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 (S ambiguous) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
89 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
90 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
92 =item Ambiguous use of %c resolved as operator %c
94 (S 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 (S 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 '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
140 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
141 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
142 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
144 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
146 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
147 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
148 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
149 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
150 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
152 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
159 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
161 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
162 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
163 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
164 a scalar value (the length of an array, or the population info of a
165 hash) and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
166 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
169 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
171 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
173 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
175 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element or a
176 subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
182 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
184 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
190 or a hash or array slice, such as:
192 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
193 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
195 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
197 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
198 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
201 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
203 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
204 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
205 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
207 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
209 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O
210 system you forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers
211 take care of transforming data between external and internal
212 representations.) Perl stopped parsing the layer list at this
213 point and did not attempt to push this layer. If your program
214 didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the
215 result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
217 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
219 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
220 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
222 =item A sequence of multiple spaces in a charnames alias definition is deprecated
224 (D) You defined a character name which had multiple space characters in
225 a row. Change them to single spaces. Usually these names are defined
226 in the C<:alias> import argument to C<use charnames>, but they could be
227 defined by a translator installed into C<$^H{charnames}>. See
228 L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
230 =item assertion botched: %s
232 (X) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
234 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
236 (X) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
238 =item Assigning non-zero to $[ is no longer possible
240 (F) When the "array_base" feature is disabled (e.g., under C<use v5.16;>)
241 the special variable C<$[>, which is deprecated, is now a fixed zero value.
243 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
245 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
246 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
247 know which context to supply to the right side.
249 =item A thread exited while %d threads were running
251 (W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily
252 the main thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
253 Usually it's a good idea first to collect the return values of the
254 created threads by joining them, and only then to exit from the main
255 thread. See L<threads>.
257 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
259 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
260 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
262 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
264 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
265 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
266 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
272 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
274 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
275 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
278 bless $self, "$proto";
280 =item Attempt to clear deleted array
282 (S debugging) An array was assigned to when it was being freed.
283 Freed values are not supposed to be visible to Perl code. This
284 can also happen if XS code calls C<av_clear> from a custom magic
285 callback on the array.
287 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
289 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
290 which is not in its key set.
292 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
294 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
295 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
297 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%x
299 (S internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
300 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
301 outside any of those arenas.
303 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string '%s'%s
305 (S internal) Perl maintains a reference-counted internal table of
306 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
307 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
308 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
310 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely: SV 0x%x
312 (S debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
313 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
314 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
315 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
318 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
320 (S internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
322 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar: SV 0x%x
324 (S internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
325 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
326 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
327 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
328 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
329 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
332 =item Attempt to join self
334 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
335 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
336 to move the join() to some other thread.
338 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
340 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
341 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
342 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
343 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
344 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
347 =item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
349 (F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
350 compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
351 unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
354 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
356 (W misc) You tried to set the length of an array which has
357 been freed. You can do this by storing a reference to the
358 scalar representing the last index of an array and later
359 assigning through that reference. For example
361 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
364 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
366 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
367 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
368 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
370 =item Attribute "locked" is deprecated
372 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the
373 "locked" attribute on a code reference. The :locked attribute is
374 obsolete, has had no effect since 5005 threads were removed, and
375 will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
377 =item Attribute "unique" is deprecated
379 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify
380 the "unique" attribute on an array, hash or scalar reference.
381 The :unique attribute has had no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and
382 will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
384 =item av_reify called on tied array
386 (S debugging) This indicates that something went wrong and Perl got I<very>
387 confused about C<@_> or C<@DB::args> being tied.
389 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
391 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
392 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
393 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
394 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
396 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
398 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
399 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
400 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
402 =item Bad filehandle: %s
404 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
405 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
406 open(), or did it in another package.
408 =item Bad free() ignored
410 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
411 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
412 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
414 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
415 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
416 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
420 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
422 =item Badly placed ()'s
424 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
425 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
428 =item Bad name after %s
430 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
431 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
440 $sym = "mypack::$var";
442 =item Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
444 (F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the
447 =item Bad realloc() ignored
449 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that
450 had never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can
451 be disabled by setting the environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
453 =item Bad symbol for array
455 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
456 wasn't a symbol table entry.
458 =item Bad symbol for dirhandle
460 (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
461 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
463 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
465 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
466 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
468 =item Bad symbol for hash
470 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
471 wasn't a symbol table entry.
473 =item Bareword found in conditional
475 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
476 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
477 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
481 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
484 use constant TYPO => 1;
485 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
487 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
489 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
491 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
492 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
493 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
495 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
497 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
498 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
499 you need to predeclare a package?
501 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
503 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
504 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
507 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
509 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
510 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
511 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
512 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
513 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
515 =item \1 better written as $1
517 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
518 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
519 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
520 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
521 there are more than 9 backreferences.
523 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
525 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
526 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
527 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
529 =item bind() on closed socket %s
531 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
532 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
534 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
536 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
537 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
539 =item "\b{" is deprecated; use "\b\{" instead in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
541 =item "\B{" is deprecated; use "\B\{" instead in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
543 (W deprecated, regexp) Use of an unescaped "{" immediately following a
544 C<\b> or C<\B> is now deprecated so as to reserve its use for Perl
545 itself in a future release.
547 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
549 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
551 =item Bizarre copy of %s
553 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
556 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
558 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
559 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
560 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
562 =item Bizarre SvTYPE [%d]
564 (P) When starting a new thread or return values from a thread, Perl
565 encountered an invalid data type.
567 =item Callback called exit
569 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
570 exited by calling exit.
572 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
574 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
575 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
576 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
577 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
578 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
579 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
580 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
581 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
583 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
585 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
586 compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
587 attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
588 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
590 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
592 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
593 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
595 =item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
597 (F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference
598 in it, then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax.
599 The access triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is
600 no legal conversion from that type of reference to a typeglob.
602 =item Cannot copy to %s
604 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
605 be directly assigned to.
607 =item Cannot find encoding "%s"
609 (S io) You tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to a filehandle,
610 either with open() or binmode().
612 =item Cannot set tied @DB::args
614 (F) C<caller> tried to set C<@DB::args>, but found it tied. Tying C<@DB::args>
615 is not supported. (Before this error was added, it used to crash.)
617 =item Cannot tie unreifiable array
619 (P) You somehow managed to call C<tie> on an array that does not
620 keep a reference count on its arguments and cannot be made to
621 do so. Such arrays are not even supposed to be accessible to
622 Perl code, but are only used internally.
624 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
626 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
627 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
628 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
630 =item Can't bless non-reference value
632 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
633 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
635 =item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
637 (F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
638 a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
640 =item Can't "break" outside a given block
642 (F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
644 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
646 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
647 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
648 like this will reproduce the error:
651 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
652 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
654 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
656 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
657 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
658 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
659 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
661 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
663 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
664 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
665 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
666 Something like this will reproduce the error:
669 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
670 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
672 =item Can't chdir to %s
674 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
675 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
677 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
679 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
682 =item Can't coerce %s to %s in %s
684 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
685 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
695 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
697 =item Can't "continue" outside a when block
699 (F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
702 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
704 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
705 quotas or other plumbing problems.
707 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
709 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
710 "state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
712 =item Can't "default" outside a topicalizer
714 (F) You have used a C<default> block that is neither inside a
715 C<foreach> loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is
716 issued on exit from the C<default> block, so you won't get the
717 error if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
719 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
721 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
722 a file in /dev, a FIFO or an uneditable directory. The file was ignored.
724 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
726 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
729 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
731 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
732 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
733 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
735 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
737 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
738 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
739 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
741 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
743 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
744 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
746 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
748 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
749 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
752 =item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
754 (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
755 or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
756 little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
757 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
759 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
761 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
762 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
763 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
764 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
765 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
766 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
771 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
772 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
773 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
775 =item Can't execute %s
777 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
778 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
780 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
782 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
783 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
785 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
787 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
788 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property?
789 See L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
790 for a complete list of available properties.
792 =item Can't find label %s
794 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
795 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
797 =item Can't find %s on PATH
799 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
802 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
804 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
805 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
806 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
808 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
810 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
811 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
812 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
814 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
816 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
817 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag or there
818 may not be a linebreak after it. A good programmer's editor will have
819 a way to help you find these characters (or lack of characters). See
820 L<perlop> for the full details on here-documents.
822 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
824 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode
825 property (for example C<\p{Lu}> matches all uppercase
826 letters). If you did mean to use a Unicode property, see
827 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
828 for a complete list of available properties. If you didn't
829 mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either by
830 C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, or
835 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
838 =item Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
840 (W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be retried
843 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
845 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
846 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
847 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
848 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
849 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
850 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
851 the access-checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
852 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
853 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
854 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
855 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access-checking routine gave up
856 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access-checking
857 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
858 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
859 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
861 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
863 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
864 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
866 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
868 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
869 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
871 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
873 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
874 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
876 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
878 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
879 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
880 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
881 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
883 =item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
885 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
886 comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
887 as the reduce() function in List::Util).
