
1323 all variables in the current package beginning with "E". In
1324 the main package, that includes %ENV. Resetting %ENV is not
1325 supported on some systems, notably VMS.
1327 =item Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
1329 (F)(P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1330 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1331 package. If the method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1333 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1335 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1336 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1339 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1341 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1342 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1344 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1346 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue
1347 subroutine, but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl
1348 think you meant to return only one value. You probably meant to
1349 write parentheses around the call to the subroutine, which tell
1350 Perl that the call should be in list context.
1352 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1354 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1355 open already. Bizarre.
1357 =item Can't take log of %g
1359 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1360 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1361 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1364 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1366 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1367 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1368 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1370 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1372 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1373 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1374 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1376 =item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1378 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1379 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1380 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1381 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1383 =item Can't use '%c' after -mname
1385 (F) You tried to call perl with the B<-m> switch, but you put something
1386 other than "=" after the module name.
1388 =item Can't use a hash as a reference
1390 (F) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
1391 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl
1392 <= 5.22.0 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't
1393 have. This was deprecated in perl 5.6.1.
1395 =item Can't use an array as a reference
1397 (F) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
1398 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.22.0
1399 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. This
1400 was deprecated in perl 5.6.1.
1402 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1404 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1405 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1406 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1408 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1410 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1411 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1413 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1415 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1416 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1418 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1420 (F) The first time the C<%!> hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1421 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1422 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1424 =item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1426 (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1427 byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1428 allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1430 =item Can't use 'defined(@array)' (Maybe you should just omit the defined()?)
1432 (F) defined() is not useful on arrays because it
1433 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1434 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1436 =item Can't use 'defined(%hash)' (Maybe you should just omit the defined()?)
1438 (F) C<defined()> is not usually right on hashes.
1440 Although C<defined %hash> is false on a plain not-yet-used hash, it
1441 becomes true in several non-obvious circumstances, including iterators,
1442 weak references, stash names, even remaining true after C<undef %hash>.
1443 These things make C<defined %hash> fairly useless in practice, so it now
1444 generates a fatal error.
1446 If a check for non-empty is what you wanted then just put it in boolean
1447 context (see L<perldata/Scalar values>):
1453 If you had C<defined %Foo::Bar::QUUX> to check whether such a package
1454 variable exists then that's never really been reliable, and isn't
1455 a good way to enquire about the features of a package, or whether
1458 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1460 (P) The parser got confused when trying to parse a C<foreach> loop.
1462 =item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1464 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1465 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1466 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1467 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1470 =item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1472 (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1473 that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1474 For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1475 is inside a big-endian group.
1477 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1479 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1480 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1481 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1482 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1485 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1487 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1488 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1489 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1491 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1493 =item Can't use string ("%s"...) as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1495 (F) You've told Perl to dereference a string, something which
1496 C<use strict> blocks to prevent it happening accidentally. See
1497 L<perlref/"Symbolic references">. This can be triggered by an C<@> or C<$>
1498 in a double-quoted string immediately before interpolating a variable,
1499 for example in C<"user @$twitter_id">, which says to treat the contents
1500 of C<$twitter_id> as an array reference; use a C<\> to have a literal C<@>
1501 symbol followed by the contents of C<$twitter_id>: C<"user \@$twitter_id">.
1503 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1505 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1506 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1507 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1509 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1511 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1512 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1513 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1514 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1515 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1518 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1520 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1521 references can be weakened.
1523 =item Can't "when" outside a topicalizer
1525 (F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1526 loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1527 from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1528 or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1530 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1532 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1533 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1534 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1536 =item Character following "\c" must be printable ASCII
1538 (F) In C<\cI<X>>, I<X> must be a printable (non-control) ASCII character.
1540 Note that ASCII characters that don't map to control characters are
1541 discouraged, and will generate the warning (when enabled)
1542 L</""\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"">.
1544 =item Character following \%c must be '{' or a single-character Unicode property name in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1546 (F) (In the above the C<%c> is replaced by either C<p> or C<P>.) You
1547 specified something that isn't a legal Unicode property name. Most
1548 Unicode properties are specified by C<\p{...}>. But if the name is a
1549 single character one, the braces may be omitted.
1551 =item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1557 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1558 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1559 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1563 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1566 =item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1572 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1573 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1574 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1576 pack("c", $x & 255);
1578 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1581 =item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1583 (W unpack) You tried something like
1585 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1587 where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1588 below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the
1589 value modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1591 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1593 =item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1599 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode
1600 expects all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved
1603 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1605 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1607 (W pack) You tried something like
1609 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1611 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1612 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1613 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1615 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1617 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1619 (W unpack) You tried something like
1621 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1623 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1624 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1625 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1627 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1629 =item charnames alias definitions may not contain a sequence of multiple spaces
1631 (F) You defined a character name which had multiple space characters
1632 in a row. Change them to single spaces. Usually these names are
1633 defined in the C<:alias> import argument to C<use charnames>, but they
1634 could be defined by a translator installed into C<$^H{charnames}>. See
1635 L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
1637 =item charnames alias definitions may not contain trailing white-space
1639 (F) You defined a character name which ended in a space
1640 character. Remove the trailing space(s). Usually these names are
1641 defined in the C<:alias> import argument to C<use charnames>, but they
1642 could be defined by a translator installed into C<$^H{charnames}>.
1643 See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
1645 =item chdir() on unopened filehandle %s
1647 (W unopened) You tried chdir() on a filehandle that was never opened.
1649 =item "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"
1651 (W syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way to specify
1652 non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which
1653 is better written as simply itself, perhaps preceded by a backslash
1654 for non-word characters. Doing it the way you did is not portable
1655 between ASCII and EBCDIC platforms.
1657 =item Cloning substitution context is unimplemented
1659 (F) Creating a new thread inside the C<s///> operator is not supported.
1661 =item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1663 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1664 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1666 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1668 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1670 =item Closure prototype called
1672 (F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to an attribute
1673 handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure is created.
1674 This subroutine cannot be called.
1676 =item \C no longer supported in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
1678 (F) The \C character class used to allow a match of single byte
1679 within a multi-byte utf-8 character, but was removed in v5.24 as
1680 it broke encapsulation and its implementation was extremely buggy.
1681 If you really need to process the individual bytes, you probably
1682 want to convert your string to one where each underlying byte is
1683 stored as a character, with utf8::encode().
1685 =item Code missing after '/'
1687 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be
1688 another template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1690 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, and not portable
1692 (S non_unicode) You had a code point that has never been in any
1693 standard, so it is likely that languages other than Perl will NOT
1694 understand it. At one time, it was legal in some standards to have code
1695 points up to 0x7FFF_FFFF, but not higher, and this code point is higher.
1697 Acceptance of these code points is a Perl extension, and you should
1698 expect that nothing other than Perl can handle them; Perl itself on
1699 EBCDIC platforms before v5.24 does not handle them.
1701 Code points above 0xFFFF_FFFF require larger than a 32 bit word.
1703 Perl also makes no guarantees that the representation of these code
1704 points won't change at some point in the future, say when machines
1705 become available that have larger than a 64-bit word. At that time,
1706 files written by an older Perl would require conversion before being
1707 readable by a newer Perl.
1709 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
1711 (S non_unicode) You had a code point above the Unicode maximum
1714 Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code points, but
1715 these may not be accepted by other languages/systems. Further, even if
1716 these languages/systems accept these large code points, they may have
1717 chosen a different representation for them than the UTF-8-like one that
1718 Perl has, which would mean files are not exchangeable between them and
1721 On EBCDIC platforms, code points above 0x3FFF_FFFF have a different
1722 representation in Perl v5.24 than before, so any file containing these
1723 that was written before that version will require conversion before
1724 being readable by a later Perl.
1726 =item %s: Command not found
1728 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> or another shell
1729 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
1730 Perl yourself. The #! line at the top of your file could look like
1734 =item %s: command not found
1736 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<bash> or another shell
1737 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
1738 Perl yourself. The #! line at the top of your file could look like
1742 =item %s: command not found: %s
1744 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<zsh> or another shell
1745 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
1746 Perl yourself. The #! line at the top of your file could look like
1750 =item Compilation failed in require
1752 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1753 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1754 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1756 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1758 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1759 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1760 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1761 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1762 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1763 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1764 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1765 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1766 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1768 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1770 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1771 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1772 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1774 =item Constant(%s): Call to &{$^H{%s}} did not return a defined value
1776 (F) The subroutine registered to handle constant overloading
1777 (see L<overload>) or a custom charnames handler (see
1778 L<charnames/CUSTOM TRANSLATORS>) returned an undefined value.
1780 =item Constant(%s): $^H{%s} is not defined
1782 (F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to define an
1783 overloaded constant. Perhaps you forgot to load the corresponding
1786 =item Constant is not %s reference
1788 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1789 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1790 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1791 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1792 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1794 =item Constants from lexical variables potentially modified elsewhere are
1797 (D deprecated) You wrote something like
1800 $sub = sub () { $var };
1802 but $var is referenced elsewhere and could be modified after the C<sub>
1803 expression is evaluated. Either it is explicitly modified elsewhere
1804 (C<$var = 3>) or it is passed to a subroutine or to an operator like
1805 C<printf> or C<map>, which may or may not modify the variable.
1807 Traditionally, Perl has captured the value of the variable at that
1808 point and turned the subroutine into a constant eligible for inlining.
