3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (enabled by default).
12 (S) A severe warning (enabled by default).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
19 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
21 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
22 category is included with the classification letter in the description
25 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
26 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Severe warnings are always enabled, unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %x
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '%c' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only
60 after certain types. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
76 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
79 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
81 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
82 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
83 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
84 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
86 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
88 (W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
89 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
90 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
92 =item Ambiguous use of %c resolved as operator %c
94 (W ambiguous) C<%>, C<&>, and C<*> are both infix operators (modulus,
95 bitwise and, and multiplication) I<and> initial special characters
96 (denoting hashes, subroutines and typeglobs), and you said something
97 like C<*foo * foo> that might be interpreted as either of them. We
98 assumed you meant the infix operator, but please try to make it more
99 clear -- in the example given, you might write C<*foo * foo()> if you
100 really meant to multiply a glob by the result of calling a function.
102 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s} resolved to %c%s
104 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<@{foo}>, which might be
105 asking for the variable C<@foo>, or it might be calling a function
106 named foo, and dereferencing it as an array reference. If you wanted
107 the variable, you can just write C<@foo>. If you wanted to call the
108 function, write C<@{foo()}> ... or you could just not have a variable
109 and a function with the same name, and save yourself a lot of trouble.
111 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s[...]} resolved to %c%s[...]
113 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s{...}} resolved to %c%s{...}
115 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<${foo[2]}> (where foo represents
116 the name of a Perl keyword), which might be looking for element number
117 2 of the array named C<@foo>, in which case please write C<$foo[2]>, or you
118 might have meant to pass an anonymous arrayref to the function named
119 foo, and then do a scalar deref on the value it returns. If you meant
120 that, write C<${foo([2])}>.
122 In regular expressions, the C<${foo[2]}> syntax is sometimes necessary
123 to disambiguate between array subscripts and character classes.
124 C</$length[2345]/>, for instance, will be interpreted as C<$length> followed
125 by the character class C<[2345]>. If an array subscript is what you
126 want, you can avoid the warning by changing C</${length[2345]}/> to the
127 unsightly C</${\$length[2345]}/>, by renaming your array to something
128 that does not coincide with a built-in keyword, or by simply turning
129 off warnings with C<no warnings 'ambiguous';>.
131 =item Ambiguous use of -%s resolved as -&%s()
133 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<-foo>, which might be the
134 string C<"-foo">, or a call to the function C<foo>, negated. If you meant
135 the string, just write C<"-foo">. If you meant the function call,
138 =item Ambiguous use of 's//le...' resolved as 's// le...'; Rewrite as 's//el' if you meant 'use locale rules and evaluate rhs as an expression'. In Perl 5.18, it will be resolved the other way
140 (W deprecated, ambiguous) You wrote a pattern match with substitution
141 immediately followed by "le". In Perl 5.16 and earlier, this is
142 resolved as meaning to take the result of the substitution, and see if
143 it is stringwise less-than-or-equal-to what follows in the expression.
144 Having the "le" immediately following a pattern is deprecated behavior,
145 so in Perl 5.18, this expression will be resolved as meaning to do the
146 pattern match using the rules of the current locale, and evaluate the
147 rhs as an expression when doing the substitution. In 5.14, and 5.16 if
148 you want the latter interpretation, you can simply write "el" instead.
149 But note that the C</l> modifier should not be used explicitly anyway;
150 you should use C<use locale> instead. See L<perllocale>.
152 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
154 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
155 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
156 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
158 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
160 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
161 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
162 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
163 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
164 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
166 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
173 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
175 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
176 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
177 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
178 a scalar value (the length of an array, or the population info of a
179 hash) and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
180 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
183 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
185 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
187 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
189 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element or a
190 subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
196 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
198 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
204 or a hash or array slice, such as:
206 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
207 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
209 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
211 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
212 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
215 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
217 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
218 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
219 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
221 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
223 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O
224 system you forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers
225 take care of transforming data between external and internal
226 representations.) Perl stopped parsing the layer list at this
227 point and did not attempt to push this layer. If your program
228 didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the
229 result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
231 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
233 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
234 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
236 =item assertion botched: %s
238 (X) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
240 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
242 (X) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
244 =item Assigning non-zero to $[ is no longer possible
246 (F) When the "array_base" feature is disabled (e.g., under C<use v5.16;>)
247 the special variable C<$[>, which is deprecated, is now a fixed zero value.
249 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
251 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
252 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
253 know which context to supply to the right side.
255 =item A thread exited while %d threads were running
257 (W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily
258 the main thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
259 Usually it's a good idea first to collect the return values of the
260 created threads by joining them, and only then to exit from the main
261 thread. See L<threads>.
263 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
265 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
266 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
268 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
270 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
271 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
272 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
278 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
280 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
281 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
284 bless $self, "$proto";
286 =item Attempt to clear deleted array
288 (S debugging) An array was assigned to when it was being freed.
289 Freed values are not supposed to be visible to Perl code. This
290 can also happen if XS code calls C<av_clear> from a custom magic
291 callback on the array.
293 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
295 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
296 which is not in its key set.
298 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
300 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
301 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
303 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%x
305 (S internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
306 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
307 outside any of those arenas.
309 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string '%s'%s
311 (S internal) Perl maintains a reference-counted internal table of
312 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
313 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
314 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
316 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely: SV 0x%x
318 (S debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
319 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
320 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
321 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
324 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
326 (S internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
328 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar: SV 0x%x
330 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
331 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
332 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
333 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
334 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
335 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
338 =item Attempt to join self
340 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
341 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
342 to move the join() to some other thread.
344 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
346 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
347 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
348 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
349 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
350 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
353 =item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
355 (F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
356 compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
357 unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
360 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
362 (W) You tried to set the length of an array which has been freed. You
363 can do this by storing a reference to the scalar representing the last index
364 of an array and later assigning through that reference. For example
366 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
369 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
371 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
372 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
373 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
375 =item Attribute "locked" is deprecated
377 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the
378 "locked" attribute on a code reference. The :locked attribute is
379 obsolete, has had no effect since 5005 threads were removed, and
380 will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
382 =item Attribute "unique" is deprecated
384 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify
385 the "unique" attribute on an array, hash or scalar reference.
386 The :unique attribute has had no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and
387 will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
389 =item av_reify called on tied array
391 (S debugging) This indicates that something went wrong and Perl got I<very>
392 confused about C<@_> or C<@DB::args> being tied.
394 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
396 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
397 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
398 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
399 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
401 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
403 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
404 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
405 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
407 =item Bad filehandle: %s
409 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
410 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
411 open(), or did it in another package.
413 =item Bad free() ignored
415 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
416 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
417 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
419 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
420 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
421 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
425 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
427 =item Badly placed ()'s
429 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
430 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
433 =item Bad name after %s
435 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
436 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
445 $sym = "mypack::$var";
447 =item Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
449 (F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the
452 =item Bad realloc() ignored
454 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that
455 had never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can
456 be disabled by setting the environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
458 =item Bad symbol for array
460 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
461 wasn't a symbol table entry.
463 =item Bad symbol for dirhandle
465 (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
466 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
468 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
470 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
471 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
473 =item Bad symbol for hash
475 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
476 wasn't a symbol table entry.
478 =item Bareword found in conditional
480 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
481 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
482 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
486 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
489 use constant TYPO => 1;
490 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
492 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
494 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
496 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
497 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
498 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
500 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
502 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
503 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
504 you need to predeclare a package?
506 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
508 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
509 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
512 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
514 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
515 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
516 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
517 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
518 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
520 =item \1 better written as $1
522 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
523 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
524 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
525 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
526 there are more than 9 backreferences.
528 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
530 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
531 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
532 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
534 =item bind() on closed socket %s
536 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
537 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
539 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
541 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
542 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
544 =item "\b{" is deprecated; use "\b\{" instead
546 =item "\B{" is deprecated; use "\B\{" instead
548 (W deprecated, regexp) Use of an unescaped "{" immediately following a
549 C<\b> or C<\B> is now deprecated so as to reserve its use for Perl
550 itself in a future release.
552 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
554 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
556 =item Bizarre copy of %s
558 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
561 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
563 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
564 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
565 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
567 =item Bizarre SvTYPE [%d]
569 (P) When starting a new thread or return values from a thread, Perl
570 encountered an invalid data type.
572 =item Callback called exit
574 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
575 exited by calling exit.
577 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
579 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
580 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
581 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
582 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
583 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
584 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
585 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
586 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
588 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
590 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
591 compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
592 attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
593 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
595 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
597 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
598 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
600 =item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
602 (F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference
603 in it, then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax.