889 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
891 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
894 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
896 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
897 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
898 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
899 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
901 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
903 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
904 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
905 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
906 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
907 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
908 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
910 =item Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
912 (F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a fatal error to
913 attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise non-numeric
916 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
918 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
919 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
920 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
921 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
922 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
923 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
926 =item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
928 (F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
929 package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
931 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
933 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension.
934 This may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one
935 that is incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known
936 to happen between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your
937 dynamic extension was built against an older version of the library
938 that is installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old
941 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
943 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
944 lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you
945 want to localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with
948 =item Can't localize through a reference
950 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
951 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
952 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
953 that $ref will still be a reference.
955 =item Can't locate %s
957 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be found.
958 Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC, unless
959 the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
960 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the
961 extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
962 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
963 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
965 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
967 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
968 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
969 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
970 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
972 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
974 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
975 for example, F<foo.so> or F<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
976 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
978 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
980 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
981 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
982 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
984 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
986 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
987 doesn't seem to exist.
989 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
991 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
992 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
994 =item Can't make list assignment to %ENV on this system
996 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
999 =item Can't modify %s in %s
1001 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
1002 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
1004 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
1006 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
1009 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
1011 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
1012 such. See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1014 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
1016 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
1019 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
1021 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
1022 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1023 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
1024 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1025 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
1026 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
1030 (F) You tried to run a perl built with MAD support with
1031 the PERL_XMLDUMP environment variable set, but the file
1032 named by that variable could not be opened.
1034 =item Can't open %s: %s
1036 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
1037 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
1038 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually
1039 this is because you don't have read permission for a file which
1040 you named on the command line.
1042 (F) You tried to call perl with the B<-e> switch, but F</dev/null> (or
1043 your operating system's equivalent) could not be opened.
1045 =item Can't open a reference
1047 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
1048 using the 3-arg open() syntax:
1052 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
1053 open is not supported.
1055 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
1057 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
1058 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
1059 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
1060 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
1062 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
1064 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1065 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
1066 the command line for writing.
1068 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
1070 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1071 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
1072 command line for reading.
1074 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
1076 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1077 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
1078 the command line for writing.
1080 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
1082 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1083 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
1086 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
1088 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
1090 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
1091 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1092 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1094 =item Can't read CRTL environ
1096 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1097 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1098 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1099 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1102 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1104 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1105 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1106 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1107 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1108 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1109 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1111 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1113 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1114 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1115 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1117 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1119 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1120 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1122 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1124 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1125 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1127 =item Can't reset %ENV on this system
1129 (F) You called C<reset('E')> or similar, which tried to reset
1130 all variables in the current package beginning with "E". In
1131 the main package, that includes %ENV. Resetting %ENV is not
1132 supported on some systems, notably VMS.
1134 =item Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
1136 (F)(P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1137 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1138 package. If the method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1140 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1142 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1143 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1146 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1148 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1149 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1151 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1153 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue
1154 subroutine, but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl
1155 think you meant to return only one value. You probably meant to
1156 write parentheses around the call to the subroutine, which tell
1157 Perl that the call should be in list context.
1159 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1161 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1162 open already. Bizarre.
1164 =item Can't take log of %g
1166 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1167 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1168 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1171 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1173 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1174 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1175 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1177 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1179 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1180 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1181 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1183 =item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1185 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1186 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1187 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1188 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1190 =item Can't use '%c' after -mname
1192 (F) You tried to call perl with the B<-m> switch, but you put something
1193 other than "=" after the module name.
1195 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1197 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1198 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1199 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1201 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1203 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1204 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1206 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1208 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1209 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1211 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1213 (F) The first time the C<%!> hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1214 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1215 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1217 =item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1219 (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1220 byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1221 allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1223 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1225 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1228 =item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1230 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1231 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1232 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1233 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1236 =item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1238 (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1239 that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1240 For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1241 is inside a big-endian group.
1243 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1245 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1246 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1247 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1248 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1251 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1253 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1254 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1255 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1257 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1259 (F) You've told Perl to dereference a string, something which
1260 C<use strict> blocks to prevent it happening accidentally. See
1261 L<perlref/"Symbolic references">. This can be triggered by an C<@> or C<$>
1262 in a double-quoted string immediately before interpolating a variable,
1263 for example in C<"user @$twitter_id">, which says to treat the contents
1264 of C<$twitter_id> as an array reference; use a C<\> to have a literal C<@>
1265 symbol followed by the contents of C<$twitter_id>: C<"user \@$twitter_id">.
1267 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1269 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1270 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1271 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1273 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1275 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1276 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1277 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1278 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1279 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1282 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1284 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1285 references can be weakened.
1287 =item Can't "when" outside a topicalizer
1289 (F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1290 loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1291 from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1292 or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1294 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1296 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1297 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1298 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1300 =item Character following "\c" must be ASCII
1302 (F)(W deprecated, syntax) In C<\cI<X>>, I<X> must be an ASCII character.
1303 It is planned to make this fatal in all instances in Perl 5.18. In the
1304 cases where it isn't fatal, the character this evaluates to is
1305 derived by exclusive or'ing the code point of this character with 0x40.
1307 Note that non-alphabetic ASCII characters are discouraged here as well.
1309 =item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1315 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1316 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1317 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1321 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1324 =item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1330 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode
1331 expects all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved
1334 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1336 =item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1342 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1343 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1344 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1346 pack("c", $x & 255);
1348 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1351 =item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1353 (W unpack) You tried something like
1355 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1357 where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1358 below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the
1359 value modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1361 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1363 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1365 (W pack) You tried something like
1367 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1369 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1370 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1371 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1373 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1375 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1377 (W unpack) You tried something like
1379 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1381 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1382 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1383 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1385 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1387 =item "\c{" is deprecated and is more clearly written as ";"
1389 (D deprecated, syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way
1390 to specify non-printable characters. You used it with a "{" which
1391 evaluates to ";", which is printable. It is planned to remove the
1392 ability to specify a semi-colon this way in Perl 5.18. Just use a
1393 semi-colon or a backslash-semi-colon without the "\c".
1395 =item "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"
1397 (W syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way to specify
1398 non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which is better
1399 written as simply itself, perhaps preceded by a backslash for non-word
1402 =item Cloning substitution context is unimplemented
1404 (F) Creating a new thread inside the C<s///> operator is not supported.
1406 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1408 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1410 =item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1412 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1413 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1415 =item Closure prototype called
1417 (F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to an attribute
1418 handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure is created.
1419 This subroutine cannot be called.
1421 =item Code missing after '/'
1423 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be
1424 another template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1426 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
1428 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, all \p{} matches fail; all \P{} matches
1431 (S utf8, non_unicode) You had a code point above the Unicode maximum
1434 Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code points, up
1435 to the limit of what is storable in an unsigned integer on your system,
1436 but these may not be accepted by other languages/systems. At one time,
1437 it was legal in some standards to have code points up to 0x7FFF_FFFF,
1438 but not higher. Code points above 0xFFFF_FFFF require larger than a
1441 None of the Unicode or Perl-defined properties will match a non-Unicode
1442 code point. For example,
1444 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\p{Any}/
1446 will not match, because the code point is not in Unicode. But
1448 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\P{Any}/
1452 This may be counterintuitive at times, as both these fail:
1454 chr(0x110000) =~ /\p{ASCII_Hex_Digit=True}/ # Fails.
1455 chr(0x110000) =~ /\p{ASCII_Hex_Digit=False}/ # Also fails!
1457 and both these succeed:
1459 chr(0x110000) =~ /\P{ASCII_Hex_Digit=True}/ # Succeeds.
1460 chr(0x110000) =~ /\P{ASCII_Hex_Digit=False}/ # Also succeeds!
1462 =item %s: Command not found
1464 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> or another shell
1465 shell instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
1466 into Perl yourself. The #! line at the top of your file could look like
1470 =item Compilation failed in require
1472 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1473 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1474 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1476 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1478 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1479 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1480 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1481 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1482 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1483 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1484 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1485 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1486 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1488 =item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1490 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to
1491 call cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked.
1492 The cond_broadcast() function is used to wake up another thread
1493 that is waiting in a cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't
1494 sent before the other thread has a chance to enter the wait, it
1495 is usual for the signaling thread first to wait for a lock on
1496 variable. This lock attempt will only succeed after the other
1497 thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the lock.
1499 =item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1501 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to
1502 call cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The
1503 cond_signal() function is used to wake up another thread that
1504 is waiting in a cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't
1505 sent before the other thread has a chance to enter the wait, it
1506 is usual for the signaling thread first to wait for a lock on
1507 variable. This lock attempt will only succeed after the other
1508 thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the lock.