1809 In those cases where the variable can be modified elsewhere, this
1810 breaks the behavior of closures, in which the subroutine captures
1811 the variable itself, rather than its value, so future changes to the
1812 variable are reflected in the subroutine's return value.
1814 This usage is deprecated, because the behavior is likely to change
1815 in a future version of Perl.
1817 If you intended for the subroutine to be eligible for inlining, then
1818 make sure the variable is not referenced elsewhere, possibly by
1822 $sub = sub () { $var2 };
1824 If you do want this subroutine to be a closure that reflects future
1825 changes to the variable that it closes over, add an explicit C<return>:
1828 $sub = sub () { return $var };
1830 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1832 (W redefine)(S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously
1833 been eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions">
1834 for commentary and workarounds.
1836 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1838 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1839 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1842 =item Constant(%s) unknown
1844 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting
1845 to define an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the
1846 character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you
1847 forgot to load the corresponding L<overload> pragma?
1849 =item :const is experimental
1851 (S experimental::const_attr) The "const" attribute is experimental.
1852 If you want to use the feature, disable the warning with C<no warnings
1853 'experimental::const_attr'>, but know that in doing so you are taking
1854 the risk that your code may break in a future Perl version.
1856 =item :const is not permitted on named subroutines
1858 (F) The "const" attribute causes an anonymous subroutine to be run and
1859 its value captured at the time that it is cloned. Named subroutines are
1860 not cloned like this, so the attribute does not make sense on them.
1862 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1864 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1865 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1867 =item &CORE::%s cannot be called directly
1869 (F) You tried to call a subroutine in the C<CORE::> namespace
1870 with C<&foo> syntax or through a reference. Some subroutines
1871 in this package cannot yet be called that way, but must be
1872 called as barewords. Something like this will work:
1874 BEGIN { *shove = \&CORE::push; }
1875 shove @array, 1,2,3; # pushes on to @array
1877 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1879 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1881 =item Corrupted regexp opcode %d > %d
1883 (P) This is either an error in Perl, or, if you're using
1884 one, your L<custom regular expression engine|perlreapi>. If not the
1885 latter, report the problem through the L<perlbug> utility.
1887 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1889 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1890 expression compiler gave it.
1892 =item corrupted regexp program
1894 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1897 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
1899 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1901 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1903 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1904 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1907 =item Declaring references is experimental
1909 (S experimental::declared_refs) This warning is emitted if you use
1910 a reference constructor on the right-hand side of C<my>, C<state>, C<our>, or
1911 C<local>. Simply suppress the warning if you want to use the feature, but
1912 know that in doing so you are taking the risk of using an experimental
1913 feature which may change or be removed in a future Perl version:
1915 no warnings "experimental::declared_refs";
1916 use feature "declared_refs";
1920 The following are used in lib/diagnostics.t for testing two =items that
1921 share the same description. Changes here need to be propagated to there
1923 =item Deep recursion on anonymous subroutine
1925 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1927 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1928 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1929 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1930 which case it indicates something else.
1932 This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the F<perl> binary,
1933 setting the C pre-processor macro C<PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN> to the desired value.
1935 =item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by
1936 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
1938 (F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
1939 most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
1940 of the C<....> part.
1942 The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
1945 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1947 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1948 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1950 =item delete argument is index/value array slice, use array slice
1952 (F) You used index/value array slice syntax (C<%array[...]>) as
1953 the argument to C<delete>. You probably meant C<@array[...]> with
1954 an @ symbol instead.
1956 =item delete argument is key/value hash slice, use hash slice
1958 (F) You used key/value hash slice syntax (C<%hash{...}>) as the argument to
1959 C<delete>. You probably meant C<@hash{...}> with an @ symbol instead.
1961 =item delete argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
1963 (F) The argument to C<delete> must be either a hash or array element,
1969 or a hash or array slice, such as:
1971 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
1972 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
1974 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1976 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1977 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1978 that triggers this error.
1980 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1982 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>. There
1983 has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1984 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1985 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1986 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1987 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1988 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1990 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1994 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1996 Beginning with perl 5.10.0, you can also use C<state> variables to have
1997 lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1999 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
2001 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
2003 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
2004 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather
2005 than to create a dangling reference.
2007 =item Did not produce a valid header
2009 See L</500 Server error>.
2011 =item %s did not return a true value
2013 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
2014 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
2015 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
2016 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
2018 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
2020 (W misc) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or
2023 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
2025 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
2026 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
2029 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
2031 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
2032 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
2037 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
2038 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
2040 =item Document contains no data
2042 See L</500 Server error>.
2044 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
2046 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
2047 define a C<$VERSION>.
2049 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
2051 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
2052 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2054 =item Don't know how to get file name
2056 (P) C<PerlIO_getname>, a perl internal I/O function specific to VMS, was
2057 somehow called on another platform. This should not happen.
2059 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type \%o
2061 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
2063 =item do_study: out of memory
2065 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
2067 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
2069 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2070 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
2071 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
2072 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
2073 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
2074 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
2075 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
2076 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
2078 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
2080 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
2081 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
2083 =item dump is not supported
2085 (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
2087 =item Duplicate free() ignored
2089 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
2092 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
2094 (W unpack) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a
2095 type in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2097 =item elseif should be elsif
2099 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks
2100 it's ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
2101 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
2102 unlikely to be what you want.
2104 =item Empty \%c in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2106 =item Empty \%c{} in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2108 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
2109 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
2110 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
2112 =item ${^ENCODING} is no longer supported. Its use will be fatal in Perl 5.28
2114 (D deprecated) The special variable C<${^ENCODING}>, formerly used to implement
2115 the C<encoding> pragma, is no longer supported as of Perl 5.26.0.
2117 Setting this variable will become a fatal error in Perl 5.28.
2119 =item entering effective %s failed
2121 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2122 effective uids or gids failed.
2124 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
2126 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
2127 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
2128 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
2130 =item Error converting file specification %s
2132 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
2133 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
2134 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
2135 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
2136 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
2138 =item Eval-group in insecure regular expression
2140 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
2141 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
2142 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
2144 =item Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
2146 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
2147 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
2148 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk,
2149 it is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by using the
2150 C<re 'eval'> pragma or by explicitly building the pattern from an
2151 interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval(). See
2152 L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
2154 =item Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
2156 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
2157 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
2158 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
2160 =item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by
2161 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2163 (F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
2164 any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
2166 The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
2169 =item Excessively long <> operator
2171 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
2172 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
2173 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
2174 variable and glob that.
2176 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
2178 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented on some systems, e.g., Symbian
2179 OS. See L<perlport>.
2181 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
2183 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
2185 =item exists argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
2187 (F) The argument to C<exists> must be a hash or array element or a
2188 subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
2194 =item exists argument is not a subroutine name
2196 (F) The argument to C<exists> for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine name,
2197 and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this error.
2199 =item Exiting eval via %s
2201 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
2202 goto, or a loop control statement.
2204 =item Exiting format via %s
2206 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
2207 goto, or a loop control statement.
2209 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
2211 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
2212 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
2213 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
2215 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
2217 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
2218 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
2220 =item Exiting substitution via %s
2222 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
2223 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
2225 =item Expecting close bracket in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2227 (F) You wrote something like
2231 to denote a capturing group of the form
2232 L<C<(?I<PARNO>)>|perlre/(?PARNO) (?-PARNO) (?+PARNO) (?R) (?0)>,
2233 but omitted the C<")">.
2235 =item Expecting '(?flags:(?[...' in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2237 (F) The C<(?[...])> extended character class regular expression construct
2238 only allows character classes (including character class escapes like
2239 C<\d>), operators, and parentheses. The one exception is C<(?flags:...)>
2240 containing at least one flag and exactly one C<(?[...])> construct.
2241 This allows a regular expression containing just C<(?[...])> to be
2242 interpolated. If you see this error message, then you probably
2243 have some other C<(?...)> construct inside your character class. See
2244 L<perlrecharclass/Extended Bracketed Character Classes>.
2246 =item Experimental aliasing via reference not enabled
2248 (F) To do aliasing via references, you must first enable the feature:
2250 no warnings "experimental::refaliasing";
2251 use feature "refaliasing";
2254 =item Experimental %s on scalar is now forbidden
2256 (F) An experimental feature added in Perl 5.14 allowed C<each>, C<keys>,
2257 C<push>, C<pop>, C<shift>, C<splice>, C<unshift>, and C<values> to be called with a
2258 scalar argument. This experiment is considered unsuccessful, and
2259 has been removed. The C<postderef> feature may meet your needs better.