604 The access triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is
605 no legal conversion from that type of reference to a typeglob.
607 =item Cannot copy to %s
609 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
610 be directly assigned to.
612 =item Cannot find encoding "%s"
614 (S io) You tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to a filehandle,
615 either with open() or binmode().
617 =item Cannot set tied @DB::args
619 (F) C<caller> tried to set C<@DB::args>, but found it tied. Tying C<@DB::args>
620 is not supported. (Before this error was added, it used to crash.)
622 =item Cannot tie unreifiable array
624 (P) You somehow managed to call C<tie> on an array that does not
625 keep a reference count on its arguments and cannot be made to
626 do so. Such arrays are not even supposed to be accessible to
627 Perl code, but are only used internally.
629 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
631 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
632 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
633 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
635 =item Can't bless non-reference value
637 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
638 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
640 =item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
642 (F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
643 a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
645 =item Can't "break" outside a given block
647 (F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
649 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
651 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
652 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
653 like this will reproduce the error:
656 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
657 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
659 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
661 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
662 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
663 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
664 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
666 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
668 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
669 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
670 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
671 Something like this will reproduce the error:
674 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
675 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
677 =item Can't chdir to %s
679 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
680 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
682 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
684 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
687 =item Can't coerce %s to %s in %s
689 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
690 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
700 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
702 =item Can't "continue" outside a when block
704 (F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
707 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
709 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
710 quotas or other plumbing problems.
712 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
714 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
715 "state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
717 =item Can't "default" outside a topicalizer
719 (F) You have used a C<default> block that is neither inside a
720 C<foreach> loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is
721 issued on exit from the C<default> block, so you won't get the
722 error if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
724 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
726 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
727 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
729 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
731 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
734 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
736 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
737 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
738 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
740 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
742 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
743 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
744 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
746 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
748 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really
749 want your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The
750 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
751 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
753 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
755 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
756 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
758 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
760 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
761 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
764 =item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
766 (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
767 or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
768 little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
769 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
771 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
773 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
774 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
775 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
776 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
777 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
778 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
783 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
784 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
785 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
787 =item Can't execute %s
789 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
790 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
792 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
794 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
795 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
797 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
799 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
800 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property?
801 See L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
802 for a complete list of available properties.
804 =item Can't find label %s
806 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
807 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
809 =item Can't find %s on PATH
811 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
814 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
816 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
817 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
818 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
820 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
822 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
823 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
824 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
826 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
828 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
829 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag or there
830 may not be a linebreak after it. A good programmer's editor will have
831 a way to help you find these characters (or lack of characters). See
832 L<perlop> for the full details on here-documents.
834 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
836 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode
837 property (for example C<\p{Lu}> matches all uppercase
838 letters). If you did mean to use a Unicode property, see
839 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
840 for a complete list of available properties. If you didn't
841 mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either by
842 C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, or
847 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
850 =item Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
852 (W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be retried
855 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
857 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
858 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
859 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
860 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
861 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
862 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
863 the access-checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
864 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
865 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
866 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
867 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access-checking routine gave up
868 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access-checking
869 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
870 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
871 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
873 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
875 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
876 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
878 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
880 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
881 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
883 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
885 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
886 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
888 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
890 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
891 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
892 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
893 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
895 =item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
897 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
898 comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
899 as the reduce() function in List::Util).
901 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
903 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
906 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
908 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
909 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
910 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
911 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
913 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
915 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
916 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
917 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
918 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
919 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
920 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
922 =item Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
924 (F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a fatal error to
925 attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise non-numeric
928 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
930 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
931 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
932 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
933 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
934 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
935 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
938 =item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
940 (F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
941 package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
943 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
945 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension.
946 This may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one
947 that is incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known
948 to happen between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your
949 dynamic extension was built against an older version of the library
950 that is installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old
953 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
955 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
956 lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you
957 want to localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with
960 =item Can't localize through a reference
962 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
963 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
964 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
965 that $ref will still be a reference.
967 =item Can't locate %s
969 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be found.
970 Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC, unless
971 the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
972 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the
973 extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
974 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
975 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
977 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
979 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
980 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
981 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
982 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
984 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
986 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
987 for example, F<foo.so> or F<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
988 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
990 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
992 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
993 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
994 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
996 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
998 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
999 doesn't seem to exist.
1001 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
1003 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
1004 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
1006 =item Can't make list assignment to %ENV on this system
1008 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
1011 =item Can't modify %s in %s
1013 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
1014 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
1016 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
1018 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
1021 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
1023 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
1024 such. See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1026 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
1028 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
1031 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
1033 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
1034 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1035 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
1036 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1037 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
1038 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
1042 (F) You tried to run a perl built with MAD support with
1043 the PERL_XMLDUMP environment variable set, but the file
1044 named by that variable could not be opened.
1046 =item Can't open %s: %s
1048 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
1049 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
1050 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually
1051 this is because you don't have read permission for a file which
1052 you named on the command line.
1054 (F) You tried to call perl with the B<-e> switch, but F</dev/null> (or
1055 your operating system's equivalent) could not be opened.
1057 =item Can't open a reference
1059 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
1060 using the 3-arg open() syntax:
1064 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
1065 open is not supported.
1067 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
1069 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
1070 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
1071 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
1072 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
1074 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
1076 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1077 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
1078 the command line for writing.
1080 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
1082 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1083 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
1084 command line for reading.
1086 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
1088 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1089 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
1090 the command line for writing.
1092 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
1094 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1095 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
1098 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
1100 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
1102 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
1103 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1104 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1106 =item Can't read CRTL environ
1108 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1109 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1110 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1111 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1114 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1116 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1117 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1118 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1119 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1120 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1121 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1123 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1125 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1126 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1127 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1129 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1131 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1132 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1134 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1136 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1137 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1139 =item Can't reset %ENV on this system
1141 (F) You called C<reset('E')> or similar, which tried to reset
1142 all variables in the current package beginning with "E". In
1143 the main package, that includes %ENV. Resetting %ENV is not
1144 supported on some systems, notably VMS.
1146 =item Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
1148 (F)(P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1149 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1150 package. If the method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1152 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1154 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1155 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1158 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1160 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1161 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1163 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1165 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue
1166 subroutine, but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl
1167 think you meant to return only one value. You probably meant to
1168 write parentheses around the call to the subroutine, which tell
1169 Perl that the call should be in list context.
1171 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1173 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1174 open already. Bizarre.
1176 =item Can't take log of %g
1178 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1179 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1180 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1183 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1185 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1186 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1187 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1189 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1191 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1192 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1193 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1195 =item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1197 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1198 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1199 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1200 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1202 =item Can't use '%c' after -mname
1204 (F) You tried to call perl with the B<-m> switch, but you put something
1205 other than "=" after the module name.
1207 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1209 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1210 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1211 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1213 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1215 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1216 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1218 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1220 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1221 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1223 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1225 (F) The first time the C<%!> hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1226 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1227 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1229 =item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1231 (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1232 byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1233 allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1235 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1237 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1240 =item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1242 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1243 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1244 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1245 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1248 =item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1250 (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1251 that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1252 For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1253 is inside a big-endian group.
1255 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1257 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1258 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1259 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1260 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1263 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1265 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1266 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1267 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1269 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1271 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1272 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1274 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1276 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1277 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1278 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1280 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1282 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1283 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1284 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1285 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1286 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1289 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1291 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1292 references can be weakened.
1294 =item Can't "when" outside a topicalizer
1296 (F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1297 loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1298 from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1299 or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1301 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1303 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1304 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1305 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1307 =item Character following "\c" must be ASCII
1309 (F)(W deprecated, syntax) In C<\cI<X>>, I<X> must be an ASCII character.
1310 It is planned to make this fatal in all instances in Perl 5.18. In the
1311 cases where it isn't fatal, the character this evaluates to is
1312 derived by exclusive or'ing the code point of this character with 0x40.
1314 Note that non-alphabetic ASCII characters are discouraged here as well.
1316 =item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1322 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1323 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1324 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1328 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1331 =item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1337 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode
1338 expects all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved
1341 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1343 =item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1349 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1350 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1351 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1353 pack("c", $x & 255);
1355 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1358 =item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1360 (W unpack) You tried something like
1362 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1364 where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1365 below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the
1366 value modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1368 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1370 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1372 (W pack) You tried something like
1374 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1376 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1377 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1378 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1380 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1382 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1384 (W unpack) You tried something like
1386 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1388 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1389 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1390 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1392 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1394 =item "\c{" is deprecated and is more clearly written as ";"
1396 (D deprecated, syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way
1397 to specify non-printable characters. You used it with a "{" which
1398 evaluates to ";", which is printable. It is planned to remove the
1399 ability to specify a semi-colon this way in Perl 5.18. Just use a
1400 semi-colon or a backslash-semi-colon without the "\c".