1510 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1512 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1513 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1514 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1516 =item Constant(%s): Call to &{$^H{%s}} did not return a defined value
1518 (F) The subroutine registered to handle constant overloading
1519 (see L<overload>) or a custom charnames handler (see
1520 L<charnames/CUSTOM TRANSLATORS>) returned an undefined value.
1522 =item Constant(%s): $^H{%s} is not defined
1524 (F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to define an
1525 overloaded constant. Perhaps you forgot to load the corresponding
1526 L<overload> pragma?.
1528 =item Constant(%s) unknown
1530 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1531 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1532 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1533 corresponding L<overload> pragma?.
1535 =item Constant is not %s reference
1537 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1538 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1539 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1540 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1541 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1543 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1545 (W redefine)(S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously
1546 been eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions">
1547 for commentary and workarounds.
1549 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1551 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1552 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1555 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1557 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1558 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1560 =item &CORE::%s cannot be called directly
1562 (F) You tried to call a subroutine in the C<CORE::> namespace
1563 with C<&foo> syntax or through a reference. Some subroutines
1564 in this package cannot yet be called that way, but must be
1565 called as barewords. Something like this will work:
1567 BEGIN { *shove = \&CORE::push; }
1568 shove @array, 1,2,3; # pushes on to @array
1570 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1572 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1574 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1576 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1577 expression compiler gave it.
1579 =item corrupted regexp program
1581 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1584 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
1586 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1588 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1590 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1591 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1594 =item Deep recursion on anonymous subroutine
1596 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1598 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1599 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1600 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1601 which case it indicates something else.
1603 This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the F<perl> binary,
1604 setting the C pre-processor macro C<PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN> to the desired value.
1606 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1608 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1609 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1610 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1612 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1614 (D deprecated) C<defined()> is not usually right on hashes and has been
1615 discouraged since 5.004.
1617 Although C<defined %hash> is false on a plain not-yet-used hash, it
1618 becomes true in several non-obvious circumstances, including iterators,
1619 weak references, stash names, even remaining true after C<undef %hash>.
1620 These things make C<defined %hash> fairly useless in practice.
1622 If a check for non-empty is what you wanted then just put it in boolean
1623 context (see L<perldata/Scalar values>):
1629 If you had C<defined %Foo::Bar::QUUX> to check whether such a package
1630 variable exists then that's never really been reliable, and isn't
1631 a good way to enquire about the features of a package, or whether
1635 =item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
1638 (F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
1639 most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
1640 of the C<....> part.
1642 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
1645 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1647 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1648 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1650 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1652 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1653 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1654 that triggers this error.
1656 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1658 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>. There
1659 has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1660 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1661 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1662 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1663 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1664 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1666 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1670 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1672 Beginning with perl 5.9.4, you can also use C<state> variables to have
1673 lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1675 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1677 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1679 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1680 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather
1681 than to create a dangling reference.
1683 =item Did not produce a valid header
1687 =item %s did not return a true value
1689 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1690 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1691 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1692 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1694 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1696 (W misc) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or
1699 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1701 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1702 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1705 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1707 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1708 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1713 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1714 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
1716 =item Document contains no data
1720 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1722 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1723 define a C<$VERSION.>
1725 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1727 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1728 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1730 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1732 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1734 =item do_study: out of memory
1736 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1738 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1740 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1741 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1742 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1743 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1744 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1745 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1746 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1747 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1749 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1751 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1752 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1754 =item dump is not supported
1756 (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1758 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1760 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1763 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1765 (W unpack) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a
1766 type in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1768 =item elseif should be elsif
1770 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks
1771 it's ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1772 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1773 unlikely to be what you want.
1777 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1778 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1779 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1781 =item entering effective %s failed
1783 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1784 effective uids or gids failed.
1786 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1788 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1789 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1790 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1792 =item Error converting file specification %s
1794 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1795 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1796 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1797 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1798 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1800 =item Escape literal pattern white space under /x
1802 (D deprecated) You compiled a regular expression pattern with C</x> to
1803 ignore white space, and you used, as a literal, one of the characters
1804 that Perl plans to eventually treat as white space. The character must
1805 be escaped somehow, or it will work differently on a future Perl that
1806 does treat it as white space. The easiest way is to insert a backslash
1807 immediately before it, or to enclose it with square brackets. This
1808 change is to bring Perl into conformance with Unicode recommendations.
1809 Here are the five characters that generate this warning:
1811 U+200E LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK,
1812 U+200F RIGHT-TO-LEFT MARK,
1813 U+2028 LINE SEPARATOR,
1815 U+2029 PARAGRAPH SEPARATOR.
1817 =item Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1819 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1820 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1821 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1823 =item Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
1825 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1826 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1827 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk,
1828 it is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by using the
1829 C<re 'eval'> pragma or by explicitly building the pattern from an
1830 interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval(). See
1831 L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1833 =item Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
1835 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1836 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1837 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1839 =item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
1842 (F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
1843 any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
1845 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
1848 =item Excessively long <> operator
1850 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1851 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1852 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1853 variable and glob that.
1855 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1857 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented on some systems, e.g., Symbian
1858 OS. See L<perlport>.
1860 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
1862 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1864 =item Exiting eval via %s
1866 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1867 goto, or a loop control statement.
1869 =item Exiting format via %s
1871 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1872 goto, or a loop control statement.
1874 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1876 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1877 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1878 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1880 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1882 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1883 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1885 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1887 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1888 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1890 =item Experimental "%s" subs not enabled
1892 (F) To use lexical subs, you must first enable them:
1894 no warnings 'experimental::lexical_subs';
1895 use feature 'lexical_subs';
1898 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1900 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1901 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1902 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1903 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1905 =item %s: Expression syntax
1907 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1908 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1910 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1912 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
1913 CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
1914 queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
1916 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1918 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1919 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1920 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1921 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
1922 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1924 =item Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
1926 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1927 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1928 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1929 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1931 =item fcntl is not implemented
1933 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1934 PDP-11 or something?
1936 =item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
1938 (F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
1941 =item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1943 (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string starts with a length indicator
1944 which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1945 a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1946 C<u63> as the format.
1948 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1950 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1951 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1952 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1953 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1955 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1957 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1958 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1959 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with ">". If you intended only to
1960 read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>. Another possibility
1961 is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0 (also known as STDIN) for
1962 output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
1964 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1966 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1967 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
1970 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
1972 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1973 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
1975 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1977 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1978 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1979 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1982 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1984 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1985 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1986 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1989 =item Format not terminated
1991 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1992 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1994 =item Format %s redefined
1996 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1999 no warnings 'redefine';
2000 eval "format NAME =...";
2003 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
2013 (or something like that).
2015 =item %s found where operator expected
2017 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
2018 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
2019 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
2020 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
2022 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
2024 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
2026 =item gethostent not implemented
2028 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
2029 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
2032 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
2034 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
2035 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
2037 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
2039 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
2040 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
2042 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
2044 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
2045 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2046 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
2048 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
2050 (F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
2051 that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
2052 declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
2053 which package the global variable is in (using "::").
2055 =item glob failed (%s)
2057 (S glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used
2058 for C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
2059 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
2060 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
2061 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell)
2062 is broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables
2063 in config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as
2064 if it were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them
2065 all empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
2066 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
2067 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
2069 =item Glob not terminated
2071 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
2072 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
2073 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
2074 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
2076 =item gmtime(%f) too large
2078 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was larger than
2079 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
2080 date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2081 not-a-number value).
2083 =item gmtime(%f) too small
2085 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was smaller than
2086 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong date.
2088 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
2090 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
2091 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
2093 =item goto must have label
2095 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
2096 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
2098 =item Goto undefined subroutine%s
2100 (F) You tried to call a subroutine with C<goto &sub> syntax, but
2101 the indicated subroutine hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2102 has since been undefined.
2104 =item ()-group starts with a count
2106 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is supposed to follow
2107 something: a template character or a ()-group. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2109 =item Group name must start with a non-digit word character in regex; marked by
2112 (F) Group names must follow the rules for perl identifiers, meaning
2113 they must start with a non-digit word character. A common cause of
2114 this error is using (?&0) instead of (?0). See L<perlre>.
2116 =item %s had compilation errors.
2118 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
2120 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
2122 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
2123 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
2124 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
2126 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
2128 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
2129 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
2131 =item %s has too many errors
2133 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
2134 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
2136 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
2138 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2139 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2140 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2142 =item -i used with no filenames on the command line, reading from STDIN
2144 (S inplace) The C<-i> option was passed on the command line, indicating
2145 that the script is intended to edit files inplace, but no files were
2146 given. This is usually a mistake, since editing STDIN inplace doesn't
2147 make sense, and can be confusing because it can make perl look like
2148 it is hanging when it is really just trying to read from STDIN. You
2149 should either pass a filename to edit, or remove C<-i> from the command
2150 line. See L<perlrun> for more details.