2261 =item Experimental subroutine signatures not enabled
2263 (F) To use subroutine signatures, you must first enable them:
2265 no warnings "experimental::signatures";
2266 use feature "signatures";
2267 sub foo ($left, $right) { ... }
2269 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
2271 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
2272 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
2273 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
2274 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
2276 =item %s: Expression syntax
2278 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
2279 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
2281 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
2283 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
2284 CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
2285 queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
2287 =item Failed to close in-place edit file %s: %s
2289 (F) Closing an output file from in-place editing, as with the C<-i>
2290 command-line switch, failed.
2292 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2294 (W regexp)(F) A character class range must start and end at a literal
2295 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
2296 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". In a C<(?[...])>
2297 construct, this is an error, rather than a warning. Consider quoting
2298 the "-", "\-". The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression
2299 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2301 =item Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
2303 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
2304 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
2305 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
2306 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
2308 =item fcntl is not implemented
2310 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
2311 PDP-11 or something?
2313 =item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
2315 (F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
2318 =item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
2320 (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string starts with a length indicator
2321 which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
2322 a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
2323 C<u63> as the format.
2325 =item File::Glob::glob() will disappear in perl 5.30. Use File::Glob::bsd_glob() instead.
2327 (D deprecated) C<< File::Glob >> has a function called C<< glob >>, which
2328 just calls C<< bsd_glob >>. However, its prototype is different from the
2329 prototype of C<< CORE::glob >>, and hence, C<< File::Glob::glob >> should
2332 C<< File::Glob::glob() >> was deprecated in perl 5.8.0. A deprecation
2333 message was issued from perl 5.26.0 onwards, and the function will
2334 disappear in perl 5.30.0.
2336 Code using C<< File::Glob::glob() >> should call
2337 C<< File::Glob::bsd_glob() >> instead.
2339 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
2341 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
2342 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
2343 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
2344 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
2346 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
2348 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
2349 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
2350 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with ">". If you intended only to
2351 read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>. Another possibility
2352 is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0 (also known as STDIN) for
2353 output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
2355 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
2357 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
2358 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
2361 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
2363 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
2364 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
2366 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
2368 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
2369 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
2370 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
2373 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
2375 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
2376 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
2377 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
2380 =item Format not terminated
2382 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
2383 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
2385 =item Format %s redefined
2387 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
2390 no warnings 'redefine';
2391 eval "format NAME =...";
2394 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
2404 (or something like that).
2406 =item %s found where operator expected
2408 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
2409 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
2410 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
2411 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
2413 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
2415 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
2417 =item gethostent not implemented
2419 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
2420 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
2423 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
2425 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
2426 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
2428 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
2430 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
2431 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
2433 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
2435 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
2436 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2437 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
2439 =item given is experimental
2441 (S experimental::smartmatch) C<given> depends on smartmatch, which
2442 is experimental, so its behavior may change or even be removed
2443 in any future release of perl. See the explanation under
2444 L<perlsyn/Experimental Details on given and when>.
2446 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name (did you forget to
2449 (F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
2450 that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
2451 declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
2452 which package the global variable is in (using "::").
2454 =item glob failed (%s)
2456 (S glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used
2457 for C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
2458 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
2459 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
2460 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell)
2461 is broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables
2462 in config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as
2463 if it were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them
2464 all empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
2465 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
2466 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
2468 =item Glob not terminated
2470 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
2471 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
2472 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
2473 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
2475 =item gmtime(%f) failed
2477 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that it could not handle:
2478 too large, too small, or NaN. The returned value is C<undef>.
2480 =item gmtime(%f) too large
2482 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was larger than
2483 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
2484 date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2485 not-a-number value).
2487 =item gmtime(%f) too small
2489 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was smaller than
2490 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong date.
2492 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
2494 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
2495 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
2497 =item goto must have label
2499 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
2500 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
2502 =item Goto undefined subroutine%s
2504 (F) You tried to call a subroutine with C<goto &sub> syntax, but
2505 the indicated subroutine hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2506 has since been undefined.
2508 =item Group name must start with a non-digit word character in regex; marked by
2509 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2511 (F) Group names must follow the rules for perl identifiers, meaning
2512 they must start with a non-digit word character. A common cause of
2513 this error is using (?&0) instead of (?0). See L<perlre>.
2515 =item ()-group starts with a count
2517 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is supposed to follow
2518 something: a template character or a ()-group. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2520 =item %s had compilation errors.
2522 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
2524 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
2526 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
2527 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
2528 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
2530 =item %s has too many errors
2532 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
2533 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
2535 =item Hexadecimal float: exponent overflow
2537 (W overflow) The hexadecimal floating point has a larger exponent
2538 than the floating point supports.
2540 =item Hexadecimal float: exponent underflow
2542 (W overflow) The hexadecimal floating point has a smaller exponent
2543 than the floating point supports. With the IEEE 754 floating point,
2544 this may also mean that the subnormals (formerly known as denormals)
2545 are being used, which may or may not be an error.
2547 =item Hexadecimal float: internal error (%s)
2549 (F) Something went horribly bad in hexadecimal float handling.
2551 =item Hexadecimal float: mantissa overflow
2553 (W overflow) The hexadecimal floating point literal had more bits in
2554 the mantissa (the part between the 0x and the exponent, also known as
2555 the fraction or the significand) than the floating point supports.
2557 =item Hexadecimal float: precision loss
2559 (W overflow) The hexadecimal floating point had internally more
2560 digits than could be output. This can be caused by unsupported
2561 long double formats, or by 64-bit integers not being available
2562 (needed to retrieve the digits under some configurations).
2564 =item Hexadecimal float: unsupported long double format
2566 (F) You have configured Perl to use long doubles but
2567 the internals of the long double format are unknown;
2568 therefore the hexadecimal float output is impossible.
2570 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
2572 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2573 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2574 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2576 =item Identifier too long
2578 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
2579 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
2580 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
2581 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
2583 =item Ignoring zero length \N{} in character class in regex; marked by
2584 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2586 (W regexp) Named Unicode character escapes (C<\N{...}>) may return a
2587 zero-length sequence. When such an escape is used in a character
2588 class its behavior is not well defined. Check that the correct
2589 escape has been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
2591 =item Illegal binary digit %s
2593 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
2595 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
2597 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
2598 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
2601 =item Illegal character after '_' in prototype for %s : %s
2603 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype
2604 declaration. The '_' in a prototype must be followed by a ';',
2605 indicating the rest of the parameters are optional, or one of '@'
2606 or '%', since those two will accept 0 or more final parameters.
2608 =item Illegal character \%o (carriage return)
2610 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as
2611 it would any other whitespace, which means you should never see
2612 this error when Perl was built using standard options. For some
2613 reason, your version of Perl appears to have been built without
2614 this support. Talk to your Perl administrator.
2616 =item Illegal character following sigil in a subroutine signature
2618 (F) A parameter in a subroutine signature contained an unexpected character
2619 following the C<$>, C<@> or C<%> sigil character. Normally the sigil
2620 should be followed by the variable name or C<=> etc. Perhaps you are
2621 trying use a prototype while in the scope of C<use feature 'signatures'>?
2624 sub foo ($$) {} # legal - a prototype
2626 use feature 'signatures;
2627 sub foo ($$) {} # illegal - was expecting a signature
2629 :prototype($$) {} # legal
2632 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
2634 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2635 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2636 Perhaps you were trying to write a subroutine signature but didn't enable
2637 that feature first (C<use feature 'signatures'>), so your signature was
2638 instead interpreted as a bad prototype.
2640 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
2642 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
2643 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
2645 =item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
2647 (F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
2649 =item Illegal division by zero
2651 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
2652 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
2655 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
2657 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
2658 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
2659 number stopped before the illegal character.
2661 =item Illegal modulus zero
2663 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
2664 numbers don't take to this kindly.
2666 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
2668 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
2669 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
2671 =item Illegal octal digit %s
2673 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2675 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
2677 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2678 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
2680 =item Illegal pattern in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2682 (F) You wrote something like
2686 The C<"+"> is valid only when followed by digits, indicating a
2687 capturing group. See
2688 L<C<(?I<PARNO>)>|perlre/(?PARNO) (?-PARNO) (?+PARNO) (?R) (?0)>.
2690 =item Illegal suidscript
2692 (F) The script run under suidperl was somehow illegal.
2694 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: -%c
2696 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
2697 following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtw]>.
2699 =item Illegal user-defined property name
2701 (F) You specified a Unicode-like property name in a regular expression
2702 pattern (using C<\p{}> or C<\P{}>) that Perl knows isn't an official
2703 Unicode property, and was likely meant to be a user-defined property
2704 name, but it can't be one of those, as they must begin with either C<In>
2705 or C<Is>. Check the spelling. See also
2706 L</Can't find Unicode property definition "%s">.
2708 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
2710 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
2711 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
2712 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
2714 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
2716 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
2717 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
2718 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
2721 =item (in cleanup) %s
2723 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
2724 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
2725 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
2726 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
2727 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
2729 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
2730 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
2732 =item Incomplete expression within '(?[ ])' in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE>
2735 (F) There was a syntax error within the C<(?[ ])>. This can happen if the
2736 expression inside the construct was completely empty, or if there are
2737 too many or few operands for the number of operators. Perl is not smart
2738 enough to give you a more precise indication as to what is wrong.
