3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (enabled by default).
12 (S) A severe warning (enabled by default).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
19 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
21 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
22 category is included with the classification letter in the description
25 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
26 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Severe warnings are always enabled, unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %x
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '%c' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only
60 after certain types. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
76 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
79 =item Ambiguous overloaded argument to %s resolved as %s
81 (W ambiguous) You called C<keys>, C<values> or C<each> on an object that had
82 overloading of C<%{}> or C<@{}> or both. In such a case, the object is
83 dereferenced according to its overloading, not its underlying reference type.
84 The warning is issued when C<%{}> overloading exists on a blessed arrayref,
85 when C<@{}> overloading exists on a blessed hashref, or when both overloadings
86 are defined (in which case C<%{}> is used). You can force the interpretation
87 of the object by explicitly dereferencing it as an array or hash instead of
88 passing the object itself to C<keys>, C<values> or C<each>.
90 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
92 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
93 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
94 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
95 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
97 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
99 (W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
100 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
101 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
103 =item Ambiguous use of %c resolved as operator %c
105 (W ambiguous) C<%>, C<&>, and C<*> are both infix operators (modulus,
106 bitwise and, and multiplication) I<and> initial special characters
107 (denoting hashes, subroutines and typeglobs), and you said something
108 like C<*foo * foo> that might be interpreted as either of them. We
109 assumed you meant the infix operator, but please try to make it more
110 clear -- in the example given, you might write C<*foo * foo()> if you
111 really meant to multiply a glob by the result of calling a function.
113 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s} resolved to %c%s
115 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<@{foo}>, which might be
116 asking for the variable C<@foo>, or it might be calling a function
117 named foo, and dereferencing it as an array reference. If you wanted
118 the varable, you can just write C<@foo>. If you wanted to call the
119 function, write C<@{foo()}> ... or you could just not have a variable
120 and a function with the same name, and save yourself a lot of trouble.
122 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s[...]} resolved to %c%s[...]
124 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s{...}} resolved to %c%s{...}
126 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<${foo[2]}> (where foo
127 represents the name of a Perl keyword), which might be looking for
128 element number 2 of the array named C<@foo>, in which case please write
129 C<$foo[2]>, or you might have meant to pass an anonymous arrayref to
130 the function named foo, and then do a scalar deref on the value it
131 returns. If you meant that, write C<${foo([2])}>.
133 In regular expressions, the C<${foo[2]}> syntax is sometimes necessary
134 to disambiguate between array subscripts and character classes.
135 C</$length[2345]/>, for instance, will be interpreted as C<$length>
136 followed by the character class C<[2345]>. If an array subscript is what
137 you want, you can avoid the warning by changing C</${length[2345]}/>
138 to the unsightly C</${\$length[2345]}/>, by renaming your array to
139 something that does not coincide with a built-in keyword, or by
140 simply turning off warnings with C<no warnings 'ambiguous';>.
142 =item Ambiguous use of -%s resolved as -&%s()
144 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<-foo>, which might be the
145 string C<"-foo">, or a call to the function C<foo>, negated. If you meant
146 the string, just write C<"-foo">. If you meant the function call,
149 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
151 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
152 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
153 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
155 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
157 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
158 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
159 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
160 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
161 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
163 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
170 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
172 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
173 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
174 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
175 a scalar value (the length of an array, or the population info of a
176 hash) and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
177 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
180 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
182 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
184 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
186 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element or a
187 subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
193 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
195 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
201 or a hash or array slice, such as:
203 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
204 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
206 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
208 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
209 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
212 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
214 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
215 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
216 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
218 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
220 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you
221 forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take care of transforming
222 data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing
223 the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer.
224 If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be
225 the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
227 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
229 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
230 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
232 =item assertion botched: %s
234 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
236 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
238 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
240 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
242 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
243 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
244 know which context to supply to the right side.
246 =item A thread exited while %d threads were running
248 (W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily the main
249 thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
250 Usually it's a good idea first to collect the return values of the
251 created threads by joining them, and only then to exit from the main
252 thread. See L<threads>.
254 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
256 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
257 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
259 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
261 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
262 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
263 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
269 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
271 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
272 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
275 bless $self, "$proto";
277 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
279 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
280 which is not in its key set.
282 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
284 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
285 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
287 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%x
289 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
290 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
291 outside any of those arenas.
293 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
295 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference-counted internal table of
296 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
297 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
298 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
300 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
302 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
303 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
304 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
305 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
308 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
310 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
312 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
314 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
315 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
316 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
317 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
318 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
319 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
322 =item Attempt to join self
324 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
325 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
326 to move the join() to some other thread.
328 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
330 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
331 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
332 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
333 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
334 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
337 =item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
339 (F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
340 compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
341 unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
344 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
346 (W) You tried to set the length of an array which has been freed. You
347 can do this by storing a reference to the scalar representing the last index
348 of an array and later assigning through that reference. For example
350 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
353 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
355 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
356 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
357 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
359 =item Attribute "locked" is deprecated
361 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the "locked"
362 attribute on a code reference. The :locked attribute is obsolete, has had no
363 effect since 5005 threads were removed, and will be removed in a future
366 =item Attribute "unique" is deprecated
368 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the "unique"
369 attribute on an array, hash or scalar reference. The :unique attribute has
370 had no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and will be removed in a future release
373 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
375 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
376 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
377 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
378 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
380 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
382 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
383 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
384 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
386 =item Bad filehandle: %s
388 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
389 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
390 open(), or did it in another package.
392 =item Bad free() ignored
394 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
395 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
396 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
398 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
399 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
400 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
404 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
406 =item Badly placed ()'s
408 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
409 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
412 =item Bad name after %s::
414 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
415 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
424 $sym = "mypack::$var";
426 =item Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
428 (F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the
431 =item Bad realloc() ignored
433 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
434 never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
435 by setting the environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
437 =item Bad symbol for array
439 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
440 wasn't a symbol table entry.
442 =item Bad symbol for dirhandle
444 (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
445 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
448 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
450 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
451 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
453 =item Bad symbol for hash
455 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
456 wasn't a symbol table entry.
458 =item Bareword found in conditional
460 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
461 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
462 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
466 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
469 use constant TYPO => 1;
470 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
472 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
474 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
476 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
477 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
478 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
480 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
482 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
483 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
484 you need to predeclare a package?
486 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
488 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
489 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
492 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
494 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
495 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
496 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
497 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
498 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
500 =item \1 better written as $1
502 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
503 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
504 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
505 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
506 there are more than 9 backreferences.
508 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
510 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
511 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
512 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
514 =item bind() on closed socket %s
516 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
517 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
519 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
521 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
522 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
524 =item "\b{" is deprecated; use "\b\{" instead
526 =item "\B{" is deprecated; use "\B\{" instead
528 (W deprecated, regexp) Use of an unescaped "{" immediately following a
529 C<\b> or C<\B> is now deprecated so as to reserve its use for Perl
530 itself in a future release.
532 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
534 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
536 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
538 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
541 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
543 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
544 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
545 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
547 =item Callback called exit
549 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
550 exited by calling exit.
552 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
554 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
555 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
556 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
557 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
558 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
559 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
560 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
561 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
563 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
565 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
566 compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
567 attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
568 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
570 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
572 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
573 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
575 =item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
577 (F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference in it,
578 then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax. The access
579 triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is no legal conversion
580 from that type of reference to a typeglob.
582 =item Cannot copy to %s in %s
584 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
585 be directly assigned to.
587 =item Cannot find encoding "%s"
589 (S io) You tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to a filehandle,
590 either with open() or binmode().