2152 =item Identifier too long
2154 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
2155 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
2156 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
2157 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
2159 =item Ignoring zero length \N{} in character class in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2161 (W regexp) Named Unicode character escapes C<(\N{...})> may return a zero-length
2162 sequence. When such an escape is used in a character class its
2163 behaviour is not well defined. Check that the correct escape has
2164 been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
2166 =item Illegal binary digit %s
2168 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
2170 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
2172 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
2173 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
2176 =item Illegal character after '_' in prototype for %s : %s
2178 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2179 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2181 =item Illegal character \%o (carriage return)
2183 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
2184 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
2185 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
2186 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
2187 to your Perl administrator.
2189 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
2191 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2192 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2194 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
2196 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
2197 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
2199 =item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
2201 (F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
2203 =item Illegal division by zero
2205 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
2206 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
2209 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
2211 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
2212 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
2213 number stopped before the illegal character.
2215 =item Illegal modulus zero
2217 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
2218 numbers don't take to this kindly.
2220 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
2222 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
2223 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
2225 =item Illegal octal digit %s
2227 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2229 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
2231 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2232 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
2234 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: -%c
2236 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
2237 following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtw]>.
2239 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
2241 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
2242 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
2243 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
2245 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
2247 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
2248 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
2249 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
2252 =item (in cleanup) %s
2254 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
2255 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
2256 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
2257 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
2258 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
2260 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
2261 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
2263 =item Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on
2266 (F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not
2267 C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See the C3
2268 documentation in L<mro> for more information.
2270 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
2272 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
2273 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
2274 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
2276 =item Infinite recursion in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2278 (F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input
2279 text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive patterns
2280 either consume text or fail.
2282 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
2285 =item Initialization of state variables in list context currently forbidden
2287 (F) Currently the implementation of "state" only permits the
2288 initialization of scalar variables in scalar context. Re-write
2289 C<state ($a) = 42> as C<state $a = 42> to change from list to scalar
2290 context. Constructions such as C<state (@a) = foo()> will be
2291 supported in a future perl release.
2293 =item Insecure dependency in %s
2295 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
2296 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
2297 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
2298 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
2299 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
2300 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
2301 L<perlsec> for more information.
2303 =item Insecure directory in %s
2305 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2306 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
2307 the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
2310 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
2312 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2313 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
2314 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
2315 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
2316 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
2318 =item Insecure user-defined property %s
2320 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
2321 expression that contains a call to a user-defined character property
2322 function, i.e. C<\p{IsFoo}> or C<\p{InFoo}>.
2323 See L<perlunicode/User-Defined Character Properties> and L<perlsec>.
2325 =item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2327 (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2328 or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2329 integers for your architecture.
2331 =item Integer overflow in %s number
2333 (S overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2334 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2335 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2336 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2337 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
2338 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2339 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2340 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2343 =item Integer overflow in srand
2345 (S overflow) The number you have passed to srand is too big to fit
2346 in your architecture's integer representation. The number has been
2347 replaced with the largest integer supported (0xFFFFFFFF on 32-bit
2348 architectures). This means you may be getting less randomness than
2349 you expect, because different random seeds above the maximum will
2350 return the same sequence of random numbers.
2352 =item Integer overflow in version
2354 =item Integer overflow in version %d
2356 (W overflow) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for
2357 the size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
2358 because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use an
2359 element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by trying
2360 to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like 100/9.
2362 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2364 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
2365 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
2368 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2370 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2371 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2372 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2373 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2374 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2375 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
2377 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2379 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2380 <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
2383 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
2385 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
2386 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
2387 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
2388 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
2390 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2392 (F) The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2393 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2395 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2397 (F) The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2398 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2400 =item Invalid character in \N{...}; marked by <-- HERE in \N{%s}
2402 (F) Only certain characters are valid for character names. The
2403 indicated one isn't. See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
2405 =item Invalid character in charnames alias definition; marked by <-- HERE in '%s
2407 (F) You tried to create a custom alias for a character name, with
2408 the C<:alias> option to C<use charnames> and the specified character in
2409 the indicated name isn't valid. See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
2411 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2413 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2414 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
2416 =item Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
2419 (W regexp) The numeric escape (for example C<\xHH>) of value < 256
2420 didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion
2421 from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma.
2422 The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD) instead.
2423 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
2424 escape was discovered.
2426 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
2428 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
2431 (F) The character constant represented by C<...> is not a valid hexadecimal
2432 number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use a character other than
2433 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
2435 =item Invalid module name %s with -%c option: contains single ':'
2437 (F) The module argument to perl's B<-m> and B<-M> command-line options
2438 cannot contain single colons in the module name, but only in the
2439 arguments after "=". In other words, B<-MFoo::Bar=:baz> is ok, but
2440 B<-MFoo:Bar=baz> is not.
2442 =item Invalid mro name: '%s'
2444 (F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")> or C<use mro 'foo'>,
2445 where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO). Currently,
2446 the only valid ones supported are C<dfs> and C<c3>, unless you have loaded
2447 a module that is a MRO plugin. See L<mro> and L<perlmroapi>.
2449 =item Invalid negative number (%s) in chr
2451 (W utf8) You passed a negative number to C<chr>. Negative numbers are
2452 not valid characters numbers, so it return the Unicode replacement
2455 =item invalid option -D%c, use -D'' to see choices
2457 (S debugging) Perl was called with invalid debugger flags. Call perl
2458 with the B<-D> option with no flags to see the list of acceptable values.
2459 See also L<perlrun/B<-D>I<letters>>.
2461 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2463 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2464 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2465 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2466 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
2467 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2469 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2471 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2472 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2474 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2476 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2477 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2478 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2481 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2483 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other
2484 than a colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2485 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2486 list was terminated too soon.
2488 =item Invalid strict version format (%s)
2490 (F) A version number did not meet the "strict" criteria for versions.
2491 A "strict" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2492 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2493 v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least three components.
2494 The parenthesized text indicates which criteria were not met.
2495 See the L<version> module for more details on allowed version formats.
2497 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2499 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2500 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2502 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2505 =item Invalid version format (%s)
2507 (F) A version number did not meet the "lax" criteria for versions.
2508 A "lax" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2509 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2510 v-string. If the v-string has fewer than three components, it
2511 must have a leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading 'v' is
2512 optional. Both decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a
2513 trailing "alpha" component separated by an underscore character
2514 after a fractional or dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized
2515 text indicates which criteria were not met. See the L<version> module
2516 for more details on allowed version formats.
2518 =item Invalid version object
2520 (F) The internal structure of the version object was invalid.
2521 Perhaps the internals were modified directly in some way or
2522 an arbitrary reference was blessed into the "version" class.
2524 =item ioctl is not implemented
2526 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2527 strange for a machine that supports C.
2529 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
2531 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2532 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
2534 =item IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
2536 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2537 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO, Perl must be configured
2540 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2542 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2543 neither as a system call nor an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2545 =item $* is no longer supported
2547 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older
2548 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. In
2549 previous versions of perl the use of C<$*> enabled or disabled multi-line
2550 matching within a string.
2552 Instead of using C<$*> you should use the C</m> (and maybe C</s>) regexp
2553 modifiers. You can enable C</m> for a lexical scope (even a whole file)
2554 with C<use re '/m'>. (In older versions: when C<$*> was set to a true value
2555 then all regular expressions behaved as if they were written using C</m>.)
2557 =item $# is no longer supported
2559 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older
2560 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported. You
2561 should use the printf/sprintf functions instead.
2563 =item '%s' is not a code reference
2565 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of
2566 overload::constant needs to be a code reference. Either
2567 an anonymous subroutine, or a reference to a subroutine.
2569 =item '%s' is not an overloadable type
2571 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2574 =item Junk on end of regexp in regex m/%s/
2576 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2578 =item Label not found for "last %s"
2580 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2581 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2584 =item Label not found for "next %s"
2586 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2587 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2590 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
2592 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2593 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2596 =item leaving effective %s failed
2598 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2599 effective uids or gids failed.
2601 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
2603 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2604 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2605 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2607 =item length() used on %s
2609 (W syntax) You used length() on either an array or a hash when you
2610 probably wanted a count of the items.
2612 Array size can be obtained by doing:
2616 The number of items in a hash can be obtained by doing:
2620 =item Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
2622 (F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse
2623 (using L<lex_stuff_pvn|perlapi/lex_stuff_pvn> or similar), but tried to insert a character that
2624 couldn't be part of the current input. This is an inherent pitfall
2625 of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the reasons to avoid it. Where
2626 it is necessary to stuff, stuffing only plain ASCII is recommended.
2628 =item Lexing code internal error (%s)
2630 (F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a
2633 =item listen() on closed socket %s
2635 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2636 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2639 =item List form of piped open not implemented
2641 (F) On some platforms, notably Windows, the three-or-more-arguments
2642 form of C<open> does not support pipes, such as C<open($pipe, '|-', @args)>.