2740 =item Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on
2743 (F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not
2744 C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See the C3
2745 documentation in L<mro> for more information.
2747 =item Indentation on line %d of here-doc doesn't match delimiter
2749 (F) You have an indented here-document where one or more of its lines
2750 have whitespace at the beginning that does not match the closing
2753 For example, line 2 below is wrong because it does not have at least
2754 2 spaces, but lines 1 and 3 are fine because they have at least 2:
2764 Note that tabs and spaces are compared strictly, meaning 1 tab will
2767 =item Infinite recursion in regex
2769 (F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input
2770 text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive patterns
2771 either consume text or fail.
2773 =item Initialization of state variables in list context currently forbidden
2775 (F) C<state> only permits initializing a single scalar variable, in scalar
2776 context. So C<state $a = 42> is allowed, but not C<state ($a) = 42>. To apply
2777 state semantics to a hash or array, store a hash or array reference in a
2780 =item %%s[%s] in scalar context better written as $%s[%s]
2782 (W syntax) In scalar context, you've used an array index/value slice
2783 (indicated by %) to select a single element of an array. Generally
2784 it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $). The difference
2785 is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a scalar, both in the value it
2786 returns and when evaluating its argument, while C<%foo[&bar]> provides
2787 a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things if you're
2788 expecting only one subscript. When called in list context, it also
2789 returns the index (what C<&bar> returns) in addition to the value.
2791 =item %%s{%s} in scalar context better written as $%s{%s}
2793 (W syntax) In scalar context, you've used a hash key/value slice
2794 (indicated by %) to select a single element of a hash. Generally it's
2795 better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $). The difference
2796 is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both in the value
2797 it returns and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> and
2798 provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
2799 if you're expecting only one subscript. When called in list context,
2800 it also returns the key in addition to the value.
2802 =item Insecure dependency in %s
2804 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
2805 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
2806 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
2807 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
2808 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
2809 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
2810 L<perlsec> for more information.
2812 =item Insecure directory in %s
2814 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2815 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
2816 the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
2819 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
2821 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2822 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
2823 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
2824 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
2825 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
2827 =item Insecure user-defined property %s
2829 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
2830 expression that contains a call to a user-defined character property
2831 function, i.e. C<\p{IsFoo}> or C<\p{InFoo}>.
2832 See L<perlunicode/User-Defined Character Properties> and L<perlsec>.
2834 =item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2836 (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2837 or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2838 integers for your architecture.
2840 =item Integer overflow in %s number
2842 (S overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2843 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2844 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2845 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2846 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
2847 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2848 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2849 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2852 =item Integer overflow in srand
2854 (S overflow) The number you have passed to srand is too big to fit
2855 in your architecture's integer representation. The number has been
2856 replaced with the largest integer supported (0xFFFFFFFF on 32-bit
2857 architectures). This means you may be getting less randomness than
2858 you expect, because different random seeds above the maximum will
2859 return the same sequence of random numbers.
2861 =item Integer overflow in version
2863 =item Integer overflow in version %d
2865 (W overflow) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for
2866 the size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
2867 because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use an
2868 element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by trying
2869 to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like 100/9.
2871 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2873 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
2874 The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
2877 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2879 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2880 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2881 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2882 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2883 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2884 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
2886 =item internal %<num>p might conflict with future printf extensions
2888 (S internal) Perl's internal routine that handles C<printf> and C<sprintf>
2889 formatting follows a slightly different set of rules when called from
2890 C or XS code. Specifically, formats consisting of digits followed
2891 by "p" (e.g., "%7p") are reserved for future use. If you see this
2892 message, then an XS module tried to call that routine with one such
2895 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2897 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2898 S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
2901 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
2903 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
2904 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
2905 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
2906 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
2908 =item In '(?...)', the '(' and '?' must be adjacent in regex;
2909 marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2911 (F) The two-character sequence C<"(?"> in this context in a regular
2912 expression pattern should be an indivisible token, with nothing
2913 intervening between the C<"("> and the C<"?">, but you separated them
2916 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2918 (F) The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2919 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2921 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2923 (F) The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2924 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2926 =item Invalid character in charnames alias definition; marked by
2929 (F) You tried to create a custom alias for a character name, with
2930 the C<:alias> option to C<use charnames> and the specified character in
2931 the indicated name isn't valid. See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
2933 =item Invalid \0 character in %s for %s: %s\0%s
2935 (W syscalls) Embedded \0 characters in pathnames or other system call
2936 arguments produce a warning as of 5.20. The parts after the \0 were
2937 formerly ignored by system calls.
2939 =item Invalid character in \N{...}; marked by S<<-- HERE> in \N{%s}
2941 (F) Only certain characters are valid for character names. The
2942 indicated one isn't. See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
2944 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2946 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2947 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
2949 =item Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by
2950 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2952 (W regexp)(F) The numeric escape (for example C<\xHH>) of value < 256
2953 didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion
2954 from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma.
2955 The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD)
2956 instead, except within S<C<(?[ ])>>, where it is a fatal error.
2957 The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
2958 escape was discovered.
2960 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
2962 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...} in regex; marked by
2963 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2965 (F) The character constant represented by C<...> is not a valid hexadecimal
2966 number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use a character other than
2967 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
2969 =item Invalid module name %s with -%c option: contains single ':'
2971 (F) The module argument to perl's B<-m> and B<-M> command-line options
2972 cannot contain single colons in the module name, but only in the
2973 arguments after "=". In other words, B<-MFoo::Bar=:baz> is ok, but
2974 B<-MFoo:Bar=baz> is not.
2976 =item Invalid mro name: '%s'
2978 (F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")> or C<use mro 'foo'>,
2979 where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO). Currently,
2980 the only valid ones supported are C<dfs> and C<c3>, unless you have loaded
2981 a module that is a MRO plugin. See L<mro> and L<perlmroapi>.
2983 =item Invalid negative number (%s) in chr
2985 (W utf8) You passed a negative number to C<chr>. Negative numbers are
2986 not valid character numbers, so it returns the Unicode replacement
2989 =item Invalid number '%s' for -C option.
2991 (F) You supplied a number to the -C option that either has extra leading
2992 zeroes or overflows perl's unsigned integer representation.
2994 =item invalid option -D%c, use -D'' to see choices
2996 (S debugging) Perl was called with invalid debugger flags. Call perl
2997 with the B<-D> option with no flags to see the list of acceptable values.
2998 See also L<perlrun/-Dletters>.
3000 =item Invalid quantifier in {,} in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3002 (F) The pattern looks like a {min,max} quantifier, but the min or max
3003 could not be parsed as a valid number - either it has leading zeroes,
3004 or it represents too big a number to cope with. The S<<-- HERE> shows
3005 where in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3007 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3009 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
3010 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
3011 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
3012 up to C<ff>. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
3013 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3015 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
3017 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
3018 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
3020 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
3022 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
3023 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
3024 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
3027 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
3029 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other
3030 than a colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
3031 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
3032 list was terminated too soon.
3034 =item Invalid strict version format (%s)
3036 (F) A version number did not meet the "strict" criteria for versions.
3037 A "strict" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
3038 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
3039 v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least three components.
3040 The parenthesized text indicates which criteria were not met.
3041 See the L<version> module for more details on allowed version formats.
3043 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
3045 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
3046 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3048 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
3051 =item Invalid version format (%s)
3053 (F) A version number did not meet the "lax" criteria for versions.
3054 A "lax" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
3055 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
3056 v-string. If the v-string has fewer than three components, it
3057 must have a leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading 'v' is
3058 optional. Both decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a
3059 trailing "alpha" component separated by an underscore character
3060 after a fractional or dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized
3061 text indicates which criteria were not met. See the L<version> module
3062 for more details on allowed version formats.
3064 =item Invalid version object
3066 (F) The internal structure of the version object was invalid.
3067 Perhaps the internals were modified directly in some way or
3068 an arbitrary reference was blessed into the "version" class.
3070 =item In '(*VERB...)', the '(' and '*' must be adjacent in regex;
3071 marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3073 (F) The two-character sequence C<"(*"> in
3074 this context in a regular expression pattern should be an
3075 indivisible token, with nothing intervening between the C<"(">
3076 and the C<"*">, but you separated them.
3078 =item ioctl is not implemented
3080 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
3081 strange for a machine that supports C.
3083 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
3085 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
3086 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
3088 =item IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
3090 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
3091 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO, Perl must be configured
3094 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
3096 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
3097 neither as a system call nor an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
3099 =item '%s' is an unknown bound type in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3101 (F) You used C<\b{...}> or C<\B{...}> and the C<...> is not known to
3102 Perl. The current valid ones are given in
3103 L<perlrebackslash/\b{}, \b, \B{}, \B>.
3105 =item %s() is deprecated on :utf8 handles
3107 (D deprecated) The sysread(), recv(), syswrite() and send() operators are
3108 deprecated on handles that have the C<:utf8> layer, either explicitly, or
3109 implicitly, eg., with the C<:encoding(UTF-16LE)> layer.