1402 =item "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"
1404 (W syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way to specify
1405 non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which is better
1406 written as simply itself, perhaps preceded by a backslash for non-word
1409 =item Cloning substitution context is unimplemented
1411 (F) Creating a new thread inside the C<s///> operator is not supported.
1413 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1415 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1417 =item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1419 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1420 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1422 =item Closure prototype called
1424 (F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to an attribute
1425 handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure is created.
1426 This subroutine cannot be called.
1428 =item Code missing after '/'
1430 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be
1431 another template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1433 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
1435 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, all \p{} matches fail; all \P{} matches succeed
1437 (W utf8, non_unicode) You had a code point above the Unicode maximum
1440 Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code points, up
1441 to the limit of what is storable in an unsigned integer on your system,
1442 but these may not be accepted by other languages/systems. At one time,
1443 it was legal in some standards to have code points up to 0x7FFF_FFFF,
1444 but not higher. Code points above 0xFFFF_FFFF require larger than a
1447 None of the Unicode or Perl-defined properties will match a non-Unicode
1448 code point. For example,
1450 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\p{Any}/
1452 will not match, because the code point is not in Unicode. But
1454 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\P{Any}/
1458 This may be counterintuitive at times, as both these fail:
1460 chr(0x110000) =~ \p{ASCII_Hex_Digit=True} # Fails.
1461 chr(0x110000) =~ \p{ASCII_Hex_Digit=False} # Also fails!
1463 and both these succeed:
1465 chr(0x110000) =~ \P{ASCII_Hex_Digit=True} # Succeeds.
1466 chr(0x110000) =~ \P{ASCII_Hex_Digit=False} # Also succeeds!
1468 =item %s: Command not found
1470 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1471 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1473 =item Compilation failed in require
1475 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1476 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1477 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1479 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1481 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1482 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1483 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1484 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1485 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1486 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1487 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1488 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1489 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1491 =item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1493 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to
1494 call cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked.
1495 The cond_broadcast() function is used to wake up another thread
1496 that is waiting in a cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't
1497 sent before the other thread has a chance to enter the wait, it
1498 is usual for the signaling thread first to wait for a lock on
1499 variable. This lock attempt will only succeed after the other
1500 thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the lock.
1502 =item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1504 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to
1505 call cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The
1506 cond_signal() function is used to wake up another thread that
1507 is waiting in a cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't
1508 sent before the other thread has a chance to enter the wait, it
1509 is usual for the signaling thread first to wait for a lock on
1510 variable. This lock attempt will only succeed after the other
1511 thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the lock.
1513 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1515 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1516 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1517 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1519 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1521 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1522 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1523 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1524 corresponding L<overload> pragma?.
1526 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1528 (F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to find
1529 the character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape.
1531 =item Constant is not %s reference
1533 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1534 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1535 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1536 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1537 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1539 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1541 (W redefine)(S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously
1542 been eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions">
1543 for commentary and workarounds.
1545 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1547 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1548 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1551 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1553 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1554 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1556 =item &CORE::%s cannot be called directly
1558 (F) You tried to call a subroutine in the C<CORE::> namespace
1559 with C<&foo> syntax or through a reference. Some subroutines
1560 in this package cannot yet be called that way, but must be
1561 called as barewords. Something like this will work:
1563 BEGIN { *shove = \&CORE::push; }
1564 shove @array, 1,2,3; # pushes on to @array
1566 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1568 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1570 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1572 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1573 expression compiler gave it.
1575 =item corrupted regexp program
1577 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1580 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
1582 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1584 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1586 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1587 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1590 =item Deep recursion on anonymous subroutine
1592 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1594 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1595 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1596 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1597 which case it indicates something else.
1599 This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the F<perl> binary,
1600 setting the C pre-processor macro C<PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN> to the desired value.
1602 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1604 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1605 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1606 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1608 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1610 (D deprecated) C<defined()> is not usually right on hashes and has been
1611 discouraged since 5.004.
1613 Although C<defined %hash> is false on a plain not-yet-used hash, it
1614 becomes true in several non-obvious circumstances, including iterators,
1615 weak references, stash names, even remaining true after C<undef %hash>.
1616 These things make C<defined %hash> fairly useless in practice.
1618 If a check for non-empty is what you wanted then just put it in boolean
1619 context (see L<perldata/Scalar values>):
1625 If you had C<defined %Foo::Bar::QUUX> to check whether such a package
1626 variable exists then that's never really been reliable, and isn't
1627 a good way to enquire about the features of a package, or whether
1631 =item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1633 (F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
1634 most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
1635 of the C<....> part.
1637 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1640 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1642 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1643 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1645 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1647 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1648 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1649 that triggers this error.
1651 =item Deprecated character in \N{...}; marked by <-- HERE in \N{%s<-- HERE %s
1653 (D deprecated) Just about anything is legal for the C<...> in C<\N{...}>.
1654 But starting in 5.12, non-reasonable ones that don't look like names
1655 are deprecated. A reasonable name begins with an alphabetic character
1656 and continues with any combination of alphanumerics, dashes, spaces,
1657 parentheses or colons.
1659 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1661 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>. There
1662 has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1663 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1664 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1665 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1666 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1667 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1669 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1673 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1675 Beginning with perl 5.9.4, you can also use C<state> variables to have
1676 lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1678 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1680 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1682 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1683 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather
1684 than to create a dangling reference.
1686 =item Did not produce a valid header
1690 =item %s did not return a true value
1692 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1693 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1694 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1695 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1697 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1699 (W misc) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or
1702 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1704 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1705 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1708 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1710 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1711 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1716 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1717 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
1719 =item Document contains no data
1723 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1725 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1726 define a C<$VERSION.>
1728 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1730 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1731 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1733 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1735 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1737 =item do_study: out of memory
1739 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1741 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1743 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1744 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1745 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1746 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1747 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1748 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1749 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1750 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1752 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1754 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1755 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1757 =item dump is not supported
1759 (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1761 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1763 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1766 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1768 (W) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a type
1769 in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1771 =item elseif should be elsif
1773 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks
1774 it's ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1775 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1776 unlikely to be what you want.
1780 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1781 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1782 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1784 =item entering effective %s failed
1786 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1787 effective uids or gids failed.
1789 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1791 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1792 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1793 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1795 =item Error converting file specification %s
1797 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1798 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1799 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1800 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1801 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1803 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1805 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1806 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1807 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1809 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval'
1811 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1812 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1813 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk,
1814 it is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by using the
1815 C<re 'eval'> pragma or by explicitly building the pattern from an
1816 interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval(). See
1817 L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1819 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1821 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1822 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1823 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1825 =item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1827 (F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
1828 any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
1830 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1833 =item Excessively long <> operator
1835 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1836 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1837 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1838 variable and glob that.
1840 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1842 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented on some systems, e.g., Symbian
1843 OS. See L<perlport>.
1845 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
1847 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1849 =item Exiting eval via %s
1851 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1852 goto, or a loop control statement.
1854 =item Exiting format via %s
1856 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1857 goto, or a loop control statement.
1859 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1861 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1862 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1863 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1865 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1867 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1868 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1870 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1872 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1873 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1875 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1877 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1878 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1879 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1880 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1882 =item %s: Expression syntax
1884 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1885 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1887 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1889 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
1890 CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
1891 queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
1893 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1895 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1896 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1897 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1898 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1899 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1901 =item Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
1903 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1904 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1905 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1906 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1908 =item fcntl is not implemented
1910 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1911 PDP-11 or something?
1913 =item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
1915 (F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
1918 =item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1920 (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string start with a length indicator
1921 which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1922 a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1923 C<u63> as the format.
1925 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1927 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1928 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1929 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1930 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1932 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1934 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1935 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1936 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with ">". If you intended only to
1937 read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>. Another possibility
1938 is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0 (also known as STDIN) for
1939 output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
1941 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1943 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1944 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
1947 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
1949 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1950 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
1952 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1954 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1955 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1956 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1959 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1961 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1962 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1963 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1966 =item Format not terminated
1968 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1969 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1971 =item Format %s redefined
1973 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1976 no warnings 'redefine';
1977 eval "format NAME =...";
1980 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1990 (or something like that).