2643 Use the two-argument C<open($pipe, '|prog arg1 arg2...')> form instead.
2645 =item localtime(%f) too large
2647 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was larger
2648 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2649 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2650 not-a-number value).
2652 =item localtime(%f) too small
2654 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was smaller
2655 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2658 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
2660 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2661 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2663 =item Lost precision when %s %f by 1
2665 (W imprecision) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by one
2666 is too large for the underlying floating point representation to store
2667 accurately, hence the target of C<++> or C<--> is unchanged. Perl issues this
2668 warning because it has already switched from integers to floating point
2669 when values are too large for integers, and now even floating point is
2670 insufficient. You may wish to switch to using L<Math::BigInt> explicitly.
2672 =item lstat() on filehandle%s
2674 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2675 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2676 instead on the filehandle.)
2678 =item lvalue attribute %s already-defined subroutine
2680 (W misc) Although L<attributes.pm|attributes> allows this, turning the lvalue
2681 attribute on or off on a Perl subroutine that is already defined
2682 does not always work properly. It may or may not do what you
2683 want, depending on what code is inside the subroutine, with exact
2684 details subject to change between Perl versions. Only do this
2685 if you really know what you are doing.
2687 =item lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined
2689 (W misc) Using the C<:lvalue> declarative syntax to make a Perl
2690 subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it has been defined is
2691 not permitted. To make the subroutine an lvalue subroutine,
2692 add the lvalue attribute to the definition, or put the C<sub
2693 foo :lvalue;> declaration before the definition.
2695 See also L<attributes.pm|attributes>.
2697 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2699 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2700 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2702 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2704 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2705 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2707 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2709 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2716 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2717 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2718 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2719 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2721 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2723 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2724 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2725 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2726 when the function is called.
2728 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2730 (S utf8)(F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2731 encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
2733 One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2734 you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
2735 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2737 If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2738 sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2739 set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2742 See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
2744 =item Malformed UTF-8 character immediately after '%s'
2746 (F) You said C<use utf8>, but the program file doesn't comply with UTF-8
2747 encoding rules. The message prints out the properly encoded characters
2748 just before the first bad one. If C<utf8> warnings are enabled, a
2749 warning is generated that gives more details about the type of
2752 =item Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N{%s} immediately after '%s'
2754 (F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
2756 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2758 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2759 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2761 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2763 (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2764 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2766 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2768 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2769 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2771 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2773 (F) Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2774 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2776 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2778 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2779 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
2780 shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
2783 =item Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded
2785 (F) Perl aborted due to too high a number of signals pending. This
2786 usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
2787 too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
2788 resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
2789 safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
2791 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2793 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2794 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2797 =item '%' may not be used in pack
2799 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2800 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2801 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2803 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2805 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2806 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2808 =item Method %s not permitted
2812 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2814 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2815 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2816 ended earlier on the current line.
2818 =item Misplaced _ in number
2820 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2821 separate two digits.
2823 =item Missing argument in %s
2825 (W uninitialized) A printf-type format required more arguments than were
2828 =item Missing argument to -%c
2830 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2831 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2833 =item Missing braces on \N{}
2835 =item Missing braces on \N{} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2837 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2838 double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space
2839 (or comment) between the C<\N> and the C<{> in a regex with the C</x> modifier.
2840 This modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately
2843 =item Missing braces on \o{}
2845 (F) A C<\o> must be followed immediately by a C<{> in double-quotish context.
2847 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2849 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2850 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2852 =item Missing command in piped open
2854 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2855 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2858 =item Missing control char name in \c
2860 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2863 =item Missing name in "%s sub"
2865 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2866 they have a name with which they can be found.
2868 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2870 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2871 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2872 can vary from one line to the next.
2874 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2876 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2877 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2879 =item Missing right brace on \%c{} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2881 (F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}>, C<\P{...}>, or C<\N{...}>.
2883 =item Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N
2885 (F) C<\N> has two meanings.
2887 The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed in braces,
2888 meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that
2889 name. Thus C<\N{ASTERISK}> is another way of writing C<*>, valid in both
2890 double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns,
2891 it doesn't have the meaning an unescaped C<*> does.
2893 Starting in Perl 5.12.0, C<\N> also can have an additional meaning (only)
2894 in patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short
2895 for C<[^\n]>, and like C<.> but is not affected by the C</s> regex modifier.)
2897 This can lead to some ambiguities. When C<\N> is not followed immediately
2898 by a left brace, Perl assumes the C<[^\n]> meaning. Also, if the braces
2899 form a valid quantifier such as C<\N{3}> or C<\N{5,}>, Perl assumes that this
2900 means to match the given quantity of non-newlines (in these examples,
2901 3; and 5 or more, respectively). In all other case, where there is a
2902 C<\N{> and a matching C<}>, Perl assumes that a character name is desired.
2904 However, if there is no matching C<}>, Perl doesn't know if it was
2905 mistakenly omitted, or if C<[^\n]{> was desired, and raises this error.
2906 If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant the latter,
2907 escape the brace with a backslash, like so: C<\N\{>
2909 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2911 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2912 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2915 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2917 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2918 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2919 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2921 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2923 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2924 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2925 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2927 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2930 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2932 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2933 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2936 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2937 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to
2940 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2942 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2943 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2946 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2948 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2949 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2951 =item Module name must be constant
2953 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2955 =item Module name required with -%c option
2957 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2958 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2959 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2961 =item More than one argument to '%s' open
2963 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2964 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2965 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2966 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2968 =item msg%s not implemented
2970 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2972 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2974 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2975 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2977 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
2979 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
2980 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
2981 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2983 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2985 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2988 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
2990 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2991 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2992 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2994 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2996 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2997 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2998 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2999 provided for this purpose.
3001 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
3002 %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
3003 the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
3004 will not trigger this warning.
3006 =item \N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...} in regex;
3007 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3009 (F) The new (5.12) meaning of C<\N> as C<[^\n]> is not valid in a bracketed
3010 character class, for the same reason that C<.> in a character class loses
3011 its specialness: it matches almost everything, which is probably not
3014 =item \N{NAME} must be resolved by the lexer in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3016 (F) When compiling a regex pattern, an unresolved named character or
3017 sequence was encountered. This can happen in any of several ways that
3018 bypass the lexer, such as using single-quotish context, or an extra
3019 backslash in double-quotish:
3021 $re = '\N{SPACE}'; # Wrong!
3022 $re = "\\N{SPACE}"; # Wrong!
3025 Instead, use double-quotes with a single backslash:
3027 $re = "\N{SPACE}"; # ok
3030 The lexer can be bypassed as well by creating the pattern from smaller
3034 /${re}{SPACE}/; # Wrong!
3036 It's not a good idea to split a construct in the middle like this, and it
3037 doesn't work here. Instead use the solution above.
3039 Finally, the message also can happen under the C</x> regex modifier when the
3040 C<\N> is separated by spaces from the C<{>, in which case, remove the spaces.
3042 /\N {SPACE}/x; # Wrong!
3045 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
3047 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
3048 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3050 =item Negative length
3052 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
3053 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
3055 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
3057 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
3058 greater than or equal to zero.
3060 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3062 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses.
3063 So things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows
3064 whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
3066 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
3067 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
3069 =item %s never introduced
3071 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
3072 scope before it could possibly have been used.
3074 =item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
3076 (F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
3077 real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
3080 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
3082 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
3083 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
3084 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
3085 securable. See L<perlsec>.
3087 =item No code specified for -%c
3089 (F) Perl's B<-e> and B<-E> command-line options require an argument. If
3090 you want to run an empty program, pass the empty string as a separate
3091 argument or run a program consisting of a single 0 or 1:
3097 =item No comma allowed after %s
3099 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is
3100 not allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
3101 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
3103 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported
3104 a constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
3105 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating
3106 system does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did
3107 use an explicit import list for the constants you expect to see;
3108 please see L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an
3109 explicit import list would probably have caught this error earlier
3110 it naturally does not remedy the fact that your operating system
3111 still does not support that constant. Maybe you have a typo in
3112 the constants of the symbol import list of B<use> or B<import> or in the
3113 constant name at the line where this error was triggered?
3115 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
3117 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3118 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
3119 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
3121 =item No DB::DB routine defined
3123 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3124 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3125 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
3128 =item No dbm on this machine
3130 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
3131 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
3133 =item No DB::sub routine defined
3135 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3136 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3137 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
3138 of each ordinary subroutine call.