592 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
594 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
595 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
596 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
598 =item Can't bless non-reference value
600 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
601 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
603 =item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
605 (F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
606 a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
608 =item Can't "break" outside a given block
610 (F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
612 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
614 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
615 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
616 like this will reproduce the error:
619 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
620 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
622 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
624 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
625 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
626 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
627 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
629 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
631 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
632 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
633 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
634 Something like this will reproduce the error:
637 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
638 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
640 =item Can't chdir to %s
642 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
643 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
645 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
647 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
650 =item Can't coerce %s to %s in %s
652 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
653 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
663 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
665 =item Can't "continue" outside a when block
667 (F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
670 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
672 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
673 quotas or other plumbing problems.
675 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
677 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
678 "state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
680 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
682 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
683 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
685 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
687 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
690 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
692 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
693 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
694 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
696 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
698 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
699 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
700 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
702 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
704 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
705 regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the
706 regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
708 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
710 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
711 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
713 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
715 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
716 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
719 =item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
721 (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
722 or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
723 little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
724 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
726 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
728 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
729 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
730 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
731 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
732 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
733 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
738 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
739 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
740 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
742 =item Can't execute %s
744 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
745 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
747 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
749 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
750 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
752 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
754 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
755 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property?
756 See L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
757 for a complete list of available properties.
759 =item Can't find label %s
761 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
762 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
764 =item Can't find %s on PATH
766 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
769 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
771 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
772 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
773 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
775 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
777 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
778 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
779 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
781 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
783 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
784 unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
785 editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
787 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
789 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode
790 property (for example C<\p{Lu}> matches all uppercase
791 letters). If you did mean to use a Unicode property, see
792 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
793 for a complete list of available properties. If you didn't
794 mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either by C<\\p>
795 (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, or
800 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
803 =item Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
805 (W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be retried
808 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
810 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
811 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
812 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
813 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
814 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
815 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
816 the access-checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
817 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
818 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
819 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
820 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access-checking routine gave up
821 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access-checking
822 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
823 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
824 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
826 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
828 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
829 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
831 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
833 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
834 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
836 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
838 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
839 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
841 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
843 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
844 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
845 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
846 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
848 =item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
850 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
851 comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
852 as the reduce() function in List::Util).
854 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
856 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
859 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
861 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
862 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
863 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
864 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
866 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
868 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
869 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
870 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
871 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
872 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
873 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
875 =item Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
877 (F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a fatal error to
878 attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise non-numeric
881 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
883 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
884 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
885 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
886 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
887 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
888 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
891 =item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
893 (F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
894 package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
896 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
898 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension. This
899 may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one that is
900 incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known to happen
901 between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your dynamic
902 extension was built against an older version of the library that is
903 installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old dynamic
906 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
908 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
909 lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you want to
910 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
913 =item Can't localize through a reference
915 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
916 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
917 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
918 that $ref will still be a reference.
920 =item Can't locate %s
922 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
923 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
924 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
925 need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
926 the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
927 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
928 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
930 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
932 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
933 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
934 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
935 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
937 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
939 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
940 for example, C<foo.so> or C<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
941 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
943 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
945 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
946 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
947 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
949 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
951 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
952 doesn't seem to exist.
954 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
956 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
957 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
959 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
961 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
964 =item Can't modify %s in %s
966 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
967 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
969 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
971 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
974 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
976 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
977 such. See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
979 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
981 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
984 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
986 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
987 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
988 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
989 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
990 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
991 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
993 =item Can't open %s: %s
995 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
996 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
997 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
998 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
1001 =item Can't open a reference
1003 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
1004 using the 3-arg open() syntax:
1008 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
1009 open is not supported.
1011 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
1013 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
1014 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
1015 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
1016 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
1018 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
1020 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1021 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
1022 the command line for writing.
1024 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
1026 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1027 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
1028 command line for reading.
1030 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
1032 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1033 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
1034 the command line for writing.
1036 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
1038 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1039 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
1042 =item Can't open perl script%s
1044 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
1046 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
1047 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1048 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1050 =item Can't read CRTL environ
1052 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1053 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1054 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1055 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1058 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1060 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1061 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1062 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1063 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1064 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1065 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1067 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1069 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1070 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1071 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1073 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1075 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1076 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1078 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1080 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1081 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1083 =item Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
1085 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
1086 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
1087 the method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1089 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1091 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1092 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1095 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1097 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1098 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1100 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1102 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
1103 but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
1104 to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
1105 the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
1108 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1110 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1111 open already. Bizarre.
1113 =item Can't take log of %g
1115 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1116 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1117 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1120 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1122 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1123 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1124 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1126 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1128 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1129 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1130 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1132 =item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1134 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1135 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1136 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1137 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1139 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1141 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1142 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1143 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1145 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1147 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1148 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1150 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1152 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1153 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1155 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1157 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1158 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1159 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1161 =item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1163 (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1164 byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1165 allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1167 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1169 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1172 =item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1174 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1175 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1176 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1177 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1180 =item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1182 (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1183 that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1184 For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1185 is inside a big-endian group.
1187 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1189 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1190 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1191 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1192 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1195 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1197 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1198 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1199 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1201 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1203 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1204 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1206 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1208 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1209 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1210 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1212 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1214 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1215 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1216 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1217 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1218 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1221 =item Can't use "when" outside a topicalizer
1223 (F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1224 loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1225 from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1226 or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1228 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1230 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1231 references can be weakened.
1233 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1235 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1236 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1237 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1239 =item Character following "\c" must be ASCII
1241 (F|W deprecated, syntax) In C<\cI<X>>, I<X> must be an ASCII character.
1242 It is planned to make this fatal in all instances in Perl 5.16. In the
1243 cases where it isn't fatal, the character this evaluates to is
1244 derived by exclusive or'ing the code point of this character with 0x40.
1246 Note that non-alphabetic ASCII characters are discouraged here as well.
1248 =item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1254 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1255 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1256 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1260 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1263 =item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1269 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode expects
1270 all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved as if you
1273 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1275 =item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1281 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1282 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1283 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1285 pack("c", $x & 255);
1287 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1290 =item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1292 (W unpack) You tried something like
1294 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1296 where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1297 below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the value
1298 modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1300 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1302 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1304 (W pack) You tried something like
1306 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1308 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1309 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1310 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1312 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1314 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1316 (W unpack) You tried something like
1318 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1320 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1321 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1322 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1324 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1326 =item "\c{" is deprecated and is more clearly written as ";"
1328 (D deprecated, syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way
1329 to specify non-printable characters. You used it with a "{" which
1330 evaluates to ";", which is printable. It is planned to remove the
1331 ability to specify a semi-colon this way in Perl 5.16. Just use a
1332 semi-colon or a backslash-semi-colon without the "\c".
1334 =item "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"
1336 (W syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way to specify
1337 non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which is better
1338 written as simply itself, perhaps preceded by a backslash for non-word
1341 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1343 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1345 =item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1347 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1348 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1350 =item Closure prototype called
1352 (F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to an attribute
1353 handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure is created.
1354 This subroutine cannot be called.
1356 =item Code missing after '/'
1358 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be another
1359 template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1361 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
1363 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, no properties match it; all inverse properties do
1365 (W utf8, non_unicode) You had a code point above the Unicode maximum of U+10FFFF.
1367 Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code
1368 points, up to the limit of what is storable in an unsigned integer on
1369 your system, but these may not be accepted by other languages/systems.
1370 At one time, it was legal in some standards to have code points up to
1371 0x7FFF_FFFF, but not higher. Code points above 0xFFFF_FFFF require
1372 larger than a 32 bit word.