1992 =item %s found where operator expected
1994 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
1995 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1996 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1997 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1999 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
2001 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
2003 =item gethostent not implemented
2005 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
2006 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
2009 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
2011 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
2012 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
2014 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
2016 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
2017 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
2019 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
2021 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
2022 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2023 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
2025 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
2027 (F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
2028 that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
2029 declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
2030 which package the global variable is in (using "::").
2032 =item glob failed (%s)
2034 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used
2035 for C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
2036 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
2037 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
2038 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell)
2039 is broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables
2040 in config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as
2041 if it were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them
2042 all empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
2043 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
2044 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
2046 =item Glob not terminated
2048 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
2049 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
2050 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
2051 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
2053 =item gmtime(%f) too large
2055 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was larger than
2056 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
2057 date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2058 not-a-number value).
2060 =item gmtime(%f) too small
2062 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was smaller than
2063 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong date.
2065 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
2067 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
2068 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
2070 =item goto must have label
2072 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
2073 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
2075 =item Goto undefined subroutine%s
2077 (F) You tried to call a subroutine with C<goto &sub> syntax, but
2078 the indicated subroutine hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2079 has since been undefined.
2081 =item ()-group starts with a count
2083 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is supposed to follow
2084 something: a template character or a ()-group. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2086 =item %s had compilation errors.
2088 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
2090 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
2092 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
2093 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
2094 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
2096 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
2098 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
2099 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
2101 =item %s has too many errors
2103 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
2104 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
2106 =item Having no space between pattern and following word is deprecated
2110 You had a word that isn't a regex modifier immediately following
2111 a pattern without an intervening space. If you are trying to use
2112 the C</le> flags on a substitution, use C</el> instead. Otherwise, add
2113 white space between the pattern and following word to eliminate
2114 the warning. As an example of the latter, the two constructs:
2117 $a =~ m/$foo/sand $bar
2118 $a =~ m/$foo/s and $bar
2120 both currently mean the same thing, but it is planned to disallow
2121 the first form in Perl 5.18. And,
2123 $a =~ m/$foo/and $bar
2125 will be disallowed too.
2127 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
2129 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2130 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2131 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2133 =item Identifier too long
2135 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
2136 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
2137 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
2138 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
2140 =item Ignoring zero length \N{} in character class
2142 (W) Named Unicode character escapes C<(\N{...})> may return a zero-length
2143 sequence. When such an escape is used in a character class its
2144 behaviour is not well defined. Check that the correct escape has
2145 been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
2147 =item Illegal binary digit %s
2149 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
2151 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
2153 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
2154 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
2157 =item Illegal character after '_' in prototype for %s : %s
2159 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2160 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2162 =item Illegal character \%o (carriage return)
2164 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
2165 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
2166 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
2167 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
2168 to your Perl administrator.
2170 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
2172 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2173 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2175 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
2177 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
2178 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
2180 =item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
2182 (F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
2184 =item Illegal division by zero
2186 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
2187 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
2190 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
2192 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
2193 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
2194 number stopped before the illegal character.
2196 =item Illegal modulus zero
2198 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
2199 numbers don't take to this kindly.
2201 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
2203 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
2204 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
2206 =item Illegal octal digit %s
2208 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2210 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
2212 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2213 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
2215 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: -%c
2217 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
2218 following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtw]>.
2220 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
2222 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
2223 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
2224 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
2226 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
2228 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
2229 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
2230 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
2233 =item (in cleanup) %s
2235 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
2236 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
2237 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
2238 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
2239 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
2241 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
2242 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
2244 =item Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on parent '%s'
2246 (F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not
2247 C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See the C3
2248 documentation in L<mro> for more information.
2250 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
2252 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
2253 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
2254 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
2256 =item Infinite recursion in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2258 (F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input
2259 text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive patterns
2260 either consume text or fail.
2262 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2265 =item Initialization of state variables in list context currently forbidden
2267 (F) Currently the implementation of "state" only permits the
2268 initialization of scalar variables in scalar context. Re-write
2269 C<state ($a) = 42> as C<state $a = 42> to change from list to scalar
2270 context. Constructions such as C<state (@a) = foo()> will be
2271 supported in a future perl release.
2273 =item Insecure dependency in %s
2275 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
2276 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
2277 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
2278 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
2279 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
2280 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
2281 L<perlsec> for more information.
2283 =item Insecure directory in %s
2285 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2286 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
2287 the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
2290 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
2292 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2293 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
2294 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
2295 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
2296 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
2298 =item Insecure user-defined property %s
2300 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
2301 expression that contains a call to a user-defined character property
2302 function, i.e. C<\p{IsFoo}> or C<\p{InFoo}>.
2303 See L<perlunicode/User-Defined Character Properties> and L<perlsec>.
2305 =item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2307 (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2308 or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2309 integers for your architecture.
2311 =item Integer overflow in %s number
2313 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2314 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2315 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2316 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2317 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
2318 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2319 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2320 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2323 =item Integer overflow in version
2325 (F) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for the
2326 size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
2327 because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use a
2328 element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by
2329 trying to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like
2332 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2334 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
2335 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2338 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2340 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2341 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2342 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2343 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2344 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2345 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
2347 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2349 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2350 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2353 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
2355 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
2356 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
2357 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
2358 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
2360 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2362 (F) The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2363 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2365 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2367 (F) The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2368 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2370 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2372 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2373 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
2375 =item Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2377 (W regexp) The numeric escape (for example C<\xHH>) of value < 256
2378 didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion
2379 from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma.
2380 The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD) instead.
2381 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2382 escape was discovered.
2384 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
2386 (F) The character constant represented by C<...> is not a valid hexadecimal
2387 number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use a character other than
2388 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
2390 =item Invalid module name %s with -%c option: contains single ':'
2392 (F) The module argument to perl's B<-m> and B<-M> command-line options
2393 cannot contain single colons in the module name, but only in the
2394 arguments after "=". In other words, B<-MFoo::Bar=:baz> is ok, but
2395 B<-MFoo:Bar=baz> is not.
2397 =item Invalid mro name: '%s'
2399 (F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")> or C<use mro 'foo'>,
2400 where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO). Currently,
2401 the only valid ones supported are C<dfs> and C<c3>, unless you have loaded
2402 a module that is a MRO plugin. See L<mro> and L<perlmroapi>.
2404 =item invalid option -D%c, use -D'' to see choices
2406 (F) Perl was called with invalid debugger flags. Call perl with
2407 the B<-D> option with no flags to see the list of acceptable values.
2408 See also L<< perlrun/B<-D>I<letters> >>.
2410 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2412 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2413 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2414 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2415 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2416 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2418 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2420 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2421 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2423 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2425 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2426 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2427 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2430 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2432 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other
2433 than a colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2434 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2435 list was terminated too soon.
2437 =item Invalid strict version format (%s)
2439 (F) A version number did not meet the "strict" criteria for versions.
2440 A "strict" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2441 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2442 v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least three components.
2443 The parenthesized text indicates which criteria were not met.
2444 See the L<version> module for more details on allowed version formats.
2446 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2448 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2449 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2451 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2454 =item Invalid version format (%s)
2456 (F) A version number did not meet the "lax" criteria for versions.
2457 A "lax" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2458 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2459 v-string. If the v-string has fewer than three components, it
2460 must have a leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading 'v' is
2461 optional. Both decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a
2462 trailing "alpha" component separated by an underscore character
2463 after a fractional or dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized
2464 text indicates which criteria were not met. See the L<version> module
2465 for more details on allowed version formats.
2467 =item Invalid version object
2469 (F) The internal structure of the version object was invalid.
2470 Perhaps the internals were modified directly in some way or
2471 an arbitrary reference was blessed into the "version" class.
2473 =item ioctl is not implemented
2475 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2476 strange for a machine that supports C.
2478 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
2480 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2481 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
2483 =item IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
2485 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2486 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO, Perl must be configured
2489 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2491 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2492 neither as a system call nor an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2494 =item $* is no longer supported
2496 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older
2497 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. In
2498 previous versions of perl the use of C<$*> enabled or disabled multi-line
2499 matching within a string.
2501 Instead of using C<$*> you should use the C</m> (and maybe C</s>) regexp
2502 modifiers. You can enable C</m> for a lexical scope (even a whole file)
2503 with C<use re '/m'>. (In older versions: when C<$*> was set to a true value
2504 then all regular expressions behaved as if they were written using C</m>.)
2506 =item $# is no longer supported
2508 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older
2509 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported. You
2510 should use the printf/sprintf functions instead.
2512 =item '%s' is not a code reference
2514 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of
2515 overload::constant needs to be a code reference. Either
2516 an anonymous subroutine, or a reference to a subroutine.