3140 =item No directory specified for -I
3142 (F) The B<-I> command-line switch requires a directory name as part of the
3143 I<same> argument. Use B<-Ilib>, for instance. B<-I lib> won't work.
3145 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
3147 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3148 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
3149 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
3151 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
3153 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
3154 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3156 =item No input file after < on command line
3158 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3159 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
3160 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
3162 =item No next::method '%s' found for %s
3164 (F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
3165 in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
3166 it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
3167 or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
3169 =item "no" not allowed in expression
3171 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
3172 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
3174 =item No output file after > on command line
3176 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3177 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
3178 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
3180 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
3182 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3183 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
3184 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
3186 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
3188 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
3189 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
3190 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
3192 =item No Perl script found in input
3194 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
3195 with #! and containing the word "perl".
3197 =item No setregid available
3199 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
3202 =item No setreuid available
3204 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
3207 =item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
3209 (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed
3210 variable but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type.
3211 The indicated package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the
3214 =item No such class %s
3216 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state"
3217 declaration, but this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
3219 =item No such hook: %s
3221 (F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl.
3222 Currently, Perl accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks.
3224 =item No such pipe open
3226 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
3227 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
3228 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
3230 =item No such signal: SIG%s
3232 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
3233 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
3234 names on your system.
3236 =item Not a CODE reference
3238 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3239 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3240 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3243 =item Not a GLOB reference
3245 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
3246 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
3247 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
3248 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3250 =item Not a HASH reference
3252 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
3253 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
3254 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3256 =item Not an ARRAY reference
3258 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
3259 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3260 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3262 =item Not an unblessed ARRAY reference
3264 (F) You passed a reference to a blessed array to C<push>, C<shift> or
3265 another array function. These only accept unblessed array references
3266 or arrays beginning explicitly with C<@>.
3268 =item Not a SCALAR reference
3270 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
3271 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3272 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3274 =item Not a subroutine reference
3276 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3277 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3278 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3281 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
3283 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
3284 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
3286 =item Not enough arguments for %s
3288 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
3290 =item Not enough format arguments
3292 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
3293 supplied. See L<perlform>.
3297 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3298 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3301 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
3303 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
3304 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
3305 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
3306 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
3307 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
3309 =item Non-octal character '%c'. Resolved as "%s"
3311 (W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character was
3312 unexpectedly encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value
3315 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
3317 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
3318 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
3319 select. See L<perlfunc/select>.
3321 =item Null filename used
3323 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
3324 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
3326 =item NULL OP IN RUN
3328 (S debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
3331 =item Null picture in formline
3333 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
3334 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
3335 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
3339 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
3341 =item NULL regexp argument
3343 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
3345 =item NULL regexp parameter
3347 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
3349 =item Number too long
3351 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
3352 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
3353 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
3354 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
3357 =item Number with no digits
3359 (F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like
3360 a number. This happens, for example with C<\o{}>, with no number between
3363 =item "my %s" used in sort comparison
3365 (W syntax) The package variables $a and $b are used for sort comparisons.
3366 You used $a or $b in as an operand to the C<< <=> >> or C<cmp> operator inside a
3367 sort comparison block, and the variable had earlier been declared as a
3368 lexical variable. Either qualify the sort variable with the package
3369 name, or rename the lexical variable.
3371 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
3373 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
3374 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
3375 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
3377 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
3379 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
3380 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
3382 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
3384 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3385 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3387 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
3389 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3390 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3392 =item Offset outside string
3394 (F)(W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
3395 with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
3396 imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
3397 take place when going past the end of the string when either
3398 C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
3399 for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
3402 =item %s() on unopened %s
3404 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
3405 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
3406 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
3408 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
3410 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
3411 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3415 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3419 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3421 =item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
3423 (D io, deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
3424 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
3425 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3428 =item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
3430 (D io, deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
3431 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
3432 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3435 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
3437 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
3438 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
3439 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
3440 the C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
3442 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for non-Unicode code point 0x%X
3444 (S utf8, non_unicode) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3445 semantics on a code point that is not in Unicode, so what it should do
3446 is not defined. Perl has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn you.
3448 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3449 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3451 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3452 C<no warnings 'non_unicode';>.
3454 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
3456 (S utf8, surrogate) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3457 semantics on a Unicode surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use of
3458 surrogates for anything but storing strings in UTF-16, but semantics
3459 are (reluctantly) defined for the surrogates, and they are to do
3460 nothing for this operation. Because the use of surrogates can be
3461 dangerous, Perl warns.
3463 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3464 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3466 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3467 C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
3469 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
3471 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
3472 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
3473 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
3474 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
3477 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
3479 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
3480 in the current lexical scope.
3482 =item Out of memory!
3484 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3485 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
3486 no option but to exit immediately.
3488 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
3489 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
3490 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
3491 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
3492 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
3494 =item Out of memory during %s extend
3496 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
3497 the largest possible memory allocation.
3499 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
3501 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3502 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
3503 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
3504 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
3506 =item Out of memory during request for %s
3508 (X)(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
3509 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
3512 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
3513 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
3514 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
3515 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
3516 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
3517 where the failed request happened.
3519 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
3521 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
3522 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
3523 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
3525 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
3527 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
3528 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
3531 =item '.' outside of string in pack
3533 (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
3534 position to before the start of the packed string being built.
3536 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
3538 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3539 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3541 =item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
3543 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3544 the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
3545 UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3547 =item overload arg '%s' is invalid
3549 (W overload) The L<overload> pragma was passed an argument it did not
3550 recognize. Did you mistype an operator?
3552 =item Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
3554 (F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was dereferenced,
3555 but the overloaded operation did not return a reference. See
3558 =item Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
3560 (F) An object with a C<qr> overload was used as part of a match, but the
3561 overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See L<overload>.
3563 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
3565 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
3566 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
3567 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
3568 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
3570 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
3572 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3573 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3577 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
3578 page. See L<perlform>.
3582 (P) An internal error.
3584 =item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
3586 (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
3587 an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
3588 platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
3589 enter this branch on this platform.
3591 =item panic: child pseudo-process was never scheduled
3593 (P) A child pseudo-process in the ithreads implementation on Windows
3594 was not scheduled within the time period allowed and therefore was not
3595 able to initialize properly.
3597 =item panic: ck_grep, type=%u
3599 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
3601 =item panic: ck_split, type=%u
3603 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
3605 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index %ld
3607 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
3608 there are in the savestack.
3610 =item panic: del_backref
3612 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
3617 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
3618 it wasn't an eval context.
3620 =item panic: do_subst
3622 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
3625 =item panic: do_trans_%s
3627 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
3630 =item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
3632 (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
3637 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
3639 =item panic: goto, type=%u, ix=%ld
3641 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
3642 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
3644 =item panic: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
3646 (P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries tried
3647 repeatedly, but each time something re-created entries in the glob.
3648 Most likely the glob contains an object with a reference back to
3649 the glob and a destructor that adds a new object to the glob.
3651 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD, %s
3653 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
3655 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT, %s
3657 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
3659 =item panic: kid popen errno read
3661 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
3663 =item panic: last, type=%u
3665 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
3666 it wasn't a block context.
3668 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
3670 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
3673 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency %u
3675 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
3676 invalid enum on the top of it.
3678 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
3680 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
3681 references to an object.
3683 =item panic: malloc, %s
3685 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
3687 =item panic: memory wrap
3689 (P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
3691 =item panic: pad_alloc, %p!=%p
3693 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3694 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3696 =item panic: pad_free curpad, %p!=%p
3698 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3699 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3701 =item panic: pad_free po
3703 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3705 =item panic: pad_reset curpad, %p!=%p
3707 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3708 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3710 =item panic: pad_sv po
3712 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3714 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad, %p!=%p
3716 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3717 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3719 =item panic: pad_swipe po
3721 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3723 =item panic: pp_iter, type=%u
3725 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
3727 =item panic: pp_match%s
3729 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
3732 =item panic: pp_split, pm=%p, s=%p
3734 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
3736 =item panic: realloc, %s
3738 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
3740 =item panic: reference miscount on nsv in sv_replace() (%d != 1)
3742 (P) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
3743 reference count other than 1.
3745 =item panic: restartop in %s
3747 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
3748 didn't supply the destination.
3750 =item panic: return, type=%u
3752 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
3753 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
3755 =item panic: scan_num, %s
3757 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
3759 =item panic: Sequence (?{...}): no code block found
3761 (P) while compiling a pattern that has embedded (?{}) or (??{}) code
3762 blocks, perl couldn't locate the code block that should have already been
3763 seen and compiled by perl before control passed to the regex compiler.
3765 =item panic: sv_chop %s
3767 (P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the
3768 scalar's string buffer.
3770 =item panic: sv_insert, midend=%p, bigend=%p
3772 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
3775 =item panic: strxfrm() gets absurd - a => %u, ab => %u
3777 (P) The interpreter's sanity check of the C function strxfrm() failed.
3778 In your current locale the returned transformation of the string "ab" is
3779 shorter than that of the string "a", which makes no sense.
3781 =item panic: top_env
3783 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
3785 =item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
3787 (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't
3788 permitted at run time.
3790 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
3792 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
3793 to even) byte length.
3795 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
3797 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an odd (as opposed
3798 to even) byte length.