1374 None of the Unicode or Perl-defined properties will match a non-Unicode
1375 code point. For example,
1377 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\p{Any}/
1379 will not match, because the code point is not in Unicode. But
1381 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\P{Any}/
1385 =item %s: Command not found
1387 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1388 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1390 =item Compilation failed in require
1392 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1393 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1394 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1396 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1398 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1399 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1400 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1401 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1402 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1403 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1404 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1405 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1406 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1408 =item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1410 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1411 cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_broadcast()
1412 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1413 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1414 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread
1415 first to wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1416 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1419 =item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1421 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1422 cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_signal()
1423 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1424 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1425 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread
1426 first to wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1427 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1430 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1432 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1433 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1434 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1436 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1438 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1439 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1440 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1441 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1444 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1446 (F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to find
1447 the character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you
1448 forgot to load the corresponding C<charnames> pragma?
1452 =item Constant is not %s reference
1454 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1455 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1456 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1457 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1458 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1460 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1462 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1463 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1464 commentary and workarounds.
1466 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1468 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1469 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1472 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1474 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1475 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1477 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1479 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1481 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1483 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1484 expression compiler gave it.
1486 =item corrupted regexp program
1488 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1491 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
1493 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1495 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1497 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1498 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1501 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1503 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1504 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1505 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1506 which case it indicates something else.
1508 This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the F<perl> binary,
1509 setting the C pre-processor macro C<PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN> to the desired value.
1511 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1513 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1514 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1515 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1517 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1519 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1520 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1521 is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1523 =item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1525 (F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
1526 most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
1527 of the C<....> part.
1529 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1532 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1534 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1535 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1537 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1539 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1540 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1541 that triggers this error.
1543 =item Deprecated character in \N{...}; marked by <-- HERE in \N{%s<-- HERE %s
1545 (D deprecated) Just about anything is legal for the C<...> in C<\N{...}>.
1546 But starting in 5.12, non-reasonable ones that don't look like names
1547 are deprecated. A reasonable name begins with an alphabetic character
1548 and continues with any combination of alphanumerics, dashes, spaces,
1549 parentheses or colons.
1551 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1553 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>.
1554 There has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1555 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1556 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1557 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1558 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1559 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1561 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1565 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1567 Beginning with perl 5.9.4, you can also use C<state> variables to
1568 have lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1570 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1572 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1574 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1575 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather than
1576 to create a dangling reference.
1578 =item Did not produce a valid header
1582 =item %s did not return a true value
1584 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1585 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1586 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1587 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1589 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1591 (W misc) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or
1594 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1596 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1597 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1600 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1602 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1603 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1608 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1609 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
1611 =item Document contains no data
1615 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1617 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1618 define a C<$VERSION.>
1620 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1622 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1623 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1625 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1627 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1629 =item do_study: out of memory
1631 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1633 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1635 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1636 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1637 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1638 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1639 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1640 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1641 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1642 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1644 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1646 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1647 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1649 =item dump is not supported
1651 (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1653 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1655 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1658 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1660 (W) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a type
1661 in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1663 =item elseif should be elsif
1665 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1666 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1667 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1668 unlikely to be what you want.
1672 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1673 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1674 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1676 =item entering effective %s failed
1678 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1679 effective uids or gids failed.
1681 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1683 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1684 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1685 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1687 =item Error converting file specification %s
1689 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1690 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1691 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1692 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1693 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1695 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1697 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1698 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1699 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1701 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval'
1703 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1704 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1705 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk,
1706 it is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by using the
1707 C<re 'eval'> pragma or by explicitly building the pattern from an
1708 interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval(). See
1709 L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1711 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1713 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1714 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1715 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1717 =item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1719 (F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
1720 any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
1722 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1725 =item Excessively long <> operator
1727 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1728 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1729 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1730 variable and glob that.
1732 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1734 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented on some systems, e.g., Symbian
1735 OS. See L<perlport>.
1737 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
1739 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1741 =item Exiting eval via %s
1743 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1744 goto, or a loop control statement.
1746 =item Exiting format via %s
1748 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1749 goto, or a loop control statement.
1751 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1753 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1754 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1755 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1757 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1759 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1760 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1762 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1764 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1765 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1767 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1769 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1770 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1771 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1772 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1774 =item %s: Expression syntax
1776 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1777 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1779 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1781 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
1782 CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
1783 queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
1785 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1787 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1788 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1789 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1790 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1791 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1793 =item Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
1795 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1796 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1797 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1798 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1800 =item fcntl is not implemented
1802 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1803 PDP-11 or something?
1805 =item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
1807 (F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
1810 =item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1812 (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string start with a length indicator
1813 which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1814 a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1815 C<u63> as the format.
1817 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1819 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1820 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1821 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1822 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1824 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1826 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1827 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1828 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with ">". If you intended only to
1829 read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>. Another possibility
1830 is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0 (also known as STDIN) for
1831 output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
1833 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1835 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1836 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
1839 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
1841 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1842 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
1844 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1846 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1847 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1848 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1851 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1853 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1854 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1855 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1858 =item Format not terminated
1860 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1861 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1863 =item Format %s redefined
1865 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1868 no warnings 'redefine';
1869 eval "format NAME =...";
1872 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1882 (or something like that).
1884 =item %s found where operator expected
1886 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
1887 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1888 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1889 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1891 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1893 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1895 =item gethostent not implemented
1897 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1898 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1901 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1903 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1904 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1906 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1908 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1909 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1911 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1913 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1914 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1915 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1917 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1919 (F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
1920 that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
1921 declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
1922 which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1924 =item glob failed (%s)
1926 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1927 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1928 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1929 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1930 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1931 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1932 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1933 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1934 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1935 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1936 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1938 =item Glob not terminated
1940 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1941 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1942 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1943 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1945 =item gmtime(%f) too large
1947 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was larger than
1948 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
1949 date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
1950 not-a-number value).
1952 =item gmtime(%f) too small
1954 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was smaller than
1955 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
1956 date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
1957 not-a-number value).
1959 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1961 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1962 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1964 =item goto must have label
1966 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1967 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1969 =item ()-group starts with a count
1971 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is supposed to follow
1972 something: a template character or a ()-group. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1974 =item %s had compilation errors.
1976 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1978 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1980 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1981 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1982 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1984 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1986 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1987 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
1989 =item %s has too many errors
1991 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1992 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1994 =item Having no space between pattern and following word is deprecated
1998 You had a word that isn't a regex modifier immediately following a pattern
1999 without an intervening space or you used one of the regex modifiers
2000 ("a", "d", "l", and "u") that in 5.14 are disallowed as suffixes.
2001 In that case, use the infix form, like C</(?a:...)/>. In the other case,
2002 add between the pattern and following word. As an example of the
2003 latter, the two constructs:
2005 $a =~ m/$foo/sand $bar
2006 $a =~ m/$foo/s and $bar
2008 both currently mean the same thing, but it is planned to disallow the first
2009 form in Perl 5.16. And,
2011 $a =~ m/$foo/and $bar
2013 will be disallowed too.
2015 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
2017 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2018 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2019 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2021 =item Identifier too long
2023 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
2024 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
2025 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
2026 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
2028 =item Ignoring zero length \N{} in character class
2030 (W) Named Unicode character escapes (\N{...}) may return a
2031 zero length sequence. When such an escape is used in a character class
2032 its behaviour is not well defined. Check that the correct escape has
2033 been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
2035 =item Illegal binary digit %s
2037 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
2039 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
2041 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
2042 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
2045 =item Illegal character \%o (carriage return)
2047 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
2048 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
2049 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
2050 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
2051 to your Perl administrator.
2053 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
2055 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2056 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2058 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
2060 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
2061 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
2063 =item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
2065 (F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
2067 =item Illegal division by zero
2069 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
2070 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
2073 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
2075 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
2076 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
2077 number stopped before the illegal character.