2518 =item '%s' is not an overloadable type
2520 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2523 =item junk on end of regexp
2525 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2527 =item Label not found for "last %s"
2529 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2530 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2533 =item Label not found for "next %s"
2535 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2536 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2539 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
2541 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2542 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2545 =item leaving effective %s failed
2547 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2548 effective uids or gids failed.
2550 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
2552 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2553 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2554 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2556 =item length() used on %s
2558 (W syntax) You used length() on either an array or a hash when you
2559 probably wanted a count of the items.
2561 Array size can be obtained by doing:
2565 The number of items in a hash can be obtained by doing:
2569 =item Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
2571 (F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse
2572 (using L<lex_stuff_pvn|perlapi/lex_stuff_pvn> or similar), but tried to insert a character that
2573 couldn't be part of the current input. This is an inherent pitfall
2574 of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the reasons to avoid it. Where
2575 it is necessary to stuff, stuffing only plain ASCII is recommended.
2577 =item Lexing code internal error (%s)
2579 (F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a
2582 =item listen() on closed socket %s
2584 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2585 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2588 =item List form of piped open not implemented
2590 (F) On some platforms, notably Windows, the three-or-more-arguments
2591 form of C<open> does not support pipes, such as C<open($pipe, '|-', @args)>.
2592 Use the two-argument C<open($pipe, '|prog arg1 arg2...')> form instead.
2594 =item localtime(%f) too large
2596 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was larger
2597 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2598 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2599 not-a-number value).
2601 =item localtime(%f) too small
2603 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was smaller
2604 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2607 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
2609 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2610 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2612 =item Lost precision when %s %f by 1
2614 (W) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by one is too large
2615 for the underlying floating point representation to store accurately,
2616 hence the target of C<++> or C<--> is unchanged. Perl issues this warning
2617 because it has already switched from integers to floating point when values
2618 are too large for integers, and now even floating point is insufficient.
2619 You may wish to switch to using L<Math::BigInt> explicitly.
2621 =item lstat() on filehandle%s
2623 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2624 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2625 instead on the filehandle.)
2627 =item lvalue attribute cannot be removed after the subroutine has been defined
2629 (W misc) The lvalue attribute on a Perl subroutine cannot be turned off
2630 once the subroutine is defined.
2632 =item lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined
2634 (W misc) Making a Perl subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it has been
2635 defined, whether by declaring the subroutine with an lvalue attribute
2636 or by using L<attributes.pm|attributes>, is not possible. To make the subroutine an
2637 lvalue subroutine, add the lvalue attribute to the definition, or put
2638 the declaration before the definition.
2640 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2642 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2643 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2645 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2647 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2648 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2650 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2652 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2659 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2660 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2661 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2662 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2664 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2666 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2667 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2668 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2669 when the function is called.
2671 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2673 (S utf8)(F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2674 encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
2676 One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2677 you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
2678 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2680 If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2681 sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2682 set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2685 See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
2687 =item Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N
2689 (F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
2691 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2693 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2694 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2696 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2698 (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2699 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2701 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2703 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2704 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2706 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2708 (F) Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2709 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2711 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2713 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2714 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
2715 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2718 =item Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded
2720 (F) Perl aborted due to too high a number of signals pending. This
2721 usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
2722 too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
2723 resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
2724 safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
2726 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2728 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2729 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2732 =item '%' may not be used in pack
2734 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2735 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2736 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2738 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2740 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2741 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2743 =item Method %s not permitted
2747 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2749 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2750 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2751 ended earlier on the current line.
2753 =item Misplaced _ in number
2755 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2756 separate two digits.
2758 =item Missing argument in %s
2760 (W uninitialized) A printf-type format required more arguments than were
2763 =item Missing argument to -%c
2765 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2766 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2768 =item Missing braces on \N{}
2770 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2771 double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space
2772 (or comment) between the C<\N> and the C<{> in a regex with the C</x> modifier.
2773 This modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately
2776 =item Missing braces on \o{}
2778 (F) A C<\o> must be followed immediately by a C<{> in double-quotish context.
2780 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2782 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2783 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2785 =item Missing command in piped open
2787 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2788 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2791 =item Missing control char name in \c
2793 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2796 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2798 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2799 they have a name with which they can be found.
2801 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2803 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2804 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2805 can vary from one line to the next.
2807 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2809 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2810 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2812 =item Missing right brace on %s
2814 (F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}>, C<\P{...}>, or C<\N{...}>.
2816 =item Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N
2818 (F) C<\N> has two meanings.
2820 The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed in braces,
2821 meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that
2822 name. Thus C<\N{ASTERISK}> is another way of writing C<*>, valid in both
2823 double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns,
2824 it doesn't have the meaning an unescaped C<*> does.
2826 Starting in Perl 5.12.0, C<\N> also can have an additional meaning (only)
2827 in patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short
2828 for C<[^\n]>, and like C<.> but is not affected by the C</s> regex modifier.)
2830 This can lead to some ambiguities. When C<\N> is not followed immediately
2831 by a left brace, Perl assumes the C<[^\n]> meaning. Also, if the braces
2832 form a valid quantifier such as C<\N{3}> or C<\N{5,}>, Perl assumes that this
2833 means to match the given quantity of non-newlines (in these examples,
2834 3; and 5 or more, respectively). In all other case, where there is a
2835 C<\N{> and a matching C<}>, Perl assumes that a character name is desired.
2837 However, if there is no matching C<}>, Perl doesn't know if it was
2838 mistakenly omitted, or if C<[^\n]{> was desired, and raises this error.
2839 If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant the latter,
2840 escape the brace with a backslash, like so: C<\N\{>
2842 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2844 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2845 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2848 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2850 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2851 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2852 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2854 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2856 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2857 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2858 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2860 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2863 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2865 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2866 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2869 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2870 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to
2873 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2875 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2876 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2879 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2881 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2882 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2884 =item Module name must be constant
2886 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2888 =item Module name required with -%c option
2890 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2891 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2892 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2894 =item More than one argument to '%s' open
2896 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2897 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2898 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2899 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2901 =item msg%s not implemented
2903 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2905 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2907 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2908 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2910 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
2912 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
2913 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
2914 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2916 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2918 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2921 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
2923 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2924 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2925 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2927 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2929 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2930 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2931 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2932 provided for this purpose.
2934 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
2935 %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
2936 the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
2937 will not trigger this warning.
2939 =item \N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...}
2941 (F) The new (5.12) meaning of C<\N> as C<[^\n]> is not valid in a bracketed
2942 character class, for the same reason that C<.> in a character class loses
2943 its specialness: it matches almost everything, which is probably not
2946 =item \N{NAME} must be resolved by the lexer
2948 (F) When compiling a regex pattern, an unresolved named character or
2949 sequence was encountered. This can happen in any of several ways that
2950 bypass the lexer, such as using single-quotish context, or an extra
2951 backslash in double-quotish:
2953 $re = '\N{SPACE}'; # Wrong!
2954 $re = "\\N{SPACE}"; # Wrong!
2957 Instead, use double-quotes with a single backslash:
2959 $re = "\N{SPACE}"; # ok
2962 The lexer can be bypassed as well by creating the pattern from smaller
2966 /${re}{SPACE}/; # Wrong!
2968 It's not a good idea to split a construct in the middle like this, and it
2969 doesn't work here. Instead use the solution above.
2971 Finally, the message also can happen under the C</x> regex modifier when the
2972 C<\N> is separated by spaces from the C<{>, in which case, remove the spaces.
2974 /\N {SPACE}/x; # Wrong!
2977 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
2979 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
2980 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2982 =item Negative length
2984 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2985 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2987 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
2989 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
2990 greater than or equal to zero.
2992 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2994 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses.
2995 So things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the
2996 regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2998 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2999 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
3001 =item %s never introduced
3003 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
3004 scope before it could possibly have been used.
3006 =item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
3008 (F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
3009 real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
3012 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
3014 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
3015 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
3016 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
3017 securable. See L<perlsec>.
3019 =item No code specified for -%c
3021 (F) Perl's B<-e> and B<-E> command-line options require an argument. If
3022 you want to run an empty program, pass the empty string as a separate
3023 argument or run a program consisting of a single 0 or 1:
3029 =item No comma allowed after %s
3031 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is
3032 not allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
3033 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
3035 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported
3036 a constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
3037 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating
3038 system does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did
3039 use an explicit import list for the constants you expect to see;
3040 please see L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an
3041 explicit import list would probably have caught this error earlier
3042 it naturally does not remedy the fact that your operating system
3043 still does not support that constant. Maybe you have a typo in
3044 the constants of the symbol import list of B<use> or B<import> or in the
3045 constant name at the line where this error was triggered?