3800 =item panic: yylex, %s
3802 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
3804 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
3806 (W parenthesis) You said something like
3812 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
3814 Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
3816 =item Parsing code internal error (%s)
3818 (F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API in
3821 =item Passing malformed UTF-8 to "%s" is deprecated
3823 (D deprecated, utf8) This message indicates a bug either in the Perl
3824 core or in XS code. Such code was trying to find out if a character,
3825 allegedly stored internally encoded as UTF-8, was of a given type, such
3826 as being punctuation or a digit. But the character was not encoded in
3827 legal UTF-8. The C<%s> is replaced by a string that can be used by
3828 knowledgeable people to determine what the type being checked against
3829 was. If C<utf8> warnings are enabled, a further message is raised,
3830 giving details of the malformation.
3832 =item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex;
3833 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3835 (F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
3836 consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before
3837 the nesting limit is exceeded.
3839 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
3842 =item C<-p> destination: %s
3844 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
3845 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
3846 redirected it with select().)
3848 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
3850 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3851 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
3852 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
3854 =item Perl folding rules are not up-to-date for 0x%X; please use the perlbug
3855 utility to report; in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3857 (W regexp, deprecated) You used a regular expression with
3858 case-insensitive matching, and there is a bug in Perl in which the
3859 built-in regular expression folding rules are not accurate. This may
3860 lead to incorrect results. Please report this as a bug using the
3861 "perlbug" utility. (This message is marked deprecated, so that it by
3862 default will be turned-on.)
3864 =item Perl_my_%s() not available
3866 (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
3867 so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
3868 conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
3869 '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3871 =item Perl %s required (did you mean %s?)--this is only %s, stopped
3873 (F) The code you are trying to run has asked for a newer version of
3874 Perl than you are running. Perhaps C<use 5.10> was written instead
3875 of C<use 5.010> or C<use v5.10>. Without the leading C<v>, the number is
3876 interpreted as a decimal, with every three digits after the
3877 decimal point representing a part of the version number. So 5.10
3878 is equivalent to v5.100.
3880 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
3882 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
3883 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
3884 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
3886 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3888 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3889 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
3891 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
3893 (X) See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
3895 =item Perls since %s too modern--this is %s, stopped
3897 (F) The code you are trying to run claims it will not run
3898 on the version of Perl you are using because it is too new.
3899 Maybe the code needs to be updated, or maybe it is simply
3900 wrong and the version check should just be removed.
3902 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3904 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3906 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3907 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3910 are supported and installed on your system.
3911 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3913 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3914 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3915 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
3916 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
3917 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
3918 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
3919 Perl can and will use, and the script will be run. Before you really
3920 fix the problem, however, you will get the same error message each
3921 time you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
3922 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3924 =item perl: warning: Non hex character in '$ENV{PERL_HASH_SEED}', seed only
3927 (W) PERL_HASH_SEED should match /^\s*(?:0x)?[0-9a-fA-F]+\s*\z/ but it
3928 contained a non hex character. This could mean your hash randomization
3929 is not being set correctly.
3931 =item pid %x not a child
3933 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
3934 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
3935 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
3937 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
3939 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
3941 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3943 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
3944 shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
3945 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
3946 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
3947 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
3949 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
3951 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
3952 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
3954 =item POSIX syntax [%c %c] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by
3957 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
3958 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
3959 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
3960 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and
3961 will cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular
3962 expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3964 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by
3967 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
3968 with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
3969 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
3970 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[."
3971 and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
3972 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3974 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by
3977 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
3978 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
3979 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
3980 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
3981 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
3982 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3984 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
3986 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
3987 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
3988 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
3989 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
3991 You probably wrote something like this:
3998 when you should have written this:
4005 If you really want comments, build your list the
4006 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
4010 'b', # another comment
4013 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
4015 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
4016 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
4017 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
4020 You probably wrote something like this:
4024 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
4025 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
4029 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
4031 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
4032 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
4033 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
4034 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
4036 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
4038 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
4039 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
4041 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
4043 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
4044 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
4045 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
4046 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
4048 =item Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
4050 (W ambiguous) You said something like C<m/$\/> in a regex.
4051 The regex C<m/foo$\s+bar/m> translates to: match the word 'foo', the output
4052 record separator (see L<perlvar/$\>) and the letter 's' (one time or more)
4053 followed by the word 'bar'.
4055 If this is what you intended then you can silence the warning by using
4056 C<m/${\}/> (for example: C<m/foo${\}s+bar/>).
4058 If instead you intended to match the word 'foo' at the end of the line
4059 followed by whitespace and the word 'bar' on the next line then you can use
4060 C<m/$(?)\/> (for example: C<m/foo$(?)\s+bar/>).
4062 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
4064 (W ambiguous) You said something like '@foo' in a double-quoted string
4065 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
4066 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
4067 to the array you apparently lost track of.
4069 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
4071 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
4075 is now misinterpreted as
4079 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
4080 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
4081 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
4084 =item Premature end of script headers
4088 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
4090 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4091 before now. Check your control flow.
4093 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
4095 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
4096 before now. Check your control flow.
4098 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
4100 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
4101 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
4102 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
4103 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
4106 =item Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
4108 (W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is
4109 useless, since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments.
4111 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
4113 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
4114 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
4116 =item Prototype not terminated
4118 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
4121 =item \p{} uses Unicode rules, not locale rules
4123 (W) You compiled a regular expression that contained a Unicode property
4124 match (C<\p> or C<\P>), but the regular expression is also being told to
4125 use the run-time locale, not Unicode. Instead, use a POSIX character
4126 class, which should know about the locale's rules.
4127 (See L<perlrecharclass/POSIX Character Classes>.)
4129 Even if the run-time locale is ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), which is a subset of
4130 Unicode, some properties will give results that are not valid for that
4133 Here are a couple of examples to help you see what's going on. If the
4134 locale is ISO 8859-7, the character at code point 0xD7 is the "GREEK
4135 CAPITAL LETTER CHI". But in Unicode that code point means the
4136 "MULTIPLICATION SIGN" instead, and C<\p> always uses the Unicode
4137 meaning. That means that C<\p{Alpha}> won't match, but C<[[:alpha:]]>
4138 should. Only in the Latin1 locale are all the characters in the same
4139 positions as they are in Unicode. But, even here, some properties give
4140 incorrect results. An example is C<\p{Changes_When_Uppercased}> which
4141 is true for "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS", but since the upper
4142 case of that character is not in Latin1, in that locale it doesn't
4143 change when upper cased.
4145 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4147 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if
4148 you meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular
4149 expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4151 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4153 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of
4154 the {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular
4155 expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4157 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression in regex; marked by <--
4160 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
4161 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
4162 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
4163 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
4164 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
4166 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4169 =item Quantifier {n,m} with n > m can't match in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4171 (W regexp) Minima should be less than or equal to maxima. If you really
4172 want your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}.
4174 =item Range iterator outside integer range
4176 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
4177 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
4178 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
4179 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
4181 =item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4183 (W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
4184 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4186 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
4188 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
4189 before now. Check your control flow.
4191 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
4193 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4195 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
4197 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4199 =item Reallocation too large: %x
4201 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
4203 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
4205 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
4208 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
4210 (S debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
4211 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
4212 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
4214 =item Recursive call to Perl_load_module in PerlIO_find_layer
4216 (P) It is currently not permitted to load modules when creating
4217 a filehandle inside an %INC hook. This can happen with C<open my
4218 $fh, '<', \$scalar>, which implicitly loads PerlIO::scalar. Try
4219 loading PerlIO::scalar explicitly first.
4221 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
4223 (F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, Perl
4224 believes it found an infinite loop in the C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a
4225 crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth.
4227 =item refcnt_dec: fd %d%s
4229 =item refcnt: fd %d%s
4231 =item refcnt_inc: fd %d%s
4233 (P) Perl's I/O implementation failed an internal consistency check. If
4234 you see this message, something is very wrong.
4236 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
4238 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
4239 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
4240 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
4241 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
4243 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
4244 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
4245 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
4246 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
4248 =item Reference is already weak
4250 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
4251 Doing so has no effect.
4253 =item Reference to invalid group 0 in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4255 (F) You used C<\g0> or similar in a regular expression. You may refer
4256 to capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers
4257 (normal backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
4258 backreferences). Using 0 does not make sense.
4260 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4262 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
4263 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If
4264 you wanted to have the character with ordinal 7 inserted into the regular
4265 expression, prepend zeroes to make it three digits long: C<\007>
4267 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4270 =item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4272 (F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k<NAME> >> in your regular
4273 expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses
4274 such as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<< (?<NAME>...) >>. Check if the name has been
4275 spelled correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
4277 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4280 =item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by <-- HERE
4283 (F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there
4284 are not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the
4285 expression before where the C<\g{-7}> was located.