3111 Both sysread() and recv() currently use only the C<:utf8> flag for the stream,
3112 ignoring the actual layers. Since sysread() and recv() do no UTF-8
3113 validation they can end up creating invalidly encoded scalars.
3115 Similarly, syswrite() and send() use only the C<:utf8> flag, otherwise ignoring
3116 any layers. If the flag is set, both write the value UTF-8 encoded, even if
3117 the layer is some different encoding, such as the example above.
3119 Ideally, all of these operators would completely ignore the C<:utf8> state,
3120 working only with bytes, but this would result in silently breaking existing
3121 code. To avoid this a future version of perl will throw an exception when
3122 any of sysread(), recv(), syswrite() or send() are called on handle with the
3125 =item "%s" is more clearly written simply as "%s" in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3127 (W regexp) (only under C<S<use re 'strict'>> or within C<(?[...])>)
3129 You specified a character that has the given plainer way of writing it,
3130 and which is also portable to platforms running with different character
3133 =item '%s' is not a code reference
3135 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of
3136 overload::constant needs to be a code reference. Either
3137 an anonymous subroutine, or a reference to a subroutine.
3139 =item '%s' is not an overloadable type
3141 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
3144 =item -i used with no filenames on the command line, reading from STDIN
3146 (S inplace) The C<-i> option was passed on the command line, indicating
3147 that the script is intended to edit files in place, but no files were
3148 given. This is usually a mistake, since editing STDIN in place doesn't
3149 make sense, and can be confusing because it can make perl look like
3150 it is hanging when it is really just trying to read from STDIN. You
3151 should either pass a filename to edit, or remove C<-i> from the command
3152 line. See L<perlrun> for more details.
3154 =item Junk on end of regexp in regex m/%s/
3156 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
3158 =item Label not found for "last %s"
3160 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
3161 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
3164 =item Label not found for "next %s"
3166 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
3167 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
3170 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
3172 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
3173 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
3176 =item leaving effective %s failed
3178 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
3179 effective uids or gids failed.
3181 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
3183 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
3184 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
3185 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3187 =item length() used on %s (did you mean "scalar(%s)"?)
3189 (W syntax) You used length() on either an array or a hash when you
3190 probably wanted a count of the items.
3192 Array size can be obtained by doing:
3196 The number of items in a hash can be obtained by doing:
3200 =item Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
3202 (F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse
3203 (using L<lex_stuff_pvn|perlapi/lex_stuff_pvn> or similar), but tried to insert a character that
3204 couldn't be part of the current input. This is an inherent pitfall
3205 of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the reasons to avoid it. Where
3206 it is necessary to stuff, stuffing only plain ASCII is recommended.
3208 =item Lexing code internal error (%s)
3210 (F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a
3213 =item listen() on closed socket %s
3215 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
3216 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
3219 =item List form of piped open not implemented
3221 (F) On some platforms, notably Windows, the three-or-more-arguments
3222 form of C<open> does not support pipes, such as C<open($pipe, '|-', @args)>.
3223 Use the two-argument C<open($pipe, '|prog arg1 arg2...')> form instead.
3225 =item %s: loadable library and perl binaries are mismatched (got handshake key %p, needed %p)
3227 (P) A dynamic loading library C<.so> or C<.dll> was being loaded into the
3228 process that was built against a different build of perl than the
3229 said library was compiled against. Reinstalling the XS module will
3230 likely fix this error.
3232 =item Locale '%s' may not work well.%s
3234 (W locale) You are using the named locale, which is a non-UTF-8 one, and
3235 which perl has determined is not fully compatible with what it can
3236 handle. The second C<%s> gives a reason.
3238 By far the most common reason is that the locale has characters in it
3239 that are represented by more than one byte. The only such locales that
3240 Perl can handle are the UTF-8 locales. Most likely the specified locale
3241 is a non-UTF-8 one for an East Asian language such as Chinese or
3242 Japanese. If the locale is a superset of ASCII, the ASCII portion of it
3245 Some essentially obsolete locales that aren't supersets of ASCII, mainly
3246 those in ISO 646 or other 7-bit locales, such as ASMO 449, can also have
3247 problems, depending on what portions of the ASCII character set get
3248 changed by the locale and are also used by the program.
3249 The warning message lists the determinable conflicting characters.
3251 Note that not all incompatibilities are found.
3253 If this happens to you, there's not much you can do except switch to use a
3254 different locale or use L<Encode> to translate from the locale into
3255 UTF-8; if that's impracticable, you have been warned that some things
3258 This message is output once each time a bad locale is switched into
3259 within the scope of C<S<use locale>>, or on the first possibly-affected
3260 operation if the C<S<use locale>> inherits a bad one. It is not raised
3261 for any operations from the L<POSIX> module.
3263 =item localtime(%f) failed
3265 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that it could not handle:
3266 too large, too small, or NaN. The returned value is C<undef>.
3268 =item localtime(%f) too large
3270 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was larger
3271 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
3272 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
3273 not-a-number value).
3275 =item localtime(%f) too small
3277 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was smaller
3278 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
3281 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
3283 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
3284 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
3286 =item Lost precision when %s %f by 1
3288 (W imprecision) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by one
3289 is too large for the underlying floating point representation to store
3290 accurately, hence the target of C<++> or C<--> is unchanged. Perl issues this
3291 warning because it has already switched from integers to floating point
3292 when values are too large for integers, and now even floating point is
3293 insufficient. You may wish to switch to using L<Math::BigInt> explicitly.
3295 =item lstat() on filehandle%s
3297 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
3298 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
3299 instead on the filehandle.)
3301 =item lvalue attribute %s already-defined subroutine
3303 (W misc) Although L<attributes.pm|attributes> allows this, turning the lvalue
3304 attribute on or off on a Perl subroutine that is already defined
3305 does not always work properly. It may or may not do what you
3306 want, depending on what code is inside the subroutine, with exact
3307 details subject to change between Perl versions. Only do this
3308 if you really know what you are doing.
3310 =item lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined
3312 (W misc) Using the C<:lvalue> declarative syntax to make a Perl
3313 subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it has been defined is
3314 not permitted. To make the subroutine an lvalue subroutine,
3315 add the lvalue attribute to the definition, or put the C<sub
3316 foo :lvalue;> declaration before the definition.
3318 See also L<attributes.pm|attributes>.
3320 =item Magical list constants are not supported
3322 (F) You assigned a magical array to a stash element, and then tried
3323 to use the subroutine from the same slot. You are asking Perl to do
3324 something it cannot do, details subject to change between Perl versions.
3326 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
3328 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
3329 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3331 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
3333 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
3334 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3336 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
3338 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
3345 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
3346 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
3347 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
3348 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
3350 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
3352 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
3353 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
3354 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
3355 when the function is called.
3356 Perhaps the function's author was trying to write a subroutine signature
3357 but didn't enable that feature first (C<use feature 'signatures'>),
3358 so the signature was instead interpreted as a bad prototype.
3360 =item Malformed UTF-8 character%s
3362 (S utf8)(F) Perl detected a string that should be UTF-8, but didn't
3363 comply with UTF-8 encoding rules, or represents a code point whose
3364 ordinal integer value doesn't fit into the word size of the current
3365 platform (overflows). Details as to the exact malformation are given in
3366 the variable, C<%s>, part of the message.
3368 One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
3369 you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
3370 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
3372 If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
3373 sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
3374 set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
3377 See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
3379 =item Malformed UTF-8 character immediately after '%s'
3381 (F) You said C<use utf8>, but the program file doesn't comply with UTF-8
3382 encoding rules. The message prints out the properly encoded characters
3383 just before the first bad one. If C<utf8> warnings are enabled, a
3384 warning is generated that gives more details about the type of
3387 =item Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N{%s} immediately after '%s'
3389 (F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
3391 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
3393 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
3394 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
3396 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
3398 (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
3399 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
3401 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
3403 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
3404 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
3406 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
3408 (F) Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
3409 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
3411 =item Mandatory parameter follows optional parameter
3413 (F) In a subroutine signature, you wrote something like "$a = undef,
3414 $b", making an earlier parameter optional and a later one mandatory.
3415 Parameters are filled from left to right, so it's impossible for the
3416 caller to omit an earlier one and pass a later one. If you want to act
3417 as if the parameters are filled from right to left, declare the rightmost
3418 optional and then shuffle the parameters around in the subroutine's body.
3420 =item Matched non-Unicode code point 0x%X against Unicode property; may
3423 (S non_unicode) Perl allows strings to contain a superset of
3424 Unicode code points; each code point may be as large as what is storable
3425 in an unsigned integer on your system, but these may not be accepted by
3426 other languages/systems. This message occurs when you matched a string
3427 containing such a code point against a regular expression pattern, and
3428 the code point was matched against a Unicode property, C<\p{...}> or
3429 C<\P{...}>. Unicode properties are only defined on Unicode code points,
3430 so the result of this match is undefined by Unicode, but Perl (starting
3431 in v5.20) treats non-Unicode code points as if they were typical
3432 unassigned Unicode ones, and matched this one accordingly. Whether a
3433 given property matches these code points or not is specified in
3434 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>.