2079 =item Illegal modulus zero
2081 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
2082 numbers don't take to this kindly.
2084 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
2086 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
2087 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
2089 =item Illegal octal digit %s
2091 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2093 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
2095 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2096 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
2098 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: -%c
2100 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
2101 following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtw]>.
2103 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
2105 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
2106 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
2107 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
2109 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
2111 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
2112 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
2113 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
2116 =item (in cleanup) %s
2118 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
2119 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
2120 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
2121 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
2122 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
2124 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
2125 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
2127 =item Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on parent '%s'
2129 (F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not
2130 C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See the C3
2131 documentation in L<mro> for more information.
2133 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
2135 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
2136 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
2137 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
2139 =item Infinite recursion in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2141 (F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input
2142 text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive patterns
2143 either consume text or fail.
2145 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2148 =item Initialization of state variables in list context currently forbidden
2150 (F) Currently the implementation of "state" only permits the initialization
2151 of scalar variables in scalar context. Re-write C<state ($a) = 42> as
2152 C<state $a = 42> to change from list to scalar context. Constructions such
2153 as C<state (@a) = foo()> will be supported in a future perl release.
2155 =item Insecure dependency in %s
2157 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
2158 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
2159 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
2160 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
2161 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
2162 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
2163 L<perlsec> for more information.
2165 =item Insecure directory in %s
2167 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2168 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
2169 the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
2172 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
2174 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2175 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
2176 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
2177 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
2178 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
2180 =item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2182 (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2183 or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2184 integers for your architecture.
2186 =item Integer overflow in %s number
2188 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2189 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2190 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2191 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2192 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
2193 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2194 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2195 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2198 =item Integer overflow in version
2200 (F) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for the
2201 size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
2202 because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use a
2203 element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by
2204 trying to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like
2207 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2209 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
2210 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2213 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2215 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2216 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2217 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2218 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2219 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2220 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
2222 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2224 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2225 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2228 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
2230 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
2231 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
2232 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
2233 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
2235 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2237 (F) The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2238 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2240 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2242 (F) The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2243 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2245 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2247 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2248 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
2250 =item Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2252 (W regexp) The numeric escape (for example C<\xHH>) of value < 256
2253 didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion
2254 from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma.
2255 The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD) instead.
2256 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2257 escape was discovered.
2259 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
2261 (F) The character constant represented by C<...> is not a valid hexadecimal
2262 number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use a character other than
2263 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
2265 =item Invalid mro name: '%s'
2267 (F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")> or C<use mro 'foo'>,
2268 where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO). Currently,
2269 the only valid ones supported are C<dfs> and C<c3>, unless you have loaded
2270 a module that is a MRO plugin. See L<mro> and L<perlmroapi>.
2272 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2274 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2275 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2276 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2277 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2278 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2280 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2282 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2283 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2285 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2287 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2288 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2289 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2292 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2294 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other
2295 than a colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2296 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2297 list was terminated too soon.
2299 =item Invalid strict version format (%s)
2301 (F) A version number did not meet the "strict" criteria for versions.
2302 A "strict" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2303 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2304 v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least three components.
2305 The parenthesized text indicates which criteria were not met.
2306 See the L<version> module for more details on allowed version formats.
2308 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2310 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2311 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2312 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2315 =item Invalid version format (%s)
2317 (F) A version number did not meet the "lax" criteria for versions.
2318 A "lax" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2319 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2320 v-string. If the v-string has fewer than three components, it must
2321 have a leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading 'v' is optional.
2322 Both decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a trailing "alpha"
2323 component separated by an underscore character after a fractional or
2324 dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized text indicates which
2325 criteria were not met. See the L<version> module for more details on
2326 allowed version formats.
2328 =item Invalid version object
2330 (F) The internal structure of the version object was invalid. Perhaps
2331 the internals were modified directly in some way or an arbitrary reference
2332 was blessed into the "version" class.
2334 =item ioctl is not implemented
2336 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2337 strange for a machine that supports C.
2339 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
2341 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2342 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
2344 =item IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
2346 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2347 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO, Perl must be configured
2350 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2352 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2353 neither as a system call nor an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2355 =item $* is no longer supported
2357 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older
2358 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. In
2359 previous versions of perl the use of C<$*> enabled or disabled multi-line
2360 matching within a string.
2362 Instead of using C<$*> you should use the C</m> (and maybe C</s>) regexp
2363 modifiers. You can enable C</m> for a lexical scope (even a whole file)
2364 with C<use re '/m'>. (In older versions: when C<$*> was set to a true value
2365 then all regular expressions behaved as if they were written using C</m>.)
2367 =item $# is no longer supported
2369 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older
2370 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported. You
2371 should use the printf/sprintf functions instead.
2373 =item `%s' is not a code reference
2375 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant
2376 needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
2379 =item `%s' is not an overloadable type
2381 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2384 =item junk on end of regexp
2386 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2388 =item Label not found for "last %s"
2390 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2391 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2394 =item Label not found for "next %s"
2396 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2397 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2400 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
2402 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2403 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2406 =item leaving effective %s failed
2408 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2409 effective uids or gids failed.
2411 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
2413 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2414 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2415 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2417 =item Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
2419 (F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse
2420 (using L<lex_stuff_pvn|perlapi/lex_stuff_pvn> or similar), but tried to insert a character
2421 that couldn't be part of the current input. This is an inherent pitfall
2422 of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the reasons to avoid it. Where it
2423 is necessary to stuff, stuffing only plain ASCII is recommended.
2425 =item Lexing code internal error (%s)
2427 (F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a
2430 =item listen() on closed socket %s
2432 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2433 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2436 =item localtime(%f) too large
2438 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was larger
2439 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2440 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
2441 not-a-number value).
2443 =item localtime(%f) too small
2445 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was smaller
2446 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2447 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
2448 not-a-number value).
2450 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
2452 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2453 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2455 =item Lost precision when %s %f by 1
2457 (W) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by one is too large
2458 for the underlying floating point representation to store accurately,
2459 hence the target of C<++> or C<--> is unchanged. Perl issues this warning
2460 because it has already switched from integers to floating point when values
2461 are too large for integers, and now even floating point is insufficient.
2462 You may wish to switch to using L<Math::BigInt> explicitly.
2464 =item lstat() on filehandle %s
2466 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2467 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2468 instead on the filehandle.)
2470 =item lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined
2472 (W misc) Making a subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it has been defined
2473 by declaring the subroutine with an lvalue attribute is not
2474 possible. To make the subroutine an lvalue subroutine add the
2475 lvalue attribute to the definition, or put the declaration before
2478 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
2480 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
2481 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
2482 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
2484 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2486 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2487 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2489 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2491 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2492 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2494 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2496 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2503 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2504 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2505 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2506 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2508 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2510 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2511 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2512 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2513 when the function is called.
2515 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2517 (S utf8) (F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2518 encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
2520 One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2521 you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
2522 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2524 If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2525 sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2526 set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2529 See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
2531 =item Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N
2533 (F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
2535 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2537 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2538 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2540 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2542 (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2543 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2545 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2547 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2548 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2550 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2552 (F) Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2553 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2555 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2557 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2558 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
2559 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2562 =item Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded
2564 (F) Perl aborted due to too high a number of signals pending. This
2565 usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
2566 too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
2567 resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
2568 safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
2570 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2572 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2573 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2576 =item % may not be used in pack
2578 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2579 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2580 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2582 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2584 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2585 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2587 =item Method %s not permitted
2591 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2593 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2594 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2595 ended earlier on the current line.
2597 =item Misplaced _ in number
2599 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2600 separate two digits.
