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%s} resolved to %c%s%s
124 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<${foo[2]}> (where foo
125 represents the name of a Perl keyword), which might be looking for
126 element number 2 of the array named C<@foo>, in which case please write
127 C<$foo[2]>, or you might have meant to pass an anonymous arrayref to
128 the function named foo, and then do a scalar deref on the value it
129 returns. If you meant that, write C<${foo([2])}>.
131 In regular expressions, the C<${foo[2]}> syntax is sometimes necessary
132 to disambiguate between array subscripts and character classes.
133 C</$length[2345]/>, for instance, will be interpreted as C<$length>
134 followed by the character class C<[2345]>. If an array subscript is what
135 you want, you can avoid the warning by changing C</${length[2345]}/>
136 to the unsightly C</${\$length[2345]}/>, by renaming your array to
137 something that does not coincide with a built-in keyword, or by
138 simply turning off warnings with C<no warnings 'ambiguous';>.
140 =item Ambiguous use of -%s resolved as -&%s()
142 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<-foo>, which might be the
143 string C<"-foo">, or a call to the function C<foo>, negated. If you meant
144 the string, just write C<"-foo">. If you meant the function call,
147 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
149 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
150 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
151 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
153 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
155 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
156 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
157 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
158 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
159 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
161 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
168 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
170 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
171 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
172 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
173 a scalar value (the length of an array, or the population info of a
174 hash) and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
175 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
178 =item Args must match #! line
180 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
181 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
182 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
183 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
185 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
187 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
189 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
191 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element or a
192 subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
198 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
200 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
206 or a hash or array slice, such as:
208 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
209 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
211 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
213 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
214 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
217 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
219 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
220 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
221 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
223 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
225 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you
226 forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take care of transforming
227 data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing
228 the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer.
229 If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be
230 the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
232 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
234 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
235 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
237 =item assertion botched: %s
239 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
241 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
243 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
245 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
247 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
248 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
249 know which context to supply to the right side.
251 =item A thread exited while %d threads were running
253 (W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily the main
254 thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
255 Usually it's a good idea first to collect the return values of the
256 created threads by joining them, and only then to exit from the main
257 thread. See L<threads>.
259 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
261 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
262 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
264 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
266 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
267 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
268 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
274 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
276 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
277 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
280 bless $self, "$proto";
282 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
284 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
285 which is not in its key set.
287 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
289 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
290 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
292 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%x
294 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
295 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
296 outside any of those arenas.
298 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
300 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference-counted internal table of
301 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
302 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
303 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
305 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
307 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
308 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
309 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
310 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
313 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
315 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
317 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
319 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
320 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
321 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
322 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
323 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
324 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
327 =item Attempt to join self
329 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
330 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
331 to move the join() to some other thread.
333 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
335 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
336 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
337 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
338 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
339 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
342 =item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
344 (F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
345 compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
346 unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
349 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
351 (W) You tried to set the length of an array which has been freed. You
352 can do this by storing a reference to the scalar representing the last index
353 of an array and later assigning through that reference. For example
355 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
358 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
360 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
361 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
362 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
364 =item Attribute "locked" is deprecated
366 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the "locked"
367 attribute on a code reference. The :locked attribute is obsolete, has had no
368 effect since 5005 threads were removed, and will be removed in a future
371 =item Attribute "unique" is deprecated
373 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the "unique"
374 attribute on an array, hash or scalar reference. The :unique attribute has
375 had no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and will be removed in a future release
378 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
380 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
381 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
382 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
383 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
385 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
387 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
388 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
389 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
391 =item Bad filehandle: %s
393 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
394 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
395 open(), or did it in another package.
397 =item Bad free() ignored
399 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
400 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
401 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
403 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
404 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
405 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
409 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
411 =item Badly placed ()'s
413 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
414 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
417 =item Bad name after %s::
419 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
420 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
429 $sym = "mypack::$var";
431 =item Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
433 (F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the
436 =item Bad realloc() ignored
438 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
439 never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
440 by setting the environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
442 =item Bad symbol for array
444 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
445 wasn't a symbol table entry.
447 =item Bad symbol for dirhandle
449 (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
450 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
453 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
455 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
456 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
458 =item Bad symbol for hash
460 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
461 wasn't a symbol table entry.
463 =item Bareword found in conditional
465 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
466 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
467 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
471 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
474 use constant TYPO => 1;
475 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
477 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
479 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
481 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
482 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
483 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
485 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
487 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
488 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
489 you need to predeclare a package?
491 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
493 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
494 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
497 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
499 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
500 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
501 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
502 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
503 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
505 =item \1 better written as $1
507 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
508 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
509 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
510 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
511 there are more than 9 backreferences.
513 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
515 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
516 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
517 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
519 =item bind() on closed socket %s
521 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
522 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
524 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
526 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
527 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
529 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
531 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
533 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
535 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
538 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
540 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
541 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
542 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
544 =item Callback called exit
546 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
547 exited by calling exit.
549 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
551 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
552 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
553 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
554 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
555 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
556 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
557 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
558 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
560 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
562 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
563 compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
564 attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
565 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
567 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
569 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
570 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
572 =item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
574 (F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference in it,
575 then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax. The access
576 triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is no legal conversion
577 from that type of reference to a typeglob.
579 =item Cannot copy to %s in %s
581 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
582 be directly assigned to.
584 =item Cannot find encoding "%s"
586 (S io) You tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to a filehandle,
587 either with open() or binmode().
589 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
591 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
592 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
593 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
595 =item Can't bless non-reference value
597 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
598 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
600 =item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
602 (F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
603 a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
605 =item Can't "break" outside a given block
607 (F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
609 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
611 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
612 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
613 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
615 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
617 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
618 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
619 like this will reproduce the error:
622 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
623 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
625 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
627 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
628 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
629 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
630 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
632 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
634 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
635 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
636 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
637 Something like this will reproduce the error:
640 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
641 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
643 =item Can't chdir to %s
645 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
646 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
648 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
650 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
653 =item Can't coerce %s to %s in %s
655 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
656 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
666 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
668 =item Can't "continue" outside a when block
670 (F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
673 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
675 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
676 quotas or other plumbing problems.
678 =item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
680 (F) Currently, only scalar variables can be declared with a specific
681 class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state" declaration. The semantics may be
682 extended for other types of variables in future.