3436 This message is suppressed (unless it has been made fatal) if it is
3437 immaterial to the results of the match if the code point is Unicode or
3438 not. For example, the property C<\p{ASCII_Hex_Digit}> only can match
3439 the 22 characters C<[0-9A-Fa-f]>, so obviously all other code points,
3440 Unicode or not, won't match it. (And C<\P{ASCII_Hex_Digit}> will match
3441 every code point except these 22.)
3443 Getting this message indicates that the outcome of the match arguably
3444 should have been the opposite of what actually happened. If you think
3445 that is the case, you may wish to make the C<non_unicode> warnings
3446 category fatal; if you agree with Perl's decision, you may wish to turn
3449 See L<perlunicode/Beyond Unicode code points> for more information.
3451 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
3454 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
3455 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The S<<-- HERE>
3456 shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
3459 =item Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded
3461 (F) Perl aborted due to too high a number of signals pending. This
3462 usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
3463 too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
3464 resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
3465 safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
3467 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
3469 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
3470 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
3473 =item '%' may not be used in pack
3475 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
3476 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
3477 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
3479 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
3481 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
3482 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
3484 =item Method %s not permitted
3486 See L</500 Server error>.
3488 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
3490 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
3491 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
3492 ended earlier on the current line.
3494 =item Misplaced _ in number
3496 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
3497 separate two digits.
3499 =item Missing argument in %s
3501 (W missing) You called a function with fewer arguments than other
3502 arguments you supplied indicated would be needed.
3504 Currently only emitted when a printf-type format required more
3505 arguments than were supplied, but might be used in the future for
3506 other cases where we can statically determine that arguments to
3507 functions are missing, e.g. for the L<perlfunc/pack> function.
3509 =item Missing argument to -%c
3511 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
3512 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
3514 =item Missing braces on \N{}
3516 =item Missing braces on \N{} in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3518 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
3519 double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space
3520 (or comment) between the C<\N> and the C<{> in a regex with the C</x> modifier.
3521 This modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately
3524 =item Missing braces on \o{}
3526 (F) A C<\o> must be followed immediately by a C<{> in double-quotish context.
3528 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
3530 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
3531 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
3533 =item Missing command in piped open
3535 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
3536 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
3539 =item Missing control char name in \c
3541 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
3544 =item Missing ']' in prototype for %s : %s
3546 (W illegalproto) A grouping was started with C<[> but never closed with C<]>.
3548 =item Missing name in "%s sub"
3550 (F) The syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
3551 they have a name with which they can be found.
3553 =item Missing $ on loop variable
3555 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
3556 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
3557 can vary from one line to the next.
3559 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
3561 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3562 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
3564 =item Missing or undefined argument to %s
3566 (F) You tried to call require or do with no argument or with an undefined
3567 value as an argument. Require expects either a package name or a
3568 file-specification as an argument; do expects a filename. See
3569 L<perlfunc/require EXPR> and L<perlfunc/do EXPR>.
3571 =item Missing right brace on \%c{} in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3573 (F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}>, C<\P{...}>, or C<\N{...}>.
3575 =item Missing right brace on \N{}
3577 =item Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N
3579 (F) C<\N> has two meanings.
3581 The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed in braces,
3582 meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that
3583 name. Thus C<\N{ASTERISK}> is another way of writing C<*>, valid in both
3584 double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns,
3585 it doesn't have the meaning an unescaped C<*> does.
3587 Starting in Perl 5.12.0, C<\N> also can have an additional meaning (only)
3588 in patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short
3589 for C<[^\n]>, and like C<.> but is not affected by the C</s> regex modifier.)
3591 This can lead to some ambiguities. When C<\N> is not followed immediately
3592 by a left brace, Perl assumes the C<[^\n]> meaning. Also, if the braces
3593 form a valid quantifier such as C<\N{3}> or C<\N{5,}>, Perl assumes that this
3594 means to match the given quantity of non-newlines (in these examples,
3595 3; and 5 or more, respectively). In all other case, where there is a
3596 C<\N{> and a matching C<}>, Perl assumes that a character name is desired.
3598 However, if there is no matching C<}>, Perl doesn't know if it was
3599 mistakenly omitted, or if C<[^\n]{> was desired, and raises this error.
3600 If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant the latter,
3601 escape the brace with a backslash, like so: C<\N\{>
3603 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
3605 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
3606 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
3609 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
3611 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3612 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
3613 the previous line just because you saw this message.
3615 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
3617 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
3618 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
3619 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
3621 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
3624 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
3626 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
3627 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
3630 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
3631 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to
3634 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
3636 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
3637 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
3640 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
3642 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
3643 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
3645 =item Module name must be constant
3647 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
3649 =item Module name required with -%c option
3651 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
3652 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
3653 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
3655 =item More than one argument to '%s' open
3657 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
3658 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
3659 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
3660 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
3662 =item mprotect for COW string %p %u failed with %d
3664 (S) You compiled perl with B<-D>PERL_DEBUG_READONLY_COW (see
3665 L<perlguts/"Copy on Write">), but a shared string buffer
3666 could not be made read-only.
3668 =item mprotect for %p %u failed with %d
3670 (S) You compiled perl with B<-D>PERL_DEBUG_READONLY_OPS (see L<perlhacktips>),
3671 but an op tree could not be made read-only.
3673 =item mprotect RW for COW string %p %u failed with %d
3675 (S) You compiled perl with B<-D>PERL_DEBUG_READONLY_COW (see
3676 L<perlguts/"Copy on Write">), but a read-only shared string
3677 buffer could not be made mutable.
3679 =item mprotect RW for %p %u failed with %d
3681 (S) You compiled perl with B<-D>PERL_DEBUG_READONLY_OPS (see
3682 L<perlhacktips>), but a read-only op tree could not be made
3683 mutable before freeing the ops.
3685 =item msg%s not implemented
3687 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
3689 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
3691 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
3692 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
3694 =item Multiple slurpy parameters not allowed
3696 (F) In subroutine signatures, a slurpy parameter (C<@> or C<%>) must be
3697 the last parameter, and there must not be more than one of them; for
3700 sub foo ($a, @b) {} # legal
3701 sub foo ($a, @b, %) {} # invalid
3703 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
3705 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
3706 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
3707 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3709 =item %s must not be a named sequence in transliteration operator
3711 (F) Transliteration (C<tr///> and C<y///>) transliterates individual
3712 characters. But a named sequence by definition is more than an
3713 individual charater, and hence doing this operation on it doesn't make
3716 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
3718 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
3721 =item "my" subroutine %s can't be in a package
3723 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
3724 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front.
3726 =item "my %s" used in sort comparison
3728 (W syntax) The package variables $a and $b are used for sort comparisons.
3729 You used $a or $b in as an operand to the C<< <=> >> or C<cmp> operator inside a
3730 sort comparison block, and the variable had earlier been declared as a
3731 lexical variable. Either qualify the sort variable with the package
3732 name, or rename the lexical variable.
3734 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
3736 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
3737 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
3738 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
3740 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
3742 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable
3743 names. If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then
3744 just mention it again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our>
3745 declaration is also provided for this purpose.
3747 NOTE: This warning detects package symbols that have been used
3748 only once. This means lexical variables will never trigger this
3749 warning. It also means that all of the package variables $c, @c,
3750 %c, as well as *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or
3751 format) are considered the same; if a program uses $c only once
3752 but also uses any of the others it will not trigger this warning.
3753 Symbols beginning with an underscore and symbols using special
3754 identifiers (q.v. L<perldata>) are exempt from this warning.
3756 =item Need exactly 3 octal digits in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3758 (F) Within S<C<(?[ ])>>, all constants interpreted as octal need to be
3759 exactly 3 digits long. This helps catch some ambiguities. If your
3760 constant is too short, add leading zeros, like
3762 (?[ [ \078 ] ]) # Syntax error!
3763 (?[ [ \0078 ] ]) # Works
3764 (?[ [ \007 8 ] ]) # Clearer
3766 The maximum number this construct can express is C<\777>. If you
3767 need a larger one, you need to use L<\o{}|perlrebackslash/Octal escapes> instead. If you meant
3768 two separate things, you need to separate them:
3770 (?[ [ \7776 ] ]) # Syntax error!
3771 (?[ [ \o{7776} ] ]) # One meaning
3772 (?[ [ \777 6 ] ]) # Another meaning
3773 (?[ [ \777 \006 ] ]) # Still another
3775 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
3777 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
3778 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3780 =item Negative length
3782 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
3783 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
3785 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
3787 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
3788 greater than or equal to zero.
3790 =item Negative repeat count does nothing
3792 (W numeric) You tried to execute the
3793 L<C<x>|perlop/Multiplicative Operators> repetition operator fewer than 0
3794 times, which doesn't make sense.
3796 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3798 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses.
3799 So things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The S<<-- HERE> shows
3800 whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
3802 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
3803 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
3805 =item %s never introduced
3807 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
3808 scope before it could possibly have been used.