3047 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
3049 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3050 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
3051 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
3053 =item No DB::DB routine defined
3055 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3056 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3057 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
3060 =item No dbm on this machine
3062 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
3063 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
3065 =item No DB::sub routine defined
3067 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3068 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3069 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
3070 of each ordinary subroutine call.
3072 =item No directory specified for -I
3074 (F) The B<-I> command-line switch requires a directory name as part of the
3075 I<same> argument. Use B<-Ilib>, for instance. B<-I lib> won't work.
3077 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
3079 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3080 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
3081 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
3083 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
3085 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
3086 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3088 =item No input file after < on command line
3090 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3091 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
3092 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
3094 =item No next::method '%s' found for %s
3096 (F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
3097 in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
3098 it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
3099 or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
3101 =item "no" not allowed in expression
3103 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
3104 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
3106 =item No output file after > on command line
3108 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3109 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
3110 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
3112 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
3114 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3115 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
3116 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
3118 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
3120 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
3121 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
3122 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
3124 =item No Perl script found in input
3126 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
3127 with #! and containing the word "perl".
3129 =item No setregid available
3131 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
3134 =item No setreuid available
3136 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
3139 =item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
3141 (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed
3142 variable but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type.
3143 The indicated package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the
3146 =item No such class %s
3148 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state"
3149 declaration, but this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
3151 =item No such hook: %s
3153 (F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl.
3154 Currently, Perl accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks.
3156 =item No such pipe open
3158 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
3159 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
3160 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
3162 =item No such signal: SIG%s
3164 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
3165 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
3166 names on your system.
3168 =item Not a CODE reference
3170 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3171 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3172 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3175 =item Not a format reference
3177 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
3178 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
3180 =item Not a GLOB reference
3182 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
3183 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
3184 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
3185 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3187 =item Not a HASH reference
3189 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
3190 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
3191 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3193 =item Not an ARRAY reference
3195 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
3196 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3197 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3199 =item Not an unblessed ARRAY reference
3201 (F) You passed a reference to a blessed array to C<push>, C<shift> or
3202 another array function. These only accept unblessed array references
3203 or arrays beginning explicitly with C<@>.
3205 =item Not a SCALAR reference
3207 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
3208 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3209 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3211 =item Not a subroutine reference
3213 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3214 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3215 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3218 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
3220 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
3221 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
3223 =item Not enough arguments for %s
3225 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
3227 =item Not enough format arguments
3229 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
3230 supplied. See L<perlform>.
3234 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3235 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3238 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
3240 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
3241 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
3242 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
3243 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
3244 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
3246 =item Non-octal character '%c'. Resolved as "%s"
3248 (W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character was
3249 unexpectedly encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value
3252 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
3254 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
3255 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
3256 select. See L<perlfunc/select>.
3258 =item Null filename used
3260 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
3261 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
3263 =item NULL OP IN RUN
3265 (S debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
3268 =item Null picture in formline
3270 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
3271 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
3272 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
3276 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
3278 =item NULL regexp argument
3280 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
3282 =item NULL regexp parameter
3284 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
3286 =item Number too long
3288 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
3289 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
3290 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
3291 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
3294 =item Number with no digits
3296 (F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like
3297 a number. This happens, for example with C<\o{}>, with no number between
3300 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
3302 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
3303 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
3304 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
3306 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
3308 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
3309 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
3311 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
3313 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3314 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3316 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
3318 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3319 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3321 =item Offset outside string
3323 (F)(W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
3324 with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
3325 imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
3326 take place when going past the end of the string when either
3327 C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
3328 for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
3331 =item %s() on unopened %s
3333 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
3334 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
3335 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
3337 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
3339 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
3340 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3344 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3348 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3350 =item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
3352 (W io, deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
3353 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
3354 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3357 =item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
3359 (W io, deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
3360 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
3361 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3364 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
3366 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
3367 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
3368 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
3369 the C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
3371 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for non-Unicode code point 0x%X
3373 (W utf8, non_unicode) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3374 semantics on a code point that is not in Unicode, so what it should do
3375 is not defined. Perl has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn you.
3377 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3378 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3380 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3381 C<no warnings 'non_unicode';>.
3383 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
3385 (W utf8, surrogate) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3386 semantics on a Unicode surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use of
3387 surrogates for anything but storing strings in UTF-16, but semantics
3388 are (reluctantly) defined for the surrogates, and they are to do
3389 nothing for this operation. Because the use of surrogates can be
3390 dangerous, Perl warns.
3392 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3393 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3395 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3396 C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
3398 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
3400 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
3401 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
3402 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
3403 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
3406 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
3408 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
3409 in the current lexical scope.
3411 =item Out of memory!
3413 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3414 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
3415 no option but to exit immediately.
3417 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
3418 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
3419 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
3420 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
3421 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
3423 =item Out of memory during %s extend
3425 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
3426 the largest possible memory allocation.
3428 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
3430 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3431 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
3432 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
3433 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
3435 =item Out of memory during request for %s
3437 (X)(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
3438 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
3441 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
3442 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
3443 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
3444 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
3445 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
3446 where the failed request happened.
3448 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
3450 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
3451 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
3452 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
3454 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
3456 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
3457 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
3460 =item '.' outside of string in pack
3462 (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
3463 position to before the start of the packed string being built.
3465 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
3467 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3468 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3470 =item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
3472 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3473 the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
3474 UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3476 =item overload arg '%s' is invalid
3478 (W overload) The L<overload> pragma was passed an argument it did not
3479 recognize. Did you mistype an operator?
3481 =item Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
3483 (F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was dereferenced,
3484 but the overloaded operation did not return a reference. See
3487 =item Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
3489 (F) An object with a C<qr> overload was used as part of a match, but the
3490 overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See L<overload>.
3492 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
3494 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
3495 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
3496 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
3497 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
3499 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
3501 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3502 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3506 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
3507 page. See L<perlform>.
3511 (P) An internal error.
3513 =item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
3515 (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
3516 an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
3517 platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
3518 enter this branch on this platform.
3520 =item panic: ck_grep
3522 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
3524 =item panic: ck_split
3526 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
3528 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
3530 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
3531 there are in the savestack.
3533 =item panic: del_backref
3535 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
3540 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
3541 it wasn't an eval context.
3543 =item panic: do_subst
3545 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
3548 =item panic: do_trans_%s
3550 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
3553 =item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
3555 (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
3560 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
3564 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
3565 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
3567 =item panic: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
3569 (P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries tried
3570 repeatedly, but each time something re-created entries in the glob.
3571 Most likely the glob contains an object with a reference back to
3572 the glob and a destructor that adds a new object to the glob.
3574 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
3576 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
3578 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
3580 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
3582 =item panic: kid popen errno read
3584 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
3588 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
3589 it wasn't a block context.
3591 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
3593 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
3596 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
3598 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
3599 invalid enum on the top of it.
3601 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
3603 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
3604 references to an object.
3608 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
3610 =item panic: memory wrap
3612 (P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
3614 =item panic: pad_alloc
3616 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3617 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3619 =item panic: pad_free curpad
3621 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3622 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3624 =item panic: pad_free po
3626 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3628 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
3630 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3631 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3633 =item panic: pad_sv po
3635 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3637 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
3639 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3640 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3642 =item panic: pad_swipe po
3644 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3646 =item panic: pp_iter
3648 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
3650 =item panic: pp_match%s
3652 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
3655 =item panic: pp_split
3657 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
3659 =item panic: realloc
3661 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
3663 =item panic: reference miscount on nsv in sv_replace() (%d != 1)
3665 (P) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
3666 reference count other than 1.
3668 =item panic: restartop
3670 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
3671 didn't supply the destination.
3675 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
3676 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
3678 =item panic: scan_num
3680 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
3682 =item panic: sv_chop %s
3684 (P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the
3685 scalar's string buffer.
3687 =item panic: sv_insert
3689 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
3692 =item panic: strxfrm() gets absurd - a => %u, ab => %u
3694 (P) The interpreter's sanity check of the C function strxfrm() failed.
3695 In your current locale the returned transformation of the string "ab" is
3696 shorter than that of the string "a", which makes no sense.
3698 =item panic: top_env
3700 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
3702 =item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
3704 (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't
3705 permitted at run time.
3707 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
3709 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
3710 to even) byte length.
3712 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
3714 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an odd (as opposed
3715 to even) byte length.
3719 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
3721 =item Parsing code internal error (%s)
3723 (F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API in
3726 =item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3728 (F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
3729 consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before
3730 the nesting limit is exceeded.