2602 =item Missing argument in %s
2604 (W uninitialized) A printf-type format required more arguments than were
2607 =item Missing argument to -%c
2609 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2610 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2612 =item Missing braces on \N{}
2614 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2615 double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space
2616 (or comment) between the C<\N> and the C<{> in a regex with the C</x> modifier.
2617 This modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately
2620 =item Missing braces on \o{}
2622 (F) A C<\o> must be followed immediately by a C<{> in double-quotish context.
2624 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2626 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2627 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2629 =item Missing command in piped open
2631 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2632 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2635 =item Missing control char name in \c
2637 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2640 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2642 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2643 they have a name with which they can be found.
2645 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2647 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2648 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2649 can vary from one line to the next.
2651 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2653 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2654 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2656 =item Missing right brace on %s
2658 (F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}>, C<\P{...}>, or C<\N{...}>.
2660 =item Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N
2662 (F) C<\N> has two meanings.
2664 The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed in braces,
2665 meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that
2666 name. Thus C<\N{ASTERISK}> is another way of writing C<*>, valid in both
2667 double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns,
2668 it doesn't have the meaning an unescaped C<*> does.
2670 Starting in Perl 5.12.0, C<\N> also can have an additional meaning (only)
2671 in patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short
2672 for C<[^\n]>, and like C<.> but is not affected by the C</s> regex modifier.)
2674 This can lead to some ambiguities. When C<\N> is not followed immediately
2675 by a left brace, Perl assumes the C<[^\n]> meaning. Also, if the braces
2676 form a valid quantifier such as C<\N{3}> or C<\N{5,}>, Perl assumes that this
2677 means to match the given quantity of non-newlines (in these examples,
2678 3; and 5 or more, respectively). In all other case, where there is a
2679 C<\N{> and a matching C<}>, Perl assumes that a character name is desired.
2681 However, if there is no matching C<}>, Perl doesn't know if it was
2682 mistakenly omitted, or if C<[^\n]{> was desired, and raises this error.
2683 If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant the latter,
2684 escape the brace with a backslash, like so: C<\N\{>
2686 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2688 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2689 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2692 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2694 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2695 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2696 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2698 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2700 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2701 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2702 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2704 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2707 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2709 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2710 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2713 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2714 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
2717 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2719 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2720 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2723 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2725 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2726 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2728 =item Module name must be constant
2730 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2732 =item Module name required with -%c option
2734 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2735 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2736 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2738 =item More than one argument to '%s' open
2740 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2741 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2742 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2743 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2745 =item msg%s not implemented
2747 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2749 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2751 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2752 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2754 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
2756 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
2757 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
2758 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2760 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2762 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2765 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
2767 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2768 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2769 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2771 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2773 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2774 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2775 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2776 provided for this purpose.
2778 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
2779 %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
2780 the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
2781 will not trigger this warning.
2783 =item \N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...}
2785 (F) The new (5.12) meaning of C<\N> as C<[^\n]> is not valid in a bracketed
2786 character class, for the same reason that C<.> in a character class loses
2787 its specialness: it matches almost everything, which is probably not
2790 =item \N{NAME} must be resolved by the lexer
2792 (F) When compiling a regex pattern, an unresolved named character or
2793 sequence was encountered. This can happen in any of several ways that
2794 bypass the lexer, such as using single-quotish context, or an extra
2795 backslash in double-quotish:
2797 $re = '\N{SPACE}'; # Wrong!
2798 $re = "\\N{SPACE}"; # Wrong!
2801 Instead, use double-quotes with a single backslash:
2803 $re = "\N{SPACE}"; # ok
2806 The lexer can be bypassed as well by creating the pattern from smaller
2810 /${re}{SPACE}/; # Wrong!
2812 It's not a good idea to split a construct in the middle like this, and it
2813 doesn't work here. Instead use the solution above.
2815 Finally, the message also can happen under the C</x> regex modifier when the
2816 C<\N> is separated by spaces from the C<{>, in which case, remove the spaces.
2818 /\N {SPACE}/x; # Wrong!
2821 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
2823 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
2824 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2826 =item Negative length
2828 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2829 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2831 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
2833 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
2834 greater than or equal to zero.
2836 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2838 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
2839 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
2840 expression about where the problem was discovered.
2842 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2843 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
2845 =item %s never introduced
2847 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2848 scope before it could possibly have been used.
2850 =item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
2852 (F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
2853 real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
2856 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
2858 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2859 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2860 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2861 securable. See L<perlsec>.
2863 =item No comma allowed after %s
2865 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2866 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2867 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2869 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2870 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2871 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2872 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2873 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see; please see
2874 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2875 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2876 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2877 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2878 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2879 this error was triggered?
2881 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
2883 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2884 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2885 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
2887 =item No DB::DB routine defined
2889 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2890 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2891 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
2894 =item No dbm on this machine
2896 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
2897 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
2899 =item No DB::sub routine defined
2901 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2902 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2903 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
2904 of each ordinary subroutine call.
2906 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2908 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2909 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2910 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2912 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
2914 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
2915 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2917 =item No input file after < on command line
2919 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2920 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2921 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2923 =item No next::method '%s' found for %s
2925 (F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
2926 in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
2927 it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
2928 or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
2930 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2932 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2933 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2935 =item No output file after > on command line
2937 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2938 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2939 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2941 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2943 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2944 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2945 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2947 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2949 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2950 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2951 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2953 =item No Perl script found in input
2955 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2956 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2958 =item No setregid available
2960 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2963 =item No setreuid available
2965 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2968 =item No %s specified for -%c
2970 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2971 you haven't specified one.
2973 =item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2975 (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed variable
2976 but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type. The indicated
2977 package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the L<fields> pragma.
2979 =item No such class %s
2981 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state"
2982 declaration, but this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
2984 =item No such hook: %s
2986 (F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl.
2987 Currently, Perl accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks.
2989 =item No such pipe open
2991 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2992 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2993 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2995 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2997 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
2998 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
2999 names on your system.
3001 =item Not a CODE reference
3003 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3004 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3005 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3008 =item Not a format reference
3010 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
3011 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
3013 =item Not a GLOB reference
3015 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
3016 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
3017 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
3018 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3020 =item Not a HASH reference
3022 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
3023 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
3024 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3026 =item Not an ARRAY reference
3028 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
3029 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3030 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3032 =item Not a SCALAR reference
3034 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
3035 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3036 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3038 =item Not a subroutine reference
3040 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3041 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3042 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3045 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
3047 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
3048 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
3050 =item Not enough arguments for %s
3052 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
3054 =item Not enough format arguments
3056 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
3057 supplied. See L<perlform>.
3061 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3062 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3065 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
3067 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
3068 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
3069 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
3070 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
3071 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
3073 =item Non-octal character '%c'. Resolved as "%s"
3075 (W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character was
3076 unexpectedly encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value is as
3079 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
3081 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
3082 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
3083 select. See L<perlfunc/select>.
3085 =item Null filename used
3087 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
3088 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
3090 =item NULL OP IN RUN
3092 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
3095 =item Null picture in formline
3097 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
3098 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
3099 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
3103 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
3105 =item NULL regexp argument
3107 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
3109 =item NULL regexp parameter
3111 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
3113 =item Number too long
3115 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
3116 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
3117 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
3118 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
3121 =item Number with no digits
3123 (F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like
3124 a number. This happens, for example with C<\o{}>, with no number between
3127 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
3129 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
3130 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
3133 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
3135 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
3136 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
3137 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
3139 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
3141 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
3142 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
3144 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
3146 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3147 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3149 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
3151 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3152 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3154 =item Offset outside string
3156 (F|W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
3157 with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
3158 imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
3159 take place when going past the end of the string when either
3160 C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
3161 for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
3164 =item %s() on unopened %s
3166 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
3167 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
3168 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
3170 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
3172 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
3173 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3177 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3181 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3183 =item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
3185 (W io, deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
3186 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
3187 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3190 =item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
3192 (W io, deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
3193 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
3194 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3197 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
3199 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
3200 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
3201 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
3202 the C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
3204 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for non-Unicode code point 0x%X
3206 (W utf8, non_unicode) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3208 point that is not in Unicode, so what it should do is not defined. Perl
3209 has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn you.