684 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
686 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
687 "state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
689 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
691 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
692 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
694 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
696 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
699 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
701 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
702 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
703 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
705 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
707 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
708 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
709 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
711 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
713 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
714 regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the
715 regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
717 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
719 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
720 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
722 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
724 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
725 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
728 =item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
730 (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
731 or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
732 little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
733 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
735 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
737 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
738 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
739 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
740 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
741 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
742 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
747 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
748 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
749 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
751 =item Can't execute %s
753 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
754 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
756 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
758 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
759 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
761 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
763 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
764 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property?
765 See L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
766 for a complete list of available properties.
768 =item Can't find label %s
770 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
771 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
773 =item Can't find %s on PATH
775 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
778 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
780 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
781 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
782 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
784 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
786 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
787 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
788 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
790 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
792 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
793 unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
794 editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
796 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
798 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode property (for
799 example C<\p{Lu}> matches all uppercase letters). If you did mean to use a
800 Unicode property, see
801 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
802 for a complete list of available properties.
803 If you didn't mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either
804 by C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, until
809 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
812 =item Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
814 (W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be retried
817 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
819 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
820 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
821 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
822 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
823 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
824 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
825 the access checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
826 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
827 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
828 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
829 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up
830 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking
831 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
832 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
833 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
835 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
837 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
838 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
840 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
842 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
843 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
845 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
847 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
848 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
850 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
852 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
853 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
854 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
855 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
857 =item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
859 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
860 comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
861 as the reduce() function in List::Util).
863 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
865 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
868 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
870 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
871 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
872 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
873 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
875 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
877 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
878 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
879 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
880 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
881 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
882 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
884 =item Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
886 (F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a fatal error to
887 attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise non-numeric
890 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
892 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
893 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
894 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
895 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
896 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
897 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
900 =item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
902 (F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
903 package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
905 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
907 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension. This
908 may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one that is
909 incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known to happen
910 between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your dynamic
911 extension was built against an older version of the library that is
912 installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old dynamic
915 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
917 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
918 lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you want to
919 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
922 =item Can't localize through a reference
924 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
925 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
926 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
927 that $ref will still be a reference.
929 =item Can't locate %s
931 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
932 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
933 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
934 need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
935 the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
936 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
937 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
939 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
941 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
942 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
943 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
944 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
946 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
948 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
949 for example, C<foo.so> or C<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
950 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
952 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
954 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
955 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
956 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
958 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
960 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
961 doesn't seem to exist.
963 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
965 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
966 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
968 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
970 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
973 =item Can't modify %s in %s
975 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
976 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
978 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
980 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
983 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
985 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
986 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
988 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
990 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
993 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
995 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
996 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
997 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
998 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
999 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
1000 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
1002 =item Can't open %s: %s
1004 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
1005 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
1006 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
1007 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
1010 =item Can't open a reference
1012 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
1013 using the 3-arg open() syntax :
1017 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
1018 open is not supported.
1020 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
1022 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
1023 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
1024 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
1025 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
1027 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
1029 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1030 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
1031 the command line for writing.
1033 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
1035 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1036 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
1037 command line for reading.
1039 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
1041 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1042 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
1043 the command line for writing.
1045 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
1047 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1048 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
1051 =item Can't open perl script%s
1053 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
1055 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
1056 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1057 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1059 =item Can't read CRTL environ
1061 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1062 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1063 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1064 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1067 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1069 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1070 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1071 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1072 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1073 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1074 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1076 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1078 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1079 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1080 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1082 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1084 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1085 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1087 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1089 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1090 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1092 =item Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
1094 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
1095 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
1096 method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1098 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1100 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1101 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1104 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1106 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1107 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1109 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1111 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
1112 but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
1113 to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
1114 the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
1117 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1119 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1120 open already. Bizarre.
1122 =item Can't take log of %g
1124 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1125 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1126 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1129 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1131 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1132 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1133 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1135 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1137 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1138 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1139 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1143 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
1144 as the main Perl stack.
1146 =item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1148 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1149 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1150 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1151 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1153 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1155 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1156 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1157 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1159 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1161 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1162 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1164 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1166 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1167 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1169 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1171 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1172 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1173 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1175 =item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1177 (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1178 byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1179 allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1181 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1183 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1186 =item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1188 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1189 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1190 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1191 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1194 =item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1196 (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1197 that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1198 For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1199 is inside a big-endian group.
1201 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1203 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1204 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1205 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1206 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1209 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1211 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1212 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1213 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1215 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1217 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1218 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1220 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1222 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1223 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1224 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1226 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1228 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1229 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1230 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1231 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1232 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1235 =item Can't use "when" outside a topicalizer
1237 (F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1238 loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1239 from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1240 or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1242 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1244 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1245 references can be weakened.
1247 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1249 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1250 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1251 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1253 =item Character following "\c" must be ASCII
1255 (F|W deprecated, syntax) In C<\cI<X>>, I<X> must be an ASCII character.
1256 It is planned to make this fatal in all instances in Perl 5.16. In the
1257 cases where it isn't fatal, the character this evaluates to is
1258 derived by exclusive or'ing the code point of this character with 0x40.
1260 Note that non-alphabetic ASCII characters are discouraged here as well.
1262 =item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1268 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1269 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1270 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1274 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1277 =item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1283 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode expects
1284 all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved as if you
1287 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1289 =item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1295 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1296 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1297 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1299 pack("c", $x & 255);
1301 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1304 =item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1306 (W unpack) You tried something like
1308 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1310 where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1311 below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the value
1312 modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1314 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1316 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1318 (W pack) You tried something like
1320 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1322 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1323 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1324 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1326 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1328 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1330 (W unpack) You tried something like
1332 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1334 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1335 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1336 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1338 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1340 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1342 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1344 =item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1346 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1347 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1349 =item Closure prototype called
1351 (F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to an attribute
1352 handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure is created.
1353 This subroutine cannot be called.
1355 =item Code missing after '/'
1357 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be another
1358 template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1360 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
1362 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, no properties match it; all inverse properties do
1364 (W utf8) You had a code point above the Unicode maximum of U+10FFFF.
1366 Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code
1367 points, up to the limit of what is storable in an unsigned integer on
1368 your system, but these may not be accepted by other languages/systems.
1369 At one time, it was legal in some standards to have code points up to
1370 0x7FFF_FFFF, but not higher. Code points above 0xFFFF_FFFF require
1371 larger than a 32 bit word.