3732 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3735 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
3737 (W parenthesis) You said something like
3743 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
3745 Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
3747 =item C<-p> destination: %s
3749 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
3750 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
3751 redirected it with select().)
3753 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
3755 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3756 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
3757 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
3759 =item Perl folding rules are not up-to-date for 0x%x; please use the perlbug utility to report
3761 (W regex, deprecated) You used a regular expression with
3762 case-insensitive matching, and there is a bug in Perl in which the
3763 built-in regular expression folding rules are not accurate. This may
3764 lead to incorrect results. Please report this as a bug using the
3765 "perlbug" utility. (This message is marked deprecated, so that it by
3766 default will be turned-on.)
3768 =item Perl_my_%s() not available
3770 (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
3771 so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
3772 conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
3773 '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3775 =item Perl %s required (did you mean %s?)--this is only %s, stopped
3777 (F) The code you are trying to run has asked for a newer version of
3778 Perl than you are running. Perhaps C<use 5.10> was written instead
3779 of C<use 5.010> or C<use v5.10>. Without the leading C<v>, the number is
3780 interpreted as a decimal, with every three digits after the
3781 decimal point representing a part of the version number. So 5.10
3782 is equivalent to v5.100.
3784 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
3786 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
3787 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
3788 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
3790 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3792 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3793 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
3795 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
3797 See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
3799 =item Perls since %s too modern--this is %s, stopped
3801 (F) The code you are trying to run claims it will not run
3802 on the version of Perl you are using because it is too new.
3803 Maybe the code needs to be updated, or maybe it is simply
3804 wrong and the version check should just be removed.
3806 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3808 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3810 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3811 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3814 are supported and installed on your system.
3815 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3817 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3818 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3819 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
3820 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
3821 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
3822 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
3823 Perl can and will use, and the script will be run. Before you really
3824 fix the problem, however, you will get the same error message each
3825 time you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
3826 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3828 =item pid %x not a child
3830 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
3831 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
3832 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
3834 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
3836 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
3838 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3840 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
3841 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
3842 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
3843 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
3844 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
3846 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
3848 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
3849 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
3851 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3853 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
3854 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
3855 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
3856 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
3857 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3858 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3860 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3862 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
3863 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
3864 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
3865 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
3866 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3867 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3869 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3871 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
3872 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
3873 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
3874 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
3875 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3876 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3878 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
3880 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
3881 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
3882 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
3883 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
3885 You probably wrote something like this:
3892 when you should have written this:
3899 If you really want comments, build your list the
3900 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
3904 'b', # another comment
3907 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
3909 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
3910 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
3911 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
3914 You probably wrote something like this:
3918 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
3919 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
3923 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
3925 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
3926 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
3927 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
3928 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
3930 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
3932 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
3933 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
3935 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
3937 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
3938 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
3939 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
3940 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
3942 =item Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
3944 (W ambiguous) You said something like C<m/$\/> in a regex.
3945 The regex C<m/foo$\s+bar/m> translates to: match the word 'foo', the output
3946 record separator (see L<perlvar/$\>) and the letter 's' (one time or more)
3947 followed by the word 'bar'.
3949 If this is what you intended then you can silence the warning by using
3950 C<m/${\}/> (for example: C<m/foo${\}s+bar/>).
3952 If instead you intended to match the word 'foo' at the end of the line
3953 followed by whitespace and the word 'bar' on the next line then you can use
3954 C<m/$(?)\/> (for example: C<m/foo$(?)\s+bar/>).
3956 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
3958 (W ambiguous) You said something like '@foo' in a double-quoted string
3959 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
3960 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
3961 to the array you apparently lost track of.
3963 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
3965 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
3969 is now misinterpreted as
3973 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
3974 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
3975 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
3978 =item Premature end of script headers
3982 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
3984 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3985 before now. Check your control flow.
3987 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
3989 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
3990 before now. Check your control flow.
3992 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3994 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3995 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3996 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3997 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
4000 =item Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
4002 (W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is
4003 useless, since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments.
4005 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
4007 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
4008 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
4010 =item Prototype not terminated
4012 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
4015 =item \p{} uses Unicode rules, not locale rules
4017 (W) You compiled a regular expression that contained a Unicode property
4018 match (C<\p> or C<\P>), but the regular expression is also being told to
4019 use the run-time locale, not Unicode. Instead, use a POSIX character
4020 class, which should know about the locale's rules.
4021 (See L<perlrecharclass/POSIX Character Classes>.)
4023 Even if the run-time locale is ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), which is a subset of
4024 Unicode, some properties will give results that are not valid for that
4027 Here are a couple of examples to help you see what's going on. If the
4028 locale is ISO 8859-7, the character at code point 0xD7 is the "GREEK
4029 CAPITAL LETTER CHI". But in Unicode that code point means the
4030 "MULTIPLICATION SIGN" instead, and C<\p> always uses the Unicode
4031 meaning. That means that C<\p{Alpha}> won't match, but C<[[:alpha:]]>
4032 should. Only in the Latin1 locale are all the characters in the same
4033 positions as they are in Unicode. But, even here, some properties give
4034 incorrect results. An example is C<\p{Changes_When_Uppercased}> which
4035 is true for "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS", but since the upper
4036 case of that character is not in Latin1, in that locale it doesn't
4037 change when upper cased.
4039 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4041 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if
4042 you meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
4043 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4045 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4047 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of
4048 the {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
4049 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4051 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4053 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
4054 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
4055 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
4056 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
4057 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
4059 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4062 =item Range iterator outside integer range
4064 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
4065 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
4066 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
4067 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
4069 =item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4071 (W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
4072 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4074 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
4076 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
4077 before now. Check your control flow.
4079 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
4081 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4083 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
4085 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4087 =item Reallocation too large: %x
4089 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
4091 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
4093 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
4096 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
4098 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
4099 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
4100 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
4102 =item Recursive call to Perl_load_module in PerlIO_find_layer
4104 (P) It is currently not permitted to load modules when creating
4105 a filehandle inside an %INC hook. This can happen with C<open my
4106 $fh, '<', \$scalar>, which implicitly loads PerlIO::scalar. Try
4107 loading PerlIO::scalar explicitly first.
4109 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
4111 (F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, Perl
4112 believes it found an infinite loop in the C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a
4113 crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth.
4115 =item refcnt_dec: fd %d%s
4117 =item refcnt: fd %d%s
4119 =item refcnt_inc: fd %d%s
4121 (P) Perl's I/O implementation failed an internal consistency check. If
4122 you see this message, something is very wrong.
4124 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
4126 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
4127 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
4128 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
4129 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
4131 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
4132 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
4133 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
4134 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
4136 =item Reference is already weak
4138 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
4139 Doing so has no effect.
4141 =item Reference to invalid group 0
4143 (F) You used C<\g0> or similar in a regular expression. You may refer
4144 to capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers
4145 (normal backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
4146 backreferences). Using 0 does not make sense.
4148 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4150 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
4151 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If
4152 you wanted to have the character with ordinal 7 inserted into the regular
4153 expression, prepend zeroes to make it three digits long: C<\007>
4155 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4158 =item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4160 (F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k<NAME> >> in your regular
4161 expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses
4162 such as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<< (?<NAME>...) >>. Check if the name has been
4163 spelled correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
4165 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4168 =item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4170 (F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there
4171 are not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the
4172 expression before where the C<\g{-7}> was located.
4174 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4177 =item regexp memory corruption
4179 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
4180 expression compiler gave it.
4182 =item Regexp modifier "/%c" may appear a maximum of twice
4184 =item Regexp modifier "/%c" may not appear twice
4186 (F syntax, regexp) The regular expression pattern had too many occurrences
4187 of the specified modifier. Remove the extraneous ones.
4189 =item Regexp modifier "%c" may not appear after the "-"
4191 (F regexp) Turning off the given modifier has the side effect of turning
4192 on another one. Perl currently doesn't allow this. Reword the regular
4193 expression to use the modifier you want to turn on (and place it before
4194 the minus), instead of the one you want to turn off.
4196 =item Regexp modifiers "/%c" and "/%c" are mutually exclusive
4198 (F syntax, regexp) The regular expression pattern had more than one of these
4199 mutually exclusive modifiers. Retain only the modifier that is
4200 supposed to be there.