3211 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3212 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3214 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3215 C<no warnings 'non_unicode';>.
3217 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
3219 (W utf8, surrogate) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3220 semantics on a Unicode
3221 surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use of surrogates for anything but
3222 storing strings in UTF-16, but semantics are (reluctantly) defined for
3223 the surrogates, and they are to do nothing for this operation. Because
3224 the use of surrogates can be dangerous, Perl warns.
3226 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3227 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3229 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3230 C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
3232 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
3234 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
3235 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
3236 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
3237 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
3240 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
3242 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
3243 in the current lexical scope.
3245 =item Out of memory!
3247 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3248 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
3249 no option but to exit immediately.
3251 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
3252 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
3253 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
3254 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
3255 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
3257 =item Out of memory during %s extend
3259 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
3260 the largest possible memory allocation.
3262 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
3264 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3265 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
3266 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
3267 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
3269 =item Out of memory during request for %s
3271 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
3272 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
3275 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
3276 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
3277 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
3278 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
3279 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
3280 where the failed request happened.
3282 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
3284 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
3285 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
3286 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
3288 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
3290 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
3291 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
3294 =item '.' outside of string in pack
3296 (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
3297 position to before the start of the packed string being built.
3299 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
3301 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3302 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3304 =item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
3306 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3307 the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
3308 UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3310 =item Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
3312 (F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was dereferenced,
3313 but the overloaded operation did not return a reference. See
3316 =item Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
3318 (F) An object with a C<qr> overload was used as part of a match, but the
3319 overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See L<overload>.
3321 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
3323 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
3324 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
3325 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
3326 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
3328 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
3330 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3331 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3335 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
3336 page. See L<perlform>.
3340 (P) An internal error.
3342 =item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
3344 (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
3345 an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
3346 platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
3347 enter this branch on this platform.
3349 =item panic: ck_grep
3351 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
3353 =item panic: ck_split
3355 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
3357 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
3359 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
3360 there are in the savestack.
3362 =item panic: del_backref
3364 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
3367 =item panic: Devel::DProf inconsistent subroutine return
3369 (P) Devel::DProf called a subroutine that exited using goto(LABEL),
3370 last(LABEL) or next(LABEL). Leaving that way a subroutine called from
3371 an XSUB will lead very probably to a crash of the interpreter. This is
3372 a bug that will hopefully one day get fixed.
3376 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
3377 it wasn't an eval context.
3379 =item panic: do_subst
3381 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
3384 =item panic: do_trans_%s
3386 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
3389 =item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
3391 (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
3396 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
3400 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
3401 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
3403 =item panic: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
3405 (P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries tried
3406 repeatedly, but each time something re-created entries in the glob. Most
3407 likely the glob contains an object with a reference back to the glob and a
3408 destructor that adds a new object to the glob.
3410 =item panic: hfreeentries failed to free hash
3412 (P) The internal routine used to clear a hash's entries tried repeatedly,
3413 but each time something added more entries to the hash. Most likely the hash
3414 contains an object with a reference back to the hash and a destructor that
3415 adds a new object to the hash.
3417 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
3419 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
3421 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
3423 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
3425 =item panic: kid popen errno read
3427 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
3431 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
3432 it wasn't a block context.
3434 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
3436 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
3439 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
3441 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
3442 invalid enum on the top of it.
3444 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
3446 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
3447 references to an object.
3451 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
3453 =item panic: memory wrap
3455 (P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
3457 =item panic: pad_alloc
3459 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3460 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3462 =item panic: pad_free curpad
3464 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3465 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3467 =item panic: pad_free po
3469 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3471 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
3473 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3474 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3476 =item panic: pad_sv po
3478 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3480 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
3482 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3483 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3485 =item panic: pad_swipe po
3487 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3489 =item panic: pp_iter
3491 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
3493 =item panic: pp_match%s
3495 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
3498 =item panic: pp_split
3500 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
3502 =item panic: realloc
3504 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
3506 =item panic: restartop
3508 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
3509 didn't supply the destination.
3513 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
3514 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
3516 =item panic: scan_num
3518 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
3520 =item panic: sv_chop %s
3522 (P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the
3523 scalar's string buffer.
3525 =item panic: sv_insert
3527 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
3530 =item panic: top_env
3532 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
3534 =item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
3536 (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't
3537 permitted at run time.
3539 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
3541 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
3542 to even) byte length.
3544 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
3546 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an odd (as opposed
3547 to even) byte length.
3551 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
3553 =item Parsing code internal error (%s)
3555 (F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API in
3558 =item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3560 (F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
3561 consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before the
3562 nesting limit is exceeded.
3564 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3567 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
3569 (W parenthesis) You said something like
3575 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
3577 Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
3579 =item C<-p> destination: %s
3581 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
3582 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
3583 redirected it with select().)
3585 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
3587 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3588 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
3589 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
3591 =item Perl_my_%s() not available
3593 (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
3594 so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
3595 conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
3596 '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3598 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
3600 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
3601 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
3602 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
3604 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3606 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3607 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
3609 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
3611 See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
3613 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3615 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3617 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3618 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3621 are supported and installed on your system.
3622 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3624 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3625 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3626 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
3627 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
3628 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
3629 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
3630 Perl can and will use, and the script will be run. Before you really
3631 fix the problem, however, you will get the same error message each
3632 time you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
3633 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3635 =item pid %x not a child
3637 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
3638 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
3639 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
3641 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
3643 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
3645 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3647 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
3648 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
3649 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
3650 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
3651 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
3653 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
3655 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
3656 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
3658 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3660 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
3661 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
3662 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
3663 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
3664 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3665 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3667 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3669 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
3670 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
3671 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
3672 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
3673 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3674 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3676 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3678 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
3679 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
3680 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
3681 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
3682 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3683 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3685 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
3687 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
3688 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
3689 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
3690 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
3692 You probably wrote something like this:
3699 when you should have written this:
3706 If you really want comments, build your list the
3707 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
3711 'b', # another comment
3714 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
3716 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
3717 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
3718 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
3721 You probably wrote something like this:
3725 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
3726 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
3730 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
3732 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
3733 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
3734 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
3735 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
3737 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
3739 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
3740 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
3742 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
3744 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
3745 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
3746 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
3747 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
3749 =item Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
3751 (W ambiguous) You said something like C<m/$\/> in a regex.
3752 The regex C<m/foo$\s+bar/m> translates to: match the word 'foo', the output
3753 record separator (see L<perlvar/$\>) and the letter 's' (one time or more)
3754 followed by the word 'bar'.
3756 If this is what you intended then you can silence the warning by using
3757 C<m/${\}/> (for example: C<m/foo${\}s+bar/>).
3759 If instead you intended to match the word 'foo' at the end of the line
3760 followed by whitespace and the word 'bar' on the next line then you can use
3761 C<m/$(?)\/> (for example: C<m/foo$(?)\s+bar/>).
3763 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
3765 (W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
3766 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
3767 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
3768 to the array you apparently lost track of.
3770 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
3772 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
3776 is now misinterpreted as
3780 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
3781 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
3782 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
3785 =item Premature end of script headers
3789 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
3791 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3792 before now. Check your control flow.