1373 None of the Unicode or Perl-defined properties will match a non-Unicode
1374 code point. For example,
1376 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\p{Any}/
1378 will not match, because the code point is not in Unicode. But
1380 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\P{Any}/
1384 =item %s: Command not found
1386 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1387 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1389 =item Compilation failed in require
1391 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1392 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1393 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1395 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1397 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1398 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1399 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1400 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1401 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1402 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1403 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1404 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1405 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1407 =item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1409 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1410 cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_broadcast()
1411 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1412 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1413 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1414 first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1415 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1418 =item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1420 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1421 cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_signal()
1422 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1423 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1424 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1425 first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1426 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1429 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1431 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1432 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1433 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1435 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1437 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1438 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1439 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1440 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1443 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1445 (F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to find
1446 the character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you
1447 forgot to load the corresponding C<charnames> pragma?
1451 =item Constant is not %s reference
1453 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1454 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1455 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1456 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1457 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1459 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1461 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1462 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1463 commentary and workarounds.
1465 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1467 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1468 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1471 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1473 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1474 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1476 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1478 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1480 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1482 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1483 expression compiler gave it.
1485 =item corrupted regexp program
1487 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1490 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
1492 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1494 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1496 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1497 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1500 =item "\c{" is deprecated and is more clearly written as ";"
1502 (D deprecated, syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way
1503 to specify non-printable characters. You used it with a "{" which
1504 evaluates to ";", which is printable. It is planned to remove the
1505 ability to specify a semi-colon this way in Perl 5.16. Just use a
1506 semi-colon or a backslash-semi-colon without the "\c".
1508 =item "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"
1510 (W syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way to specify
1511 non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which is better
1512 written as simply itself, perhaps preceded by a backslash for non-word
1515 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1517 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1518 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1519 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1520 which case it indicates something else.
1522 This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the F<perl> binary,
1523 setting the C pre-processor macro C<PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN> to the desired value.
1525 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1527 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1528 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1529 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1531 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1533 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1534 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1535 is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1537 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1539 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1540 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1542 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1544 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1545 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1546 that triggers this error.
1548 =item Deprecated character in \N{...}; marked by <-- HERE in \N{%s<-- HERE %s
1550 (D deprecated) Just about anything is legal for the C<...> in C<\N{...}>.
1551 But starting in 5.12, non-reasonable ones that don't look like names are
1552 deprecated. A reasonable name begins with an alphabetic character and
1553 continues with any combination of alphanumerics, dashes, spaces, parentheses or
1556 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1558 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>.
1559 There has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1560 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1561 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1562 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1563 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1564 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1566 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1570 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1572 Beginning with perl 5.9.4, you can also use C<state> variables to
1573 have lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1575 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1577 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1579 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1580 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather than
1581 to create a dangling reference.
1583 =item Did not produce a valid header
1587 =item %s did not return a true value
1589 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1590 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1591 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1592 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1594 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1596 (W misc) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or
1599 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1601 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1602 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1605 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1607 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1608 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1613 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1614 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1616 =item Document contains no data
1620 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1622 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1623 define a C<$VERSION.>
1625 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1627 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1628 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1630 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1632 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1634 =item do_study: out of memory
1636 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1638 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1640 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1641 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1642 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1643 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1644 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1645 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1646 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1647 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1649 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1651 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1652 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1654 =item dump is not supported
1656 (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1658 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1660 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1663 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1665 (W) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a type
1666 in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1668 =item elseif should be elsif
1670 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1671 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1672 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1673 unlikely to be what you want.
1677 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1678 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1679 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1681 =item entering effective %s failed
1683 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1684 effective uids or gids failed.
1686 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1688 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1689 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1690 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1692 =item Error converting file specification %s
1694 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1695 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1696 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1697 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1698 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1700 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1702 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1703 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1704 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1706 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval'
1708 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1709 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1710 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it
1711 is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly
1712 building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using
1713 that in an eval(). See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1715 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1717 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1718 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1719 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1721 =item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1723 (F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
1724 any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
1726 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1729 =item Excessively long <> operator
1731 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1732 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1733 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1734 variable and glob that.
1736 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1738 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented in MacPerl. See L<perlport>.
1740 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
1742 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1744 =item Exiting eval via %s
1746 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1747 goto, or a loop control statement.
1749 =item Exiting format via %s
1751 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1752 goto, or a loop control statement.
1754 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1756 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1757 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1758 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1760 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1762 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1763 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1765 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1767 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1768 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1770 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1772 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1773 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1774 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1775 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1777 =item %s: Expression syntax
1779 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1780 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1782 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1784 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
1785 CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
1786 queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
1788 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1790 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1791 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1792 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1793 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1794 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1796 =item Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
1798 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1799 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1800 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1801 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1803 =item fcntl is not implemented
1805 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1806 PDP-11 or something?
1808 =item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
1810 (F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
1813 =item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1815 (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string start with a length indicator
1816 which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1817 a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1820 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1822 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1823 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1824 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1825 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1827 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1829 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1830 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1831 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
1832 intended only to read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1833 Another possibility is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0
1834 (also known as STDIN) for output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
1836 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1838 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1839 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
1842 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
1844 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1845 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
1847 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1849 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1850 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1851 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1854 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1856 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1857 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1858 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1861 =item Format not terminated
1863 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1864 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1866 =item Format %s redefined
1868 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1871 no warnings 'redefine';
1872 eval "format NAME =...";
1875 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1885 (or something like that).
1887 =item %s found where operator expected
1889 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
1890 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1891 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1892 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1894 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1896 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1898 =item gethostent not implemented
1900 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1901 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1904 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1906 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1907 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1909 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1911 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1912 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1914 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1916 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1917 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1918 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1920 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1922 (F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
1923 that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
1924 declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
1925 which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1927 =item glob failed (%s)
1929 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1930 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1931 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1932 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1933 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1934 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1935 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1936 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1937 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1938 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1939 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1941 =item Glob not terminated
1943 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1944 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1945 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1946 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1948 =item gmtime(%f) too large
1950 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with an number that was larger than
1951 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
1952 date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
1953 not-a-number value).
1955 =item gmtime(%f) too small
1957 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with an number that was smaller than
1958 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
1959 date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
1960 not-a-number value).
1962 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1964 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1965 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1967 =item goto must have label
1969 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1970 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1972 =item ()-group starts with a count
1974 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is
1975 supposed to follow something: a template character or a ()-group.
1976 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1978 =item %s had compilation errors.
1980 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1982 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1984 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1985 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1986 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1988 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1990 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1991 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
1993 =item %s has too many errors
1995 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1996 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1998 =item Having no space between pattern and following word is deprecated
2002 You had a word that isn't a regex modifier immediately following a pattern
2003 without an intervening space. For example, 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 form
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 %s number
2182 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2183 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2184 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2185 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2186 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
2187 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2188 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2189 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2192 =item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2194 (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2195 or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2196 integers for your architecture.