3810 =item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
3812 (F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
3813 real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
3816 =item \N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...} in regex;
3817 marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3819 (F) The new (as of Perl 5.12) meaning of C<\N> as C<[^\n]> is not valid in a
3820 bracketed character class, for the same reason that C<.> in a character
3821 class loses its specialness: it matches almost everything, which is
3822 probably not what you want.
3824 =item \N{} in inverted character class or as a range end-point is restricted to one character in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3826 (F) Named Unicode character escapes (C<\N{...}>) may return a
3827 multi-character sequence. Even though a character class is
3828 supposed to match just one character of input, perl will match the
3829 whole thing correctly, except when the class is inverted (C<[^...]>),
3830 or the escape is the beginning or final end point of a range. The
3831 mathematically logical behavior for what matches when inverting
3832 is very different from what people expect, so we have decided to
3833 forbid it. Similarly unclear is what should be generated when the
3834 C<\N{...}> is used as one of the end points of the range, such as in
3836 [\x{41}-\N{ARABIC SEQUENCE YEH WITH HAMZA ABOVE WITH AE}]
3838 What is meant here is unclear, as the C<\N{...}> escape is a sequence
3839 of code points, so this is made an error.
3841 =item \N{NAME} must be resolved by the lexer in regex; marked by
3842 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3844 (F) When compiling a regex pattern, an unresolved named character or
3845 sequence was encountered. This can happen in any of several ways that
3846 bypass the lexer, such as using single-quotish context, or an extra
3847 backslash in double-quotish:
3849 $re = '\N{SPACE}'; # Wrong!
3850 $re = "\\N{SPACE}"; # Wrong!
3853 Instead, use double-quotes with a single backslash:
3855 $re = "\N{SPACE}"; # ok
3858 The lexer can be bypassed as well by creating the pattern from smaller
3862 /${re}{SPACE}/; # Wrong!
3864 It's not a good idea to split a construct in the middle like this, and
3865 it doesn't work here. Instead use the solution above.
3867 Finally, the message also can happen under the C</x> regex modifier when the
3868 C<\N> is separated by spaces from the C<{>, in which case, remove the spaces.
3870 /\N {SPACE}/x; # Wrong!
3873 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
3875 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
3876 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
3877 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
3878 securable. See L<perlsec>.
3880 =item No code specified for -%c
3882 (F) Perl's B<-e> and B<-E> command-line options require an argument. If
3883 you want to run an empty program, pass the empty string as a separate
3884 argument or run a program consisting of a single 0 or 1:
3890 =item No comma allowed after %s
3892 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is
3893 not allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
3894 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
3896 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported
3897 a constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
3898 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating
3899 system does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did
3900 use an explicit import list for the constants you expect to see;
3901 please see L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an
3902 explicit import list would probably have caught this error earlier
3903 it naturally does not remedy the fact that your operating system
3904 still does not support that constant. Maybe you have a typo in
3905 the constants of the symbol import list of B<use> or B<import> or in the
3906 constant name at the line where this error was triggered?
3908 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
3910 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3911 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
3912 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
3914 =item No DB::DB routine defined
3916 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3917 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3918 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
3921 =item No dbm on this machine
3923 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
3924 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
3926 =item No DB::sub routine defined
3928 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3929 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3930 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
3931 of each ordinary subroutine call.
3933 =item No directory specified for -I
3935 (F) The B<-I> command-line switch requires a directory name as part of the
3936 I<same> argument. Use B<-Ilib>, for instance. B<-I lib> won't work.
3938 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
3940 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3941 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
3942 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
3944 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
3946 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
3947 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3949 =item No input file after < on command line
3951 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3952 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
3953 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
3955 =item No next::method '%s' found for %s
3957 (F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
3958 in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
3959 it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
3960 or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
3962 =item Non-finite repeat count does nothing
3964 (W numeric) You tried to execute the
3965 L<C<x>|perlop/Multiplicative Operators> repetition operator C<Inf> (or
3966 C<-Inf>) or C<NaN> times, which doesn't make sense.
3968 =item Non-hex character in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3970 (F) In a regular expression, there was a non-hexadecimal character where
3971 a hex one was expected, like
3976 =item Non-octal character in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3978 (F) In a regular expression, there was a non-octal character where
3979 an octal one was expected, like
3983 =item Non-octal character '%c'. Resolved as "%s"
3985 (W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character was
3986 unexpectedly encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value
3989 =item "no" not allowed in expression
3991 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
3992 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
3994 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
3996 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
3997 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
3998 select. See L<perlfunc/select>.
4000 =item No output file after > on command line
4002 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
4003 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
4004 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
4006 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
4008 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
4009 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
4010 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
4012 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
4014 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
4015 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
4016 rules. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
4018 =item No Perl script found in input
4020 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
4021 with #! and containing the word "perl".
4023 =item No setregid available
4025 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
4028 =item No setreuid available
4030 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
4033 =item No such class %s
4035 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state"
4036 declaration, but this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
4038 =item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
4040 (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed
4041 variable but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type.
4042 The indicated package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the
4045 =item No such hook: %s
4047 (F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl.
4048 Currently, Perl accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks.
4050 =item No such pipe open
4052 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
4053 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
4054 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
4056 =item No such signal: SIG%s
4058 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
4059 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
4060 names on your system.
4062 =item Not a CODE reference
4064 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
4065 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
4066 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
4069 =item Not a GLOB reference
4071 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
4072 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
4073 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
4074 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
4076 =item Not a HASH reference
4078 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
4079 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
4080 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
4082 =item '#' not allowed immediately following a sigil in a subroutine signature
4084 (F) In a subroutine signature definition, a comment following a sigil
4085 (C<$>, C<@> or C<%>), needs to be separated by whitespace or a commma etc., in
4086 particular to avoid confusion with the C<$#> variable. For example:
4089 sub f ($# ignore first arg
4092 sub f ($, # ignore first arg
4095 =item Not an ARRAY reference
4097 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
4098 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
4099 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
4101 =item Not a SCALAR reference
4103 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
4104 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
4105 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
4107 =item Not a subroutine reference
4109 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
4110 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
4111 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
4114 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
4116 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
4117 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
4119 =item Not enough arguments for %s
4121 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
4123 =item Not enough format arguments
4125 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
4126 supplied. See L<perlform>.
4130 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
4131 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
4134 =item (?[...]) not valid in locale in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4136 (F) C<(?[...])> cannot be used within the scope of a C<S<use locale>> or with
4137 an C</l> regular expression modifier, as that would require deferring
4138 to run-time the calculation of what it should evaluate to, and it is
4139 regex compile-time only.
4141 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
4143 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
4144 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
4145 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
4146 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
4147 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
4149 =item NULL OP IN RUN
4151 (S debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
4154 =item Null picture in formline
4156 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
4157 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
4158 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
4162 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
4164 =item NULL regexp argument
4166 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
4168 =item NULL regexp parameter
4170 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
4172 =item Number too long
4174 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
4175 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
4176 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
4177 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
4180 =item Number with no digits
4182 (F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like
4183 a number. This happens, for example with C<\o{}>, with no number between
4186 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
4188 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
4189 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
4190 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
4192 =item Odd name/value argument for subroutine
4194 (F) A subroutine using a slurpy hash parameter in its signature
4195 received an odd number of arguments to populate the hash. It requires
4196 the arguments to be paired, with the same number of keys as values.
4197 The caller of the subroutine is presumably at fault. Inconveniently,
4198 this error will be reported at the location of the subroutine, not that
4201 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
4203 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
4204 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
4206 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
4208 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
4209 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
4211 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
4213 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
4214 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
4216 =item Offset outside string
4218 (F)(W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
4219 with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
4220 imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
4221 take place when going past the end of the string when either
4222 C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
4223 for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behavior
4226 =item %s() on unopened %s
4228 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
4229 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
4230 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
4232 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
4234 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
4235 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
4239 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
4243 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
4245 =item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file. This will be a fatal error in Perl 5.28
4247 (D io, deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
4248 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
4249 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
4250 and this was deprecated in Perl 5.10. In Perl 5.28, this
4251 will be a fatal error.
4253 =item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory. This will be a fatal error in Perl 5.28
4255 (D io, deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
4256 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
4257 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
4258 and this was deprecated in Perl 5.10. In Perl 5.28, this
4259 will be a fatal error.
4261 =item Operand with no preceding operator in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
4264 (F) You wrote something like
4266 (?[ \p{Digit} \p{Thai} ])
4268 There are two operands, but no operator giving how you want to combine
4271 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
4273 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
4274 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
4275 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
4276 the C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
4278 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for non-Unicode code point 0x%X
4280 (S non_unicode) You performed an operation requiring Unicode rules
4281 on a code point that is not in Unicode, so what it should do is not
4282 defined. Perl has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn you.
4284 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
4285 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
4287 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
4288 C<no warnings 'non_unicode';>.
4290 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
4292 (S surrogate) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
4293 rules on a Unicode surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use
4294 of surrogates for anything but storing strings in UTF-16, but
4295 rules are (reluctantly) defined for the surrogates, and
4296 they are to do nothing for this operation. Because the use of
4297 surrogates can be dangerous, Perl warns.