3794 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
3796 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
3797 before now. Check your control flow.
3799 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3801 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3802 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3803 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3804 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
3807 =item Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
3809 (W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is useless,
3810 since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments.
3812 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
3814 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
3815 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
3817 =item Prototype not terminated
3819 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
3822 =item \p{} uses Unicode rules, not locale rules
3824 (W) You compiled a regular expression that contained a Unicode property
3825 match (C<\p> or C<\P>), but the regular expression is also being told to
3826 use the run-time locale, not Unicode. Instead, use a POSIX character
3827 class, which should know about the locale's rules.
3828 (See L<perlrecharclass/POSIX Character Classes>.)
3830 Even if the run-time locale is ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), which is a subset of
3831 Unicode, some properties will give results that are not valid for that
3834 Here are a couple of examples to help you see what's going on. If the
3835 locale is ISO 8859-7, the character at code point 0xD7 is the "GREEK
3836 CAPITAL LETTER CHI". But in Unicode that code point means the
3837 "MULTIPLICATION SIGN" instead, and C<\p> always uses the Unicode
3838 meaning. That means that C<\p{Alpha}> won't match, but C<[[:alpha:]]>
3839 should. Only in the Latin1 locale are all the characters in the same
3840 positions as they are in Unicode. But, even here, some properties give
3841 incorrect results. An example is C<\p{Changes_When_Uppercased}> which
3842 is true for "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS", but since the upper
3843 case of that character is not in Latin1, in that locale it doesn't
3844 change when upper cased.
3846 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3848 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
3849 meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3850 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3852 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3854 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
3855 {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
3856 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3858 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3860 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
3861 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
3862 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
3863 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
3864 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
3866 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3869 =item Range iterator outside integer range
3871 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
3872 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
3873 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
3874 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
3876 =item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
3878 (W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
3879 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
3881 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
3883 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
3884 before now. Check your control flow.
3886 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
3888 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
3890 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
3892 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
3894 =item Reallocation too large: %x
3896 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
3898 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
3900 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
3903 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
3905 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
3906 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
3907 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
3909 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
3911 (F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, Perl
3912 believes it found an infinite loop in the C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a
3913 crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth.
3915 =item refcnt_dec: fd %d%s
3917 =item refcnt: fd %d%s
3919 =item refcnt_inc: fd %d%s
3921 (P) Perl's I/O implementation failed an internal consistency check. If
3922 you see this message, something is very wrong.
3924 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
3926 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
3927 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
3928 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
3929 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
3931 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
3932 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
3933 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
3934 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
3936 =item Reference is already weak
3938 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
3939 Doing so has no effect.
3941 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
3943 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
3944 a reference count other than 1.
3946 =item Reference to invalid group 0
3948 (F) You used C<\g0> or similar in a regular expression. You may refer to
3949 capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers (normal
3950 backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
3951 backreferences). Using 0 does not make sense.
3953 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3955 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
3956 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If
3957 you wanted to have the character with ordinal 7 inserted into the regular
3958 expression, prepend zeroes to make it three digits long: C<\007>
3960 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3963 =item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3965 (F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k<NAME> >> in your regular
3966 expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses
3967 such as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<< (?<NAME>...) >>. Check if the name has been
3968 spelled correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
3970 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3973 =item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3975 (F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there
3976 are not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the
3977 expression before where the C<\g{-7}> was located.
3979 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3982 =item regexp memory corruption
3984 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
3985 expression compiler gave it.
3987 =item Regexp out of space
3989 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
3992 =item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompatible)
3994 (F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
3995 numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
3996 terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
3998 =item Replacement list is longer than search list
4000 (W misc) You have used a replacement list that is longer than the
4001 search list. So the additional elements in the replacement list
4004 =item Reversed %s= operator
4006 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
4007 always come last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
4009 =item rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4011 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either closed or not
4012 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4014 =item Scalars leaked: %d
4016 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
4017 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
4018 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
4019 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
4021 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
4023 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
4024 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
4025 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
4026 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4027 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4028 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4029 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4031 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
4032 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
4033 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4036 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
4038 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
4039 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
4040 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
4041 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4042 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4043 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4044 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4046 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
4047 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
4048 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4051 =item Search pattern not terminated
4053 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
4054 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4055 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
4057 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
4058 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
4059 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
4060 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
4062 =item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
4064 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
4067 The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
4068 C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
4069 parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
4070 the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
4072 =item seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4074 (W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed or not
4075 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4077 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
4079 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
4080 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
4082 =item select not implemented
4084 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
4086 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
4088 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
4089 the current implementation.
4091 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
4093 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
4094 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
4096 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
4098 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
4099 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
4101 =item sem%s not implemented
4103 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
4105 =item send() on closed socket %s
4107 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
4108 before now. Check your control flow.
4110 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4112 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <-- HERE
4113 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4116 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4118 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
4119 has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4120 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4122 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4124 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
4125 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4126 discovered. This happens when using the C<(?^...)> construct to tell
4127 Perl to use the default regular expression modifiers, and you
4128 redundantly specify a default modifier; or having a modifier that can't
4129 be turned off (such as C<"p"> or C<"l">) after a minus; or specifying
4130 more than one of the C<"d">, C<"l">, or C<"u"> modifiers. For other
4131 causes, see L<perlre>.
4133 =item Sequence \%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4135 (F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument following the escape
4136 sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly written.
4138 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4140 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
4141 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
4142 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4145 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4147 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contain braces, they must balance
4148 for Perl to detect the end of the clause properly. The <-- HERE shows in
4149 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4152 =item Z<>500 Server error
4158 (A) This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
4159 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
4160 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
4161 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
4162 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
4163 produce a valid header".
4165 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
4167 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
4168 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
4169 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
4170 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
4171 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
4172 Please see the following for more information:
4174 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
4175 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
4176 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
4178 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
4180 =item setegid() not implemented
4182 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
4183 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4186 =item seteuid() not implemented
4188 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
4189 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4192 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
4194 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
4195 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
4198 =item setrgid() not implemented
4200 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
4201 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4204 =item setruid() not implemented
4206 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
4207 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4210 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
4212 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
4213 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
4214 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
4216 =item shm%s not implemented
4218 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
4220 =item !=~ should be !~
4222 (W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
4223 interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
4224 operators: probably not what you intended.
4226 =item <> should be quotes
4228 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
4231 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
4233 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
4234 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
4235 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
4236 probably not what you had in mind.
4238 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
4240 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
4243 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
4245 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
4246 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
4248 =item Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks encapsulation
4250 (F) You should not use the C<~~> operator on an object that does not
4251 overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's underlying structure for
4254 =item sort is now a reserved word
4256 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
4257 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
4259 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
4261 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
4262 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4264 =item splice() offset past end of array
4266 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
4267 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the end
4268 of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want, try
4269 explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset. See
4274 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
4275 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
4276 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
4278 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
4280 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
4281 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
4282 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
4283 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
4286 =item "state" variable %s can't be in a package
4288 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
4289 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
4290 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
4292 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
4294 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
4295 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4297 =item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
4299 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
4300 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
4301 C<can> may break this.
4303 =item Subroutine %s redefined
4305 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
4308 no warnings 'redefine';
4309 eval "sub name { ... }";
4312 =item Substitution loop
4314 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
4315 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
4316 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
4317 L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
4319 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
4321 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4322 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4323 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4325 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
4327 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4328 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4329 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4331 =item substr outside of string
4333 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
4334 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
4335 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
4336 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
4337 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
4339 =item sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
4341 (P) Perl tried to force the upgrade of an SV to a type which was actually
4342 inferior to its current type.