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 mro name: '%s'
2261 (F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")>
2262 or C<use mro 'foo'>, where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO).
2263 (Currently, the only valid ones are C<dfs> and C<c3>). See L<mro>.
2265 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2267 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2268 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2269 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2270 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2271 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2273 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2275 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2276 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2278 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2280 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2281 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2282 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2285 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2287 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other than a
2288 colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2289 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2290 list was terminated too soon.
2292 =item Invalid strict version format (%s)
2294 (F) A version number did not meet the "strict" criteria for versions.
2295 A "strict" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2296 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2297 v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least three components.
2298 The parenthesized text indicates which criteria were not met.
2299 See the L<version> module for more details on allowed version formats.
2301 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2303 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2304 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2305 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2308 =item Invalid version format (%s)
2310 (F) A version number did not meet the "lax" criteria for versions.
2311 A "lax" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2312 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2313 v-string. If the v-string has less than three components, it must have a
2314 leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading 'v' is optional. Both
2315 decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a trailing "alpha"
2316 component separated by an underscore character after a fractional or
2317 dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized text indicates which
2318 criteria were not met. See the L<version> module for more details on
2319 allowed version formats.
2321 =item Invalid version object
2323 (F) The internal structure of the version object was invalid. Perhaps
2324 the internals were modified directly in some way or an arbitrary reference
2325 was blessed into the "version" class.
2327 =item ioctl is not implemented
2329 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2330 strange for a machine that supports C.
2332 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
2334 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2335 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
2337 =item IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
2339 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2340 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO Perl must be configured
2343 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2345 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2346 neither as a system call or an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2348 =item $* is no longer supported
2350 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older perls, has
2351 been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. In previous versions of perl the use of
2352 C<$*> enabled or disabled multi-line matching within a string.
2354 Instead of using C<$*> you should use the C</m> (and maybe C</s>) regexp
2355 modifiers. (In older versions: when C<$*> was set to a true value then all regular
2356 expressions behaved as if they were written using C</m>.)
2358 =item $# is no longer supported
2360 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older perls, has
2361 been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported. You should use the
2362 printf/sprintf functions instead.
2364 =item `%s' is not a code reference
2366 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant
2367 needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
2370 =item `%s' is not an overloadable type
2372 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2375 =item junk on end of regexp
2377 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2379 =item Label not found for "last %s"
2381 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2382 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2385 =item Label not found for "next %s"
2387 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2388 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2391 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
2393 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2394 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2397 =item leaving effective %s failed
2399 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2400 effective uids or gids failed.
2402 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
2404 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2405 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2406 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2408 =item Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
2410 (F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse
2411 (using L<lex_stuff_pvn_flags|perlapi/lex_stuff_pvn_flags> or similar), but
2412 tried to insert a character that couldn't be part of the current input.
2413 This is an inherent pitfall of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the
2414 reasons to avoid it. Where it is necessary to stuff, stuffing only
2415 plain ASCII is recommended.
2417 =item Lexing code internal error (%s)
2419 (F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a
2422 =item listen() on closed socket %s
2424 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2425 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2428 =item localtime(%f) too large
2430 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with an number that was larger
2431 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2432 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
2433 not-a-number value).
2435 =item localtime(%f) too small
2437 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with an number that was smaller
2438 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2439 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
2440 not-a-number value).
2442 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
2444 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2445 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2447 =item Lost precision when %s %f by 1
2449 (W) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by one is too large
2450 for the underlying floating point representation to store accurately,
2451 hence the target of C<++> or C<--> is unchanged. Perl issues this warning
2452 because it has already switched from integers to floating point when values
2453 are too large for integers, and now even floating point is insufficient.
2454 You may wish to switch to using L<Math::BigInt> explicitly.
2456 =item lstat() on filehandle %s
2458 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2459 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2460 instead on the filehandle.)
2462 =item lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined
2464 (W misc) Making a subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it has been defined
2465 by declaring the subroutine with an lvalue attribute is not
2466 possible. To make the subroutine an lvalue subroutine add the
2467 lvalue attribute to the definition, or put the declaration before
2470 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
2472 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
2473 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
2474 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
2476 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2478 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2479 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2481 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2483 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2484 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2486 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2488 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2495 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2496 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2497 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2498 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2500 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2502 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2503 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2504 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2505 when the function is called.
2507 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2509 (S utf8) (F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2510 encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
2512 One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2513 you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
2514 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2516 If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2517 sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2518 set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2521 See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
2523 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2525 (F) Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2526 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2528 =item Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N
2530 (F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
2532 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2534 (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2535 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2537 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2539 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2540 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2542 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2544 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2545 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2547 =item Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded
2549 (F) Perl aborted due to a too high number of signals pending. This
2550 usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
2551 too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
2552 resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
2553 safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
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 "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2564 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2565 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2568 =item % may not be used in pack
2570 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2571 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2572 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2574 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2576 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2577 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2579 =item Method %s not permitted
2583 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2585 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2586 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2587 ended earlier on the current line.
2589 =item Misplaced _ in number
2591 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2592 separate two digits.
2594 =item Missing argument in %s
2596 (W uninitialized) A printf-type format required more arguments than were
2599 =item Missing argument to -%c
2601 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2602 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2604 =item Missing braces on \N{}
2606 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2607 double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space (or
2608 comment) between the C<\N> and the C<{> in a regex with the C</x> modifier.
2609 This modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately follow
2612 =item Missing braces on \o{}
2614 (F) A C<\o> must be followed immediately by a C<{> in double-quotish context.
2616 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2618 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2619 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2621 =item Missing command in piped open
2623 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2624 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2627 =item Missing control char name in \c
2629 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2632 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2634 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2635 they have a name with which they can be found.
2637 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2639 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2640 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2641 can vary from one line to the next.
2643 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2645 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2646 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2648 =item Missing right brace on %s
2650 (F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}>, C<\P{...}>, or C<\N{...}>.
2652 =item Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N
2655 C<\N> has two meanings.
2657 The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed
2658 in braces, meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that name.
2659 Thus C<\N{ASTERISK}> is another way of writing C<*>, valid in both
2660 double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns, it doesn't
2661 have the meaning an unescaped C<*> does.
2663 Starting in Perl 5.12.0, C<\N> also can have an additional meaning (only) in
2664 patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short for
2665 C<[^\n]>, and like C<.> but is not affected by the C</s> regex modifier.)
2667 This can lead to some ambiguities. When C<\N> is not followed immediately by a
2668 left brace, Perl assumes the C<[^\n]> meaning. Also, if
2669 the braces form a valid quantifier such as C<\N{3}> or C<\N{5,}>, Perl assumes
2670 that this means to match the given quantity of non-newlines (in these examples,
2671 3; and 5 or more, respectively). In all other case, where there is a C<\N{>
2672 and a matching C<}>, Perl assumes that a character name is desired.