4202 =item Regexp out of space
4204 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
4207 =item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompatible)
4209 (F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
4210 numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
4211 terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
4213 =item Replacement list is longer than search list
4215 (W misc) You have used a replacement list that is longer than the
4216 search list. So the additional elements in the replacement list
4219 =item Reversed %s= operator
4221 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
4222 always come last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
4224 =item rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4226 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either closed or not
4227 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4229 =item Scalars leaked: %d
4231 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
4232 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
4233 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
4234 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
4236 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
4238 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
4239 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
4240 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
4241 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4242 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4243 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4244 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4246 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
4247 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
4248 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4251 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
4253 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
4254 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
4255 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
4256 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4257 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4258 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4259 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4261 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
4262 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
4263 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4266 =item Search pattern not terminated
4268 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
4269 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4270 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
4272 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
4273 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
4274 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
4275 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
4277 =item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
4279 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
4282 The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
4283 C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
4284 parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
4285 the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
4287 =item seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4289 (W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed or not
4290 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4292 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
4294 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
4295 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
4297 =item select not implemented
4299 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
4301 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
4303 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
4304 the current implementation.
4306 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
4308 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
4309 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
4311 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
4313 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
4314 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
4316 =item sem%s not implemented
4318 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
4320 =item send() on closed socket %s
4322 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
4323 before now. Check your control flow.
4325 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4327 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The
4328 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4329 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4331 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4333 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
4334 but has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
4335 expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4337 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4339 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
4340 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4341 discovered. This happens when using the C<(?^...)> construct to tell
4342 Perl to use the default regular expression modifiers, and you
4343 redundantly specify a default modifier. For other
4344 causes, see L<perlre>.
4346 =item Sequence \%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4348 (F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument following the escape
4349 sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly written.
4351 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4353 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
4354 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
4355 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4358 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4360 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contain braces, they
4361 must balance for Perl to detect the end of the clause properly.
4362 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4363 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4365 =item Z<>500 Server error
4371 (A) This is the error message generally seen in a browser window
4372 when trying to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The
4373 actual error text varies widely from server to server. The most
4374 frequently-seen variants are "500 Server error", "Method (something)
4375 not permitted", "Document contains no data", "Premature end of script
4376 headers", and "Did not produce a valid header".
4378 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
4380 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by
4381 the user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the
4382 user account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment
4383 variables (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't
4384 in a location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or
4385 less. Please see the following for more information:
4387 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
4388 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
4389 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
4391 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
4393 =item setegid() not implemented
4395 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
4396 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4399 =item seteuid() not implemented
4401 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
4402 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4405 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
4407 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
4408 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
4411 =item setrgid() not implemented
4413 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
4414 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4417 =item setruid() not implemented
4419 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
4420 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4423 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
4425 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
4426 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
4427 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
4429 =item shm%s not implemented
4431 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
4433 =item !=~ should be !~
4435 (W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
4436 interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
4437 operators: probably not what you intended.
4439 =item <> should be quotes
4441 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
4444 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
4446 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
4447 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
4448 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
4449 probably not what you had in mind.
4451 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
4453 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
4456 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
4458 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
4459 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
4461 =item Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks encapsulation
4463 (F) You should not use the C<~~> operator on an object that does not
4464 overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's underlying structure for
4467 =item sort is now a reserved word
4469 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
4470 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
4472 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
4474 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
4475 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4477 =item Source filters apply only to byte streams
4479 (F) You tried to activate a source filter (usually by loading a
4480 source filter module) within a string passed to C<eval>. This is
4481 not permitted under the C<unicode_eval> feature. Consider using
4482 C<evalbytes> instead. See L<feature>.
4484 =item splice() offset past end of array
4486 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
4487 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the
4488 end of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want,
4489 try explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset.
4490 See L<perlfunc/splice>.
4494 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
4495 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
4496 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
4498 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
4500 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
4501 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
4502 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
4503 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
4506 =item "state" variable %s can't be in a package
4508 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
4509 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
4510 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
4512 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
4514 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
4515 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4517 =item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
4519 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
4520 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
4521 C<can> may break this.
4523 =item Subroutine %s redefined
4525 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
4528 no warnings 'redefine';
4529 eval "sub name { ... }";
4532 =item Substitution loop
4534 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
4535 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
4536 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
4537 L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
4539 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
4541 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4542 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4543 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4545 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
4547 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4548 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4549 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4551 =item substr outside of string
4553 (W substr)(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
4554 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
4555 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
4556 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
4557 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
4559 =item sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
4561 (P) Perl tried to force the upgrade of an SV to a type which was actually
4562 inferior to its current type.
4564 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4566 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most
4567 two branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or
4568 both to contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose
4569 it in clustering parentheses:
4571 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
4573 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
4574 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4576 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4578 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is
4579 a number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
4580 expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4582 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
4584 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
4585 and effective uids or gids.
4589 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
4593 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
4595 A keyword is misspelled.
4596 A semicolon is missing.
4598 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
4599 An opening or closing brace is missing.
4600 A closing quote is missing.
4602 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
4603 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
4604 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
4605 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
4606 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
4607 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
4608 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
4609 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
4610 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
4612 =item syntax error at line %d: '%s' unexpected
4614 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
4615 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
4618 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
4620 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
4621 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
4622 or "my $var" or "our $var".
4624 =item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
4626 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4628 =item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
4630 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4632 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
4634 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
4635 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
4636 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
4637 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
4639 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
4641 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4642 before now. Check your control flow.
4644 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
4646 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
4647 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
4649 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
4651 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
4652 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
4654 =item telldir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4656 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to telldir() is either closed or not really
4657 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4659 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
4661 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
4662 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4664 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
4666 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
4667 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
4676 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
4677 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[> and L<arybase>.
4679 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
4681 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
4682 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
4683 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
4684 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
4687 =item The %s function is unimplemented
4689 (F) The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
4690 to the probings of Configure.
4692 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
4694 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
4695 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
4696 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
4699 =item The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
4701 (F) This attribute was never supported on C<my> or C<sub> declarations.
4703 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
4705 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
4707 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
4708 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
4709 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
4710 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
4711 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
4712 target of the change to
4713 %ENV which produced the warning.
4715 =item thread failed to start: %s
4717 (W threads)(S) The entry point function of threads->create() failed for some reason.
4719 =item times not implemented
4721 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
4722 suspect you're not running on Unix.
4724 =item "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
4726 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains
4727 the B<-T> option (or the B<-t> option), but Perl was not invoked with
4728 B<-T> in its command line. This is an error because, by the time
4729 Perl discovers a B<-T> in a script, it's too late to properly taint
4730 everything from the environment. So Perl gives up.
4732 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
4733 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be
4734 fixed by editing the #! line so that the B<-%c> option is a part of
4735 Perl's first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -%c> to C<perl -%c -n>.
4737 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
4738 B<-%c> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -%c scriptname>.
4740 =item To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
4742 (F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
4743 uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
4744 specified an illegal mapping.
4745 See L<perlunicode/"User-Defined Character Properties">.
4747 =item Too deeply nested ()-groups
4749 (F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level.
4751 =item Too few args to syscall
4753 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
4754 system call to call, silly dilly.
4756 =item Too late for "-%s" option
4758 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4759 B<-M>, B<-m> or B<-C> option.
4761 In the case of B<-M> and B<-m>, this is an error because those options
4762 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
4764 The B<-C> option only works if it is specified on the command line as
4765 well (with the same sequence of letters or numbers following). Either
4766 specify this option on the command line, or, if your system supports
4767 it, make your script executable and run it directly instead of passing
4770 =item Too late to run %s block
4772 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
4773 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
4774 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
4775 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
4778 =item Too many args to syscall
4780 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
4782 =item Too many arguments for %s
4784 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
4788 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4789 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4793 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4794 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4796 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
4798 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
4799 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
4801 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
4803 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
4804 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
4805 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
4807 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
4809 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][],
4810 y/// or y[][] construct.
4812 =item '%s' trapped by operation mask
4814 (F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's
4815 disallowed. See L<Safe>.
4817 =item truncate not implemented
4819 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
4820 Configure knows about.
4822 =item Type of arg %d to &CORE::%s must be %s
4824 (F) The subroutine in question in the CORE package requires its argument
4825 to be a hard reference to data of the specified type. Overloading is
4826 ignored, so a reference to an object that is not the specified type, but
4827 nonetheless has overloading to handle it, will still not be accepted.
4829 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
4831 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
4832 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
4833 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
4834 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
4836 =item Type of argument to %s must be unblessed hashref or arrayref
4838 (F) You called C<keys>, C<values> or C<each> with a scalar argument that
4839 was not a reference to an unblessed hash or array.
4841 =item umask not implemented
4843 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
4844 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
4846 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
4848 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
4850 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
4852 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4853 many execution contexts were entered and left.