4287 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4290 =item regexp memory corruption
4292 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
4293 expression compiler gave it.
4295 =item Regexp modifier "/%c" may appear a maximum of twice
4297 =item Regexp modifier "/%c" may not appear twice
4299 (F syntax, regexp) The regular expression pattern had too many occurrences
4300 of the specified modifier. Remove the extraneous ones.
4302 =item Regexp modifier "%c" may not appear after the "-" in regex; marked by <--
4305 (F) Turning off the given modifier has the side effect of turning on
4306 another one. Perl currently doesn't allow this. Reword the regular
4307 expression to use the modifier you want to turn on (and place it before
4308 the minus), instead of the one you want to turn off.
4310 =item Regexp modifiers "/%c" and "/%c" are mutually exclusive
4312 (F syntax, regexp) The regular expression pattern had more than one of these
4313 mutually exclusive modifiers. Retain only the modifier that is
4314 supposed to be there.
4316 =item Regexp out of space in regex m/%s/
4318 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
4321 =item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompatible)
4323 (F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
4324 numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
4325 terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
4327 =item Replacement list is longer than search list
4329 (W misc) You have used a replacement list that is longer than the
4330 search list. So the additional elements in the replacement list
4333 =item '%s' resolved to '\o{%s}%d'
4335 (W misc, regexp) You wrote something like C<\08>, or C<\179> in a
4336 double-quotish string. All but the last digit is treated as a single
4337 character, specified in octal. The last digit is the next character in
4338 the string. To tell Perl that this is indeed what you want, you can use
4339 the C<\o{ }> syntax, or use exactly three digits to specify the octal
4342 =item Reversed %s= operator
4344 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
4345 always come last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
4347 =item rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4349 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either closed or not
4350 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4352 =item Scalars leaked: %d
4354 (S internal) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping
4355 of scalars: not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time
4356 Perl exited. What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which
4357 is of course bad, especially if the Perl program is intended to be
4360 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
4362 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
4363 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
4364 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
4365 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4366 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4367 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4368 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4370 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
4371 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
4372 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4375 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
4377 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
4378 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
4379 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
4380 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4381 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4382 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4383 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4385 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
4386 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
4387 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4390 =item Search pattern not terminated
4392 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
4393 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4394 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
4396 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
4397 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
4398 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
4399 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
4401 =item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
4403 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
4406 The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
4407 C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
4408 parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
4409 the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
4411 =item seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4413 (W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed or not
4414 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4416 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
4418 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
4419 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
4421 =item select not implemented
4423 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
4425 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
4427 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
4428 the current implementation.
4430 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
4432 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
4433 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
4435 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
4437 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
4438 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
4440 =item sem%s not implemented
4442 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
4444 =item send() on closed socket %s
4446 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
4447 before now. Check your control flow.
4449 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4451 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The
4452 <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4453 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4455 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4457 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
4458 but has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the
4459 regular expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4461 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4463 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
4464 <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4465 discovered. This happens when using the C<(?^...)> construct to tell
4466 Perl to use the default regular expression modifiers, and you
4467 redundantly specify a default modifier. For other
4468 causes, see L<perlre>.
4470 =item Sequence \%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4472 (F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument following the escape
4473 sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly written.
4475 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex m/%s/
4477 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
4478 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See
4481 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated with ')'
4483 (F) The end of the perl code contained within the {...} must be
4484 followed immediately by a ')'.
4486 =item Z<>500 Server error
4492 (A) This is the error message generally seen in a browser window
4493 when trying to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The
4494 actual error text varies widely from server to server. The most
4495 frequently-seen variants are "500 Server error", "Method (something)
4496 not permitted", "Document contains no data", "Premature end of script
4497 headers", and "Did not produce a valid header".
4499 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
4501 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by
4502 the user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the
4503 user account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment
4504 variables (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't
4505 in a location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or
4506 less. Please see the following for more information:
4508 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
4509 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
4510 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
4512 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
4514 =item setegid() not implemented
4516 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
4517 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4520 =item seteuid() not implemented
4522 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
4523 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4526 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
4528 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
4529 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
4532 =item setrgid() not implemented
4534 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
4535 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4538 =item setruid() not implemented
4540 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
4541 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4544 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
4546 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
4547 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
4548 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
4550 =item shm%s not implemented
4552 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
4554 =item !=~ should be !~
4556 (W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
4557 interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
4558 operators: probably not what you intended.
4560 =item <> should be quotes
4562 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
4565 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
4567 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
4568 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
4569 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
4570 probably not what you had in mind.
4572 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
4574 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
4577 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
4579 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
4580 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
4582 =item Slab leaked from cv %p
4584 (S) If you see this message, then something is seriously wrong with the
4585 internal bookkeeping of op trees. An op tree needed to be freed after
4586 a compilation error, but could not be found, so it was leaked instead.
4588 =item sleep(%u) too large
4590 (W overflow) You called C<sleep> with a number that was larger than
4591 it can reliably handle and C<sleep> probably slept for less time than
4594 =item Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks encapsulation
4596 (F) You should not use the C<~~> operator on an object that does not
4597 overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's underlying structure for
4600 =item sort is now a reserved word
4602 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
4603 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
4605 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
4607 (F) A sort comparison subroutine written in XS must return exactly one
4608 item. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4610 =item Source filters apply only to byte streams
4612 (F) You tried to activate a source filter (usually by loading a
4613 source filter module) within a string passed to C<eval>. This is
4614 not permitted under the C<unicode_eval> feature. Consider using
4615 C<evalbytes> instead. See L<feature>.
4617 =item splice() offset past end of array
4619 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
4620 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the
4621 end of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want,
4622 try explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset.
4623 See L<perlfunc/splice>.
4627 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
4628 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
4629 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
4631 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
4633 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
4634 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
4635 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
4636 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
4639 =item "state" variable %s can't be in a package
4641 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
4642 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
4643 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
4645 =item "state %s" used in sort comparison
4647 (W syntax) The package variables $a and $b are used for sort comparisons.
4648 You used $a or $b in as an operand to the C<< <=> >> or C<cmp> operator inside a
4649 sort comparison block, and the variable had earlier been declared as a
4650 lexical variable. Either qualify the sort variable with the package
4651 name, or rename the lexical variable.
4653 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
4655 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
4656 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4658 =item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
4660 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
4661 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
4662 C<can> may break this.
4664 =item Subroutine "&%s" is not available
4666 (W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is
4667 attempting to capture an outer lexical subroutine that is not currently
4668 available. This can happen for one of two reasons. First, the lexical
4669 subroutine may be declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that has not
4670 yet been created. (Remember that named subs are created at compile time,
4671 while anonymous subs are created at run-time.) For example,
4673 sub { my sub a {...} sub f { \&a } }
4675 At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current the "a" sub,
4676 since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely, the
4677 following won't give a warning since the anonymous subroutine has by now
4678 been created and is live:
4680 sub { my sub a {...} eval 'sub f { \&a }' }->();
4682 The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a variable that has
4683 gone out of scope, for example,
4691 Here, when the '\&a' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not currently
4692 being executed, so its &a is not available for capture.
4694 =item "%s" subroutine &%s masks earlier declaration in same %s
4696 (W misc) A "my" or "state" subroutine has been redeclared in the
4697 current scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to
4698 the previous instance. This is almost always a typographical error.
4699 Note that the earlier subroutine will still exist until the end of
4700 the scope or until all closure references to it are destroyed.
4702 =item Subroutine %s redefined
4704 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
4707 no warnings 'redefine';
4708 eval "sub name { ... }";
4711 =item Substitution loop
4713 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
4714 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
4715 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
4716 L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
4718 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
4720 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4721 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4722 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4724 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
4726 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4727 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4728 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4730 =item substr outside of string
4732 (W substr)(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
4733 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
4734 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
4735 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
4736 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
4738 =item sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
4740 (P) Perl tried to force the upgrade of an SV to a type which was actually
4741 inferior to its current type.
4743 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by
4746 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most
4747 two branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or
4748 both to contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose
4749 it in clustering parentheses:
4751 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
4753 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem
4754 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4756 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4758 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is
4759 a number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in
4760 the regular expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4762 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
4764 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
4765 and effective uids or gids.
4769 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
4773 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
4775 A keyword is misspelled.
4776 A semicolon is missing.
4778 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
4779 An opening or closing brace is missing.
4780 A closing quote is missing.
4782 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
4783 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
4784 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
4785 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
4786 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
4787 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
4788 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
4789 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
4790 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
4792 =item syntax error at line %d: '%s' unexpected
4794 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
4795 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
4798 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
4800 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
4801 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
4802 or "my $var" or "our $var".
4804 =item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
4806 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4808 =item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
4810 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4812 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
4814 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
4815 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
4816 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
4817 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
4819 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
4821 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4822 before now. Check your control flow.
4824 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
4826 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
4827 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.