2674 However, if there is no matching C<}>, Perl doesn't know if it was mistakenly
2675 omitted, or if C<[^\n]{> was desired, and
2676 raises this error. If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant
2677 the latter, escape the brace with a backslash, like so: C<\N\{>
2679 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2681 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2682 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2685 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2687 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2688 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2689 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2691 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2693 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2694 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2695 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2697 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2700 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2702 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2703 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2706 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2707 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
2710 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2712 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2713 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2716 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2718 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2719 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2721 =item Module name must be constant
2723 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2725 =item Module name required with -%c option
2727 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2728 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2729 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2731 =item More than one argument to '%s' open
2733 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2734 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2735 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2736 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2738 =item msg%s not implemented
2740 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2742 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2744 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2745 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2747 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
2749 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
2750 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
2751 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2753 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2755 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2758 =item "%s" variable %s can't be in a package
2760 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2761 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2762 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2764 =item \N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...}
2766 (F) The new (5.12) meaning of C<\N> as C<[^\n]> is not valid in a bracketed
2767 character class, for the same reason that C<.> in a character class loses its
2768 specialness: it matches almost everything, which is probably not what you want.
2770 =item \N{NAME} must be resolved by the lexer
2772 (F) When compiling a regex pattern, an unresolved named character or sequence
2773 was encountered. This can happen in any of several ways that bypass the lexer,
2774 such as using single-quotish context, or an extra backslash in double quotish:
2776 $re = '\N{SPACE}'; # Wrong!
2777 $re = "\\N{SPACE}"; # Wrong!
2780 Instead, use double-quotes with a single backslash:
2782 $re = "\N{SPACE}"; # ok
2785 The lexer can be bypassed as well by creating the pattern from smaller
2789 /${re}{SPACE}/; # Wrong!
2791 It's not a good idea to split a construct in the middle like this, and it
2792 doesn't work here. Instead use the solution above.
2794 Finally, the message also can happen under the C</x> regex modifier when the
2795 C<\N> is separated by spaces from the C<{>, in which case, remove the spaces.
2797 /\N {SPACE}/x; # Wrong!
2800 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2802 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2803 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2804 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2805 provided for this purpose.
2807 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
2808 %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
2809 the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
2810 will not trigger this warning.
2812 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
2814 (F) The character constant represented by C<...> is not a valid hexadecimal
2815 number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use a character other than 0 - 9
2816 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
2818 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
2820 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
2821 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2823 =item Negative length
2825 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2826 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2828 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
2830 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
2831 greater than or equal to zero.
2833 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2835 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
2836 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
2837 expression about where the problem was discovered.
2839 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2840 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
2842 =item %s never introduced
2844 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2845 scope before it could possibly have been used.
2847 =item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
2849 (F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
2850 real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
2853 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
2855 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2856 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2857 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2858 securable. See L<perlsec>.
2860 =item No comma allowed after %s
2862 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2863 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2864 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2866 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2867 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2868 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2869 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2870 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
2871 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2872 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2873 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2874 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2875 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2876 this error was triggered?
2878 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
2880 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2881 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2882 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
2884 =item No DB::DB routine defined
2886 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2887 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2888 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
2891 =item No dbm on this machine
2893 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
2894 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
2896 =item No DB::sub routine defined
2898 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2899 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2900 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
2901 of each ordinary subroutine call.
2903 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
2905 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
2907 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2909 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2910 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2911 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2913 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
2915 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
2916 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2918 =item No input file after < on command line
2920 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2921 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2922 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2926 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2927 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2929 =item No next::method '%s' found for %s
2931 (F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
2932 in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
2933 it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
2934 or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
2936 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2938 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2939 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2941 =item No output file after > on command line
2943 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2944 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2945 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2947 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2949 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2950 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2951 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2953 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2955 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2956 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2957 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2959 =item No Perl script found in input
2961 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2962 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2964 =item No setregid available
2966 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2969 =item No setreuid available
2971 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2974 =item No %s specified for -%c
2976 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2977 you haven't specified one.
2978 =item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2980 (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed variable
2981 but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type. The indicated
2982 package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the L<fields> pragma.
2984 =item No such class %s
2986 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state" declaration, but
2987 this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
2989 =item No such hook: %s
2991 (F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl. Currently, Perl
2992 accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks
2994 =item No such pipe open
2996 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2997 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2998 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
3000 =item No such signal: SIG%s
3002 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
3003 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
3004 names on your system.
3006 =item Not a CODE reference
3008 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3009 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3010 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3013 =item Not a format reference
3015 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
3016 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
3018 =item Not a GLOB reference
3020 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
3021 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
3022 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
3023 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3025 =item Not a HASH reference
3027 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
3028 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
3029 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3031 =item Not an ARRAY reference
3033 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
3034 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3035 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3037 =item Not a perl script
3039 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
3040 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
3043 =item Not a SCALAR reference
3045 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
3046 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3047 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3049 =item Not a subroutine reference
3051 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3052 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3053 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3056 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
3058 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
3059 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
3061 =item Not enough arguments for %s
3063 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
3065 =item Not enough format arguments
3067 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
3068 supplied. See L<perlform>.
3072 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3073 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3076 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
3078 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
3079 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
3080 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
3081 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
3082 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
3084 =item Non-octal character '%c'. Resolved as "%s"
3086 (W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character was unexpectedly
3087 encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value is as indicated.
3089 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
3091 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
3092 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
3093 select. See L<perlfunc/select>
3095 =item Null filename used
3097 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
3098 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
3100 =item NULL OP IN RUN
3102 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
3105 =item Null picture in formline
3107 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
3108 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
3109 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
3113 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
3115 =item NULL regexp argument
3117 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
3119 =item NULL regexp parameter
3121 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
3123 =item Number too long
3125 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
3126 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
3127 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
3128 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
3131 =item Number with no digits
3133 (F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like a number.