4299 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
4300 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
4302 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
4303 C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
4305 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
4307 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
4308 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
4309 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
4310 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
4313 =item Optional parameter lacks default expression
4315 (F) In a subroutine signature, you wrote something like "$a =", making a
4316 named optional parameter without a default value. A nameless optional
4317 parameter is permitted to have no default value, but a named one must
4318 have a specific default. You probably want "$a = undef".
4320 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
4322 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
4323 in the current lexical scope.
4325 =item Out of memory!
4327 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
4328 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
4329 no option but to exit immediately.
4331 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
4332 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
4333 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
4334 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
4335 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
4337 =item Out of memory during %s extend
4339 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
4340 the largest possible memory allocation.
4342 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
4344 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
4345 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
4346 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
4347 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
4349 =item Out of memory during request for %s
4351 (X)(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
4352 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
4355 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
4356 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
4357 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
4358 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
4359 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
4360 where the failed request happened.
4362 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
4364 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
4365 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
4366 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
4368 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
4370 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
4371 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
4374 =item '.' outside of string in pack
4376 (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
4377 position to before the start of the packed string being built.
4379 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
4381 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
4382 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4384 =item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
4386 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
4387 the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
4388 UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4390 =item overload arg '%s' is invalid
4392 (W overload) The L<overload> pragma was passed an argument it did not
4393 recognize. Did you mistype an operator?
4395 =item Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
4397 (F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was dereferenced,
4398 but the overloaded operation did not return a reference. See
4401 =item Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
4403 (F) An object with a C<qr> overload was used as part of a match, but the
4404 overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See L<overload>.
4406 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
4408 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
4409 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
4410 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
4411 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
4413 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
4415 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
4416 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4420 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
4421 page. See L<perlform>.
4425 (P) An internal error.
4427 =item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
4429 (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
4430 an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
4431 platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
4432 enter this branch on this platform.
4434 =item panic: child pseudo-process was never scheduled
4436 (P) A child pseudo-process in the ithreads implementation on Windows
4437 was not scheduled within the time period allowed and therefore was not
4438 able to initialize properly.
4440 =item panic: ck_grep, type=%u
4442 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
4444 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index %ld
4446 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
4447 there are in the savestack.
4449 =item panic: del_backref
4451 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
4454 =item panic: do_subst
4456 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
4459 =item panic: do_trans_%s
4461 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
4464 =item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
4466 (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
4469 =item panic: frexp: %f
4471 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
4473 =item panic: goto, type=%u, ix=%ld
4475 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
4476 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
4478 =item panic: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
4480 (P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries tried
4481 repeatedly, but each time something re-created entries in the glob.
4482 Most likely the glob contains an object with a reference back to
4483 the glob and a destructor that adds a new object to the glob.
4485 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD, %s
4487 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
4489 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT, %s
4491 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
4493 =item panic: kid popen errno read
4495 (F) A forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
4497 =item panic: last, type=%u
4499 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
4500 it wasn't a block context.
4502 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
4504 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
4507 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency %u
4509 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
4510 invalid enum on the top of it.
4512 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
4514 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
4515 references to an object.
4517 =item panic: malloc, %s
4519 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
4521 =item panic: memory wrap
4523 (P) Something tried to allocate either more memory than possible or a
4526 =item panic: pad_alloc, %p!=%p
4528 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
4529 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
4531 =item panic: pad_free curpad, %p!=%p
4533 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
4534 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
4536 =item panic: pad_free po
4538 (P) A zero scratch pad offset was detected internally. An attempt was
4539 made to free a target that had not been allocated to begin with.
4541 =item panic: pad_reset curpad, %p!=%p
4543 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
4544 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
4546 =item panic: pad_sv po
4548 (P) A zero scratch pad offset was detected internally. Most likely
4549 an operator needed a target but that target had not been allocated
4550 for whatever reason.
4552 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad, %p!=%p
4554 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
4555 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
4557 =item panic: pad_swipe po
4559 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
4561 =item panic: pp_iter, type=%u
4563 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
4565 =item panic: pp_match%s
4567 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
4570 =item panic: realloc, %s
4572 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
4574 =item panic: reference miscount on nsv in sv_replace() (%d != 1)
4576 (P) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
4577 reference count other than 1.
4579 =item panic: restartop in %s
4581 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
4582 didn't supply the destination.
4584 =item panic: return, type=%u
4586 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
4587 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
4589 =item panic: scan_num, %s
4591 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
4593 =item panic: Sequence (?{...}): no code block found in regex m/%s/
4595 (P) While compiling a pattern that has embedded (?{}) or (??{}) code
4596 blocks, perl couldn't locate the code block that should have already been
4597 seen and compiled by perl before control passed to the regex compiler.
4599 =item panic: strxfrm() gets absurd - a => %u, ab => %u
4601 (P) The interpreter's sanity check of the C function strxfrm() failed.
4602 In your current locale the returned transformation of the string "ab"
4603 is shorter than that of the string "a", which makes no sense.
4605 =item panic: sv_chop %s
4607 (P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the
4608 scalar's string buffer.
4610 =item panic: sv_insert, midend=%p, bigend=%p
4612 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
4615 =item panic: top_env
4617 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
4619 =item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
4621 (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't
4622 permitted at run time.
4624 =item panic: unknown OA_*: %x
4626 (P) The internal routine that handles arguments to C<&CORE::foo()>
4627 subroutine calls was unable to determine what type of arguments
4630 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
4632 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
4633 to even) byte length.
4635 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
4637 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an odd (as opposed
4638 to even) byte length.
4640 =item panic: yylex, %s
4642 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
4644 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
4646 (W parenthesis) You said something like
4652 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
4654 Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
4656 =item Parsing code internal error (%s)
4658 (F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API in
4661 =item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex
4663 (F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
4664 consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before
4665 the nesting limit is exceeded.
4667 =item C<-p> destination: %s
4669 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
4670 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
4671 redirected it with select().)
4673 =item Perl API version %s of %s does not match %s
4675 (F) The XS module in question was compiled against a different incompatible
4676 version of Perl than the one that has loaded the XS module.
4678 =item Perl folding rules are not up-to-date for 0x%X; please use the perlbug
4679 utility to report; in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4681 (S regexp) You used a regular expression with case-insensitive matching,
4682 and there is a bug in Perl in which the built-in regular expression
4683 folding rules are not accurate. This may lead to incorrect results.
4684 Please report this as a bug using the L<perlbug> utility.
4686 =item PerlIO layer ':win32' is experimental
4688 (S experimental::win32_perlio) The C<:win32> PerlIO layer is
4689 experimental. If you want to take the risk of using this layer,
4690 simply disable this warning:
4692 no warnings "experimental::win32_perlio";
4694 =item Perl_my_%s() not available
4696 (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
4697 so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
4698 conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
4699 '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4701 =item Perl %s required (did you mean %s?)--this is only %s, stopped
4703 (F) The code you are trying to run has asked for a newer version of
4704 Perl than you are running. Perhaps C<use 5.10> was written instead
4705 of C<use 5.010> or C<use v5.10>. Without the leading C<v>, the number is
4706 interpreted as a decimal, with every three digits after the
4707 decimal point representing a part of the version number. So 5.10
4708 is equivalent to v5.100.
4710 =item Perl %s required--this is only %s, stopped
4712 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
4713 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
4714 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
4716 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
4718 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
4719 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
4721 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
4723 (X) See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
4725 =item Perls since %s too modern--this is %s, stopped
4727 (F) The code you are trying to run claims it will not run
4728 on the version of Perl you are using because it is too new.
4729 Maybe the code needs to be updated, or maybe it is simply
4730 wrong and the version check should just be removed.
4732 =item perl: warning: Non hex character in '$ENV{PERL_HASH_SEED}', seed only partially set
4734 (S) PERL_HASH_SEED should match /^\s*(?:0x)?[0-9a-fA-F]+\s*\z/ but it
4735 contained a non hex character. This could mean you are not using the
4736 hash seed you think you are.
4738 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
4740 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
4742 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
4743 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
4746 are supported and installed on your system.
4747 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
4749 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
4750 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
4751 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
4752 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
4753 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
4754 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
4755 Perl can and will use, and the script will be run. Before you really
4756 fix the problem, however, you will get the same error message each
4757 time you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
4758 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
4760 =item perl: warning: strange setting in '$ENV{PERL_PERTURB_KEYS}': '%s'
4762 (S) Perl was run with the environment variable PERL_PERTURB_KEYS defined
4763 but containing an unexpected value. The legal values of this setting
4766 Numeric | String | Result
4767 --------+---------------+-----------------------------------------
4768 0 | NO | Disables key traversal randomization
4769 1 | RANDOM | Enables full key traversal randomization
4770 2 | DETERMINISTIC | Enables repeatable key traversal
4773 Both numeric and string values are accepted, but note that string values are
4774 case sensitive. The default for this setting is "RANDOM" or 1.
4776 =item pid %x not a child
4778 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
4779 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
4780 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
4782 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
4784 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
4786 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4788 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The S<<-- HERE>
4789 shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
4790 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
4791 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
4792 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
4794 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
4796 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
4797 the BSD version, which takes a pid.