4344 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4346 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
4347 branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
4348 contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
4349 clustering parentheses:
4351 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
4353 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4354 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4356 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4358 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is
4359 a number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
4360 expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4362 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
4364 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
4365 and effective uids or gids.
4369 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
4373 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
4375 A keyword is misspelled.
4376 A semicolon is missing.
4378 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
4379 An opening or closing brace is missing.
4380 A closing quote is missing.
4382 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
4383 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
4384 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
4385 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
4386 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
4387 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
4388 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
4389 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
4390 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
4393 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
4395 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
4396 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
4399 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
4401 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
4402 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
4403 or "my $var" or "our $var".
4405 =item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
4407 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4409 =item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
4411 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4413 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
4415 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
4416 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
4417 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
4418 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
4420 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
4422 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4423 before now. Check your control flow.
4425 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
4427 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
4428 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
4430 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
4432 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
4433 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
4435 =item telldir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4437 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to telldir() is either closed or not really
4438 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4440 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
4442 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
4443 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4445 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
4447 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
4448 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
4457 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
4458 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
4460 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
4462 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
4463 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
4464 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
4465 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
4468 =item The %s function is unimplemented
4470 (F) The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
4471 to the probings of Configure.
4473 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
4475 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
4476 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
4477 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
4480 =item The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
4482 (F) This attribute was never supported on C<my> or C<sub> declarations.
4484 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
4486 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
4488 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
4489 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
4490 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
4491 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
4492 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
4493 target of the change to
4494 %ENV which produced the warning.
4496 =item thread failed to start: %s
4498 (W threads)(S) The entry point function of threads->create() failed for some reason.
4500 =item times not implemented
4502 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
4503 suspect you're not running on Unix.
4505 =item "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
4507 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4508 B<-T> option (or the B<-t> option), but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
4509 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
4510 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
4513 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
4514 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
4515 editing the #! line so that the B<-%c> option is a part of Perl's first
4516 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -%c> to C<perl -%c -n>.
4518 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
4519 B<-%c> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -%c scriptname>.
4521 =item To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
4523 (F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
4524 uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
4525 specified an illegal mapping.
4526 See L<perlunicode/"User-Defined Character Properties">.
4528 =item Too deeply nested ()-groups
4530 (F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level.
4532 =item Too few args to syscall
4534 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
4535 system call to call, silly dilly.
4537 =item Too late for "-%s" option
4539 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4540 B<-M>, B<-m> or B<-C> option.
4542 In the case of B<-M> and B<-m>, this is an error because those options are
4543 not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
4545 The B<-C> option only works if it is specified on the command line as well
4546 (with the same sequence of letters or numbers following). Either specify
4547 this option on the command line, or, if your system supports it, make your
4548 script executable and run it directly instead of passing it to perl.
4550 =item Too late to run %s block
4552 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
4553 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
4554 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
4555 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
4558 =item Too many args to syscall
4560 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
4562 =item Too many arguments for %s
4564 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
4568 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4569 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4573 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4574 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4576 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
4578 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
4579 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
4581 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
4583 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
4584 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
4585 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
4587 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
4589 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][],
4590 y/// or y[][] construct.
4592 =item '%s' trapped by operation mask
4594 (F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's
4595 disallowed. See L<Safe>.
4597 =item truncate not implemented
4599 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
4600 Configure knows about.
4602 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
4604 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
4605 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
4606 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
4607 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
4609 =item Type of argument to %s must be hashref or arrayref
4611 (F) You called C<keys>, C<values> or C<each> with an argument that was
4612 expected to be a reference to a hash or a reference to an array.
4614 =item umask not implemented
4616 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
4617 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
4619 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
4621 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
4623 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
4625 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4626 many execution contexts were entered and left.
4628 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
4630 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4631 many values were temporarily localized.
4633 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
4635 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4636 many blocks were entered and left.
4638 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
4640 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4641 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
4643 =item Undefined format "%s" called
4645 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4646 another package? See L<perlform>.
4648 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
4650 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
4651 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4653 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
4655 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
4656 since been undefined.
4658 =item Undefined subroutine called
4660 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
4661 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
4663 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
4665 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
4666 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4668 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
4670 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4671 another package? See L<perlform>.
4673 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
4675 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
4676 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
4679 =item %s: Undefined variable
4681 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4682 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4684 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
4686 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
4687 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
4689 =item Unicode non-character U+%X is illegal for open interchange
4691 (W utf8, nonchar) Certain codepoints, such as U+FFFE and U+FFFF, are
4693 Unicode standard to be non-characters. Those are legal codepoints, but are
4694 reserved for internal use; so, applications shouldn't attempt to exchange
4695 them. If you know what you are doing you can turn
4696 off this warning by C<no warnings 'nonchar';>.
4698 =item Unicode surrogate U+%X is illegal in UTF-8
4700 (W utf8, surrogate) You had a UTF-16 surrogate in a context where they are
4701 not considered acceptable. These code points, between U+D800 and
4702 U+DFFF (inclusive), are used by Unicode only for UTF-16. However, Perl
4703 internally allows all unsigned integer code points (up to the size limit
4704 available on your platform), including surrogates. But these can cause
4705 problems when being input or output, which is likely where this message
4706 came from. If you really really know what you are doing you can turn
4707 off this warning by C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
4709 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
4711 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
4714 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
4716 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
4717 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
4718 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->, C<< <& >>, C<< >& >>.
4720 =item Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
4722 (W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
4723 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
4724 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
4725 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
4726 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
4727 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
4729 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
4731 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
4732 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
4733 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
4734 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
4736 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
4738 (W) You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
4740 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4742 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
4743 is not known. The condition must be one of the following:
4745 (1) (2) ... true if 1st, 2nd, etc., capture matched
4746 (<NAME>) ('NAME') true if named capture matched
4747 (?=...) (?<=...) true if subpattern matches
4748 (?!...) (?<!...) true if subpattern fails to match
4749 (?{ CODE }) true if code returns a true value
4750 (R) true if evaluating inside recursion
4751 (R1) (R2) ... true if directly inside capture group 1, 2, etc.
4752 (R&NAME) true if directly inside named capture
4753 (DEFINE) always false; for defining named subpatterns
4755 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4756 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4758 =item Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
4760 (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4761 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4763 =item Unknown Unicode option value %x
4765 (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4766 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4768 =item Unknown verb pattern '%s' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4770 (F) You either made a typo or have incorrectly put a C<*> quantifier
4771 after an open brace in your pattern. Check the pattern and review
4772 L<perlre> for details on legal verb patterns.
4774 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
4776 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
4777 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
4779 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a
4780 module (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have loaded this
4783 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4785 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
4786 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
4787 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
4788 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4790 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4792 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
4793 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
4794 matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4795 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4797 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
4799 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
4800 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
4801 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
4802 you were last editing.
4804 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
4806 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
4807 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
4808 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
4811 =item Unrecognized character %s; marked by <-- HERE after %s near column %d
4813 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
4814 in your Perl script (or eval) near the specified column. Perhaps you tried
4815 to run a compressed script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
4817 =item Unrecognized escape \%c in character class passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4819 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4820 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
4821 understood literally, but this may change in a future version of Perl.
4822 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4823 escape was discovered.
4825 =item Unrecognized escape \%c passed through
4827 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4828 recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally, but this may
4829 change in a future version of Perl.
4831 =item Unrecognized escape \%s passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4833 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4834 recognized by Perl. The character(s) were understood literally, but this may
4835 change in a future version of Perl.
4836 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4837 escape was discovered.
4839 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
4841 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
4842 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
4845 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
4847 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
4848 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
4849 bad switch on your behalf.)
4851 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
4853 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filen