3134 This happens, for example with C<\o{}>, with no number between the braces.
3136 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
3138 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
3139 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
3142 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
3144 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
3145 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
3146 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
3148 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
3150 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
3152 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
3153 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
3155 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
3157 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3158 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3160 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
3162 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3163 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3165 =item Offset outside string
3167 (F|W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
3168 with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
3169 imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
3170 take place when going past the end of the string when either
3171 C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
3172 for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
3175 =item %s() on unopened %s
3177 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
3178 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
3179 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
3181 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
3183 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
3184 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3188 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3192 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3194 =item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
3196 (W io, deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
3197 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
3198 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3201 =item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
3203 (W io, deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
3204 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
3205 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3208 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
3210 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
3211 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
3212 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
3213 C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
3215 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
3217 (W) You performed an operation requiring Unicode semantics on a Unicode
3218 surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use of surrogates for anything but
3219 storing strings in UTF-16, but semantics are (reluctantly) defined for
3220 the surrogates, and they are to do nothing for this operation. Because
3221 the use of surrogates can be dangerous, Perl warns.
3223 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3224 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3226 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3227 C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
3229 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for non-Unicode code point 0x%X
3231 (W) You performed an operation requiring Unicode semantics on a code
3232 point that is not in Unicode, so what it should do is not defined. Perl
3233 has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn you.
3235 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3236 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3238 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3239 C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
3241 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
3243 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
3244 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
3245 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
3246 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
3249 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
3251 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
3252 in the current lexical scope.
3254 =item Out of memory!
3256 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3257 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
3258 no option but to exit immediately.
3260 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
3261 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
3262 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
3263 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
3264 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
3266 =item Out of memory during %s extend
3268 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
3269 the largest possible memory allocation.
3271 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
3273 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3274 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
3275 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
3276 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
3278 =item Out of memory during request for %s
3280 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
3281 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
3284 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
3285 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
3286 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
3287 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
3288 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
3289 where the failed request happened.
3291 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
3293 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
3294 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
3295 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
3297 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
3299 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
3300 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
3303 =item '.' outside of string in pack
3305 (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
3306 position to before the start of the packed string being built.
3308 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
3310 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3311 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3313 =item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
3315 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3316 the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
3317 UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3319 =item Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
3321 (F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was dereferenced,
3322 but the overloaded operation did not return a reference. See
3325 =item Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
3327 (F) An object with a C<qr> overload was used as part of a match, but the
3328 overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See L<overload>.
3330 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
3332 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
3333 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
3334 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
3335 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
3337 =item \p{} uses Unicode rules, not locale rules
3339 (W) You compiled a regular expression that contained a Unicode property
3340 match (C<\p> or C<\P>), but the regular expression is also being told to
3341 use the run-time locale, not Unicode. Instead, use a POSIX character
3342 class, which should know about the locale's rules.
3343 (See L<perlrecharclass/POSIX Character Classes>.)
3345 Even if the run-time locale is ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), which is a subset of
3346 Unicode, some properties will give results that are not valid for that
3349 Here are a couple of examples to help you see what's going on. If the
3350 locale is ISO 8859-7, the character at code point 0xD7 is the "GREEK
3351 CAPITAL LETTER CHI". But in Unicode that code point means the
3352 "MULTIPLICATION SIGN" instead, and C<\p> always uses the Unicode
3353 meaning. That means that C<\p{Alpha}> won't match, but C<[[:alpha:]]>
3354 should. Only in the Latin1 locale are all the characters in the same
3355 positions as they are in Unicode. But, even here, some properties give
3356 incorrect results. An example is C<\p{Changes_When_Uppercased}> which
3357 is true for "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS", but since the upper
3358 case of that character is not in Latin1, in that locale it doesn't
3359 change when upper cased.
3361 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
3363 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3364 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3368 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
3369 page. See L<perlform>.
3373 (P) An internal error.
3375 =item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
3377 (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
3378 an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
3379 platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
3380 enter this branch on this platform.
3382 =item panic: ck_grep
3384 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
3386 =item panic: ck_split
3388 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
3390 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
3392 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
3393 there are in the savestack.
3395 =item panic: del_backref
3397 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
3400 =item panic: Devel::DProf inconsistent subroutine return
3402 (P) Devel::DProf called a subroutine that exited using goto(LABEL),
3403 last(LABEL) or next(LABEL). Leaving that way a subroutine called from
3404 an XSUB will lead very probably to a crash of the interpreter. This is
3405 a bug that will hopefully one day get fixed.
3409 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
3410 it wasn't an eval context.
3412 =item panic: do_subst
3414 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
3417 =item panic: do_trans_%s
3419 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
3422 =item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
3424 (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
3429 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
3433 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
3434 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
3436 =item panic: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
3438 (P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries tried
3439 repeatedly, but each time something re-created entries in the glob. Most
3440 likely the glob contains an object with a reference back to the glob and a
3441 destructor that adds a new object to the glob.
3443 =item panic: hfreeentries failed to free hash
3445 (P) The internal routine used to clear a hash's entries tried repeatedly,
3446 but each time something added more entries to the hash. Most likely the hash
3447 contains an object with a reference back to the hash and a destructor that
3448 adds a new object to the hash.
3450 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
3452 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
3454 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
3456 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
3458 =item panic: kid popen errno read
3460 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
3464 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
3465 it wasn't a block context.
3467 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
3469 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
3472 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
3474 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
3475 invalid enum on the top of it.
3477 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
3479 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
3480 references to an object.
3484 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
3486 =item panic: memory wrap
3488 (P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
3490 =item panic: pad_alloc
3492 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3493 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3495 =item panic: pad_free curpad
3497 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3498 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3500 =item panic: pad_free po
3502 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3504 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
3506 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3507 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3509 =item panic: pad_sv po
3511 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3513 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
3515 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3516 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3518 =item panic: pad_swipe po
3520 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3522 =item panic: pp_iter
3524 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
3526 =item panic: pp_match%s
3528 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
3531 =item panic: pp_split
3533 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
3535 =item panic: realloc
3537 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
3539 =item panic: restartop
3541 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
3542 didn't supply the destination.
3546 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
3547 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
3549 =item panic: scan_num
3551 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
3553 =item panic: sv_chop %s
3555 (P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the
3556 scalar's string buffer.
3558 =item panic: sv_insert
3560 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
3563 =item panic: top_env
3565 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
3567 =item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
3569 (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't permitted
3572 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
3574 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
3575 to even) byte length.
3577 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
3579 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an odd (as opposed
3580 to even) byte length.
3584 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
3586 =item Parsing code internal error (%s)
3588 (F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API in
3591 =item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3593 (F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
3594 consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before the
3595 nesting limit is exceeded.
3597 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3600 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
3602 (W parenthesis) You said something like
3608 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
3610 Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
3612 =item C<-p> destination: %s
3614 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
3615 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
3616 redirected it with select().)
3618 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
3620 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3621 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
3622 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
3624 =item Perl_my_%s() not available
3626 (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
3627 so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
3628 conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
3629 '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3631 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
3633 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
3634 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
3635 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
3637 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3639 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3640 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
3642 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
3644 See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
3646 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3648 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3650 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3651 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3654 are supported and installed on your system.
3655 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3657 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3658 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3659 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
3660 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
3661 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
3662 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
3663 Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before you really fix
3664 the problem, however, you will get the same error message each time
3665 you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
3666 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3668 =item pid %x not a child
3670 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
3671 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
3672 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
3674 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
3676 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
3678 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3680 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
3681 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
3682 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
3683 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
3684 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
3686 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
3688 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
3689 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
3691 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3693 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
3694 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
3695 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
3696 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
3697 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3698 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3700 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3702 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
3703 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
3704 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
3705 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
3706 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3707 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3709 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3711 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
3712 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
3713 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
3714 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
3715 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3716 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3718 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
3720 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
3721 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
3722 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
3723 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
3725 You probably wrote something like this:
3732 when you should have written this:
3739 If you really want comments, build your list the
3740 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
3744 'b', # another comment
3747 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
3749 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
3750 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
3751 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
3754 You probably wrote something like this:
3758 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
3759 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
3763 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
3765 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
3766 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
3767 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
3768 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
3770 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
3772 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
3773 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
3775 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
3777 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
3778 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
3779 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
3780 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
3782 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
3784 (W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
3785 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
3786 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
3787 to the array you apparently lost track of.
3789 =item Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
3791 (W ambiguous) You said something like C<m/$\/> in a regex.
3792 The regex C<m/foo$\s+bar/m> translates to: match the word 'foo', the output
3793 record separator (see L<perlvar/$\>) and the letter 's' (one time or more)
3794 followed by the word 'bar'.
3796 If this is what you intended then you can silence the warning by using
3797 C<m/${\}/> (for example: C<m/foo${\}s+bar/>).
3799 If instead you intended to match the word 'foo' at the end of the line
3800 followed by whitespace and the word 'bar' on the next line then you can use
3801 C<m/$(?)\/> (for example: C<m/foo$(?)\s+bar/>).
3803 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
3805 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
3809 is now misinterpreted as
3813 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
3814 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
3815 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
3818 =item Premature end of script headers
3822 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
3824 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3825 before now. Check your control flow.
3827 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
3829 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
3830 before now. Check your control flow.
3832 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3834 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3835 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3836 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3837 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
3840 =item Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
3842 (W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is useless,
3843 since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments.
3845 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
3847 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
3848 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
3850 =item Prototype not terminated
3852 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
3855 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3857 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
3858 meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3859 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3861 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3863 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
3864 {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
3865 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3867 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3869 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
3870 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
3871 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
3872 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
3873 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
3875 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3878 =item Range iterator outside integer range
3880 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
3881 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
3882 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
3883 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
3885 =item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
3887 (W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
3888 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
3890 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
3892 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
3893 before now. Check your control flow.
3895 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
3897 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
3899 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
3901 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
3903 =item Reallocation too large: %x
3905 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
3907 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
3909 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
3912 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
3914 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
3915 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
3916 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
3918 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
3920 (F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, Perl
3921 believes it found an infinite loop in the C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a
3922 crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth.
3924 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
3926 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking
3927 a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance
3930 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
3932 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
3933 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
3934 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
3935 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
3937 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
3938 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
3939 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
3940 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
3942 =item Reference is already weak
3944 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
3945 Doing so has no effect.
3947 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
3949 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
3950 a reference count of other than 1.
3952 =item Reference to invalid group 0
3954 (F) You used C<\g0> or similar in a regular expression. You may refer to
3955 capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers (normal
3956 backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
3957 backreferences), but using 0 does not make sense.
3959 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3961 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
3962 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If you
3963 wanted to have the character with ordinal 7 inserted into the regular expression,
3964 prepend zeroes to make it three digits long: C<\007>
3966 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3969 =item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3971 (F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there are
3972 not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the expression before
3973 where the C<\g{-7}> was located.
3975 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3978 =item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3980 (F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k<NAME> >> in your regular
3981 expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses such
3982 as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<(?<NAME>...). Check if the name has been spelled
3983 correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
3985 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3988 =item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3990 (F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
3991 most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
3992 of the C<....> part.
3994 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3997 =item regexp memory corruption
3999 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
4000 expression compiler gave it.
4002 =item Regexp out of space
4004 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
4007 =item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompatible)
4009 (F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
4010 numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
4011 terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
4013 =item Replacement list is longer than search list
4015 (W misc) You have used a replacement list that is longer than the
4016 search list. So the additional elements in the replacement list
4019 =item Reversed %s= operator
4021 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
4022 always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
4024 =item rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4026 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either closed or not
4027 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4029 =item Scalars leaked: %d
4031 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
4032 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
4033 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
4034 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
4036 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
4038 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
4039 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
4040 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
4041 behaves 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 array
4047 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
4048 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4051 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
4053 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
4054 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
4055 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
4056 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4057 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4058 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4059 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4061 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
4062 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
4063 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4066 =item Search pattern not terminated
4068 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
4069 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4070 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
4072 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
4073 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
4074 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
4075 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
4077 =item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
4079 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
4082 The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
4083 C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
4084 parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
4085 the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
4087 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
4089 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
4090 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
4092 =item seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4094 (W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed or not
4095 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4097 =item select not implemented
4099 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
4101 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
4103 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
4104 the current implementation.
4106 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
4108 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
4109 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
4111 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
4113 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
4114 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
4116 =item sem%s not implemented
4118 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
4120 =item send() on closed socket %s
4122 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
4123 before now. Check your control flow.
4125 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4127 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <-- HERE
4128 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4131 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4133 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
4134 has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4135 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4137 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4139 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
4140 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4141 discovered. This happens when using the C<(?^...)> construct to tell
4142 Perl to use the default regular expression modifiers, and you
4143 redundantly specify a default modifier; or having a modifier that can't
4144 be turned off (such as C<"p"> or C<"l">) after a minus; or specifying
4145 more than one of the C<"d">, C<"l">, or C<"u"> modifiers. For other
4146 causes, see L<perlre>.
4148 =item Sequence \%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4150 (F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument following the escape
4151 sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly written.
4153 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4155 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
4156 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
4157 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4160 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4162 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains braces, they must balance
4163 for Perl to properly detect the end of the clause. The <-- HERE shows in
4164 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4167 =item "500 Server error"
4173 (A) This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
4174 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
4175 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
4176 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
4177 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
4178 produce a valid header".
4180 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
4182 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
4183 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
4184 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
4185 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
4186 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
4187 Please see the following for more information:
4189 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
4190 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
4191 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
4193 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
4195 =item setegid() not implemented
4197 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
4198 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4201 =item seteuid() not implemented
4203 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
4204 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4207 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
4209 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
4210 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
4213 =item setrgid() not implemented
4215 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
4216 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4219 =item setruid() not implemented
4221 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
4222 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4225 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
4227 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
4228 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
4229 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
4231 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
4233 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the
4234 world, because the world might have written on it already.
4236 =item Setuid script not plain file
4238 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that isn't read from a file,
4239 but from a socket, a pipe or another device.
4241 =item shm%s not implemented
4243 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
4245 =item !=~ should be !~
4247 (W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
4248 interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
4249 operators: probably not what you intended.
4251 =item <> should be quotes
4253 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
4256 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
4258 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
4259 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
4260 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
4261 probably not what you had in mind.
4263 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
4265 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
4268 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
4270 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
4271 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
4273 =item Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks encapsulation
4275 (F) You should not use the C<~~> operator on an object that does not
4276 overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's underlying structure for
4279 =item sort is now a reserved word
4281 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
4282 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
4284 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
4286 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
4287 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4289 =item splice() offset past end of array
4291 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
4292 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the end
4293 of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want, try
4294 explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset. See
4299 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
4300 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
4301 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
4303 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
4305 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
4306 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
4307 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
4308 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
4311 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
4313 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
4314 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4316 =item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
4318 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
4319 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
4320 C<can> may break this.
4322 =item Subroutine %s redefined
4324 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
4327 no warnings 'redefine';
4328 eval "sub name { ... }";
4331 =item Substitution loop
4333 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
4334 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
4335 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
4336 L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
4338 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
4340 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4341 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4342 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4344 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
4346 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4347 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4348 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4350 =item substr outside of string
4352 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
4353 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
4354 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
4355 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
4356 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
4358 =item sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
4360 (P) Perl tried to force the upgrade an SV to a type which was actually
4361 inferior to its current type.
4363 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4365 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
4366 branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
4367 contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
4368 clustering parentheses:
4370 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
4372 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4373 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4375 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4377 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is a
4378 number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
4379 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4381 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
4383 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
4384 and effective uids or gids.
4388 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
4392 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
4394 A keyword is misspelled.
4395 A semicolon is missing.
4397 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
4398 An opening or closing brace is missing.
4399 A closing quote is missing.
4401 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
4402 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
4403 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
4404 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
4405 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
4406 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
4407 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
4408 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
4409 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
4412 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
4414 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
4415 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
4418 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
4420 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
4421 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
4422 or "my $var" or "our $var".
4424 =item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
4426 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4428 =item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
4430 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4432 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
4434 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
4435 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
4436 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
4437 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
4439 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
4441 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4442 before now. Check your control flow.
4444 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
4446 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
4447 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
4449 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
4451 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
4452 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
4454 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
4456 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
4457 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4459 =item telldir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4461 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to telldir() is either closed or not really
4462 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4464 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
4466 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
4467 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
4476 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
4477 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
4479 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
4481 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
4482 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
4483 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
4484 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
4487 =item The %s function is unimplemented
4489 (F) The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
4490 to the probings of Configure.
4492 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
4494 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
4495 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
4496 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
4499 =item The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
4501 (F) This attribute was never supported on C<my> or C<sub> declarations.
4503 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
4505 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
4507 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
4508 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
4509 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
4510 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
4511 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
4512 target of the change to
4513 %ENV which produced the warning.
4515 =item thread failed to start: %s
4517 (W threads)(S) The entry point function of threads->create() failed for some reason.
4519 =item times not implemented
4521 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
4522 suspect you're not running on Unix.
4524 =item "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
4526 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4527 B<-T> option (or the B<-t> option), but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
4528 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
4529 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
4532 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
4533 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
4534 editing the #! line so that the B<-%c> option is a part of Perl's first
4535 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -%c> to C<perl -%c -n>.
4537 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
4538 B<-%c> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -%c scriptname>.
4540 =item To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
4542 (F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
4543 uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
4544 specified an illegal mapping.
4545 See L<perlunicode/"User-Defined Character Properties">.
4547 =item Too deeply nested ()-groups
4549 (F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level.
4551 =item Too few args to syscall
4553 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
4554 system call to call, silly dilly.
4556 =item Too late for "-%s" option
4558 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4559 B<-M>, B<-m> or B<-C> option.
4561 In the case of B<-M> and B<-m>, this is an error because those options are
4562 not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
4564 The B<-C> option only works if it is specified on the command line as well
4565 (with the same sequence of letters or numbers following). Either specify
4566 this option on the command line, or, if your system supports it, make your
4567 script executable and run it directly instead of passing it to perl.
4569 =item Too late to run %s block
4571 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
4572 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
4573 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
4574 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
4577 =item Too many args to syscall
4579 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
4581 =item Too many arguments for %s
4583 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
4587 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4588 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4592 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4593 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4595 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
4597 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
4598 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
4600 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
4602 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
4603 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
4604 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
4606 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
4608 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][],
4609 y/// or y[][] construct.
4611 =item '%s' trapped by operation mask
4613 (F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's
4614 disallowed. See L<Safe>.
4616 =item truncate not implemented
4618 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
4619 Configure knows about.
4621 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
4623 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
4624 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
4625 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
4626 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
4628 =item Type of argument to %s must be hashref or arrayref
4630 (F) You called C<keys>, C<values> or C<each> with an argument that was
4631 expected to be a reference to a hash or a reference to an array.
4633 =item umask not implemented
4635 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
4636 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
4638 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
4640 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
4642 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
4644 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4645 many execution contexts were entered and left.
4647 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
4649 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4650 many values were temporarily localized.
4652 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
4654 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4655 many blocks were entered and left.
4657 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
4659 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4660 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
4662 =item Undefined format "%s" called
4664 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4665 another package? See L<perlform>.
4667 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
4669 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
4670 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4672 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
4674 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
4675 since been undefined.
4677 =item Undefined subroutine called
4679 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
4680 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
4682 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
4684 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
4685 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4687 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
4689 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4690 another package? See L<perlform>.
4692 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
4694 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
4695 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
4698 =item %s: Undefined variable
4700 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4701 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4703 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
4705 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
4706 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
4708 =item Unicode non-character U+%X is illegal for open interchange
4710 (W utf8) Certain codepoints, such as U+FFFE and U+FFFF, are defined by the
4711 Unicode standard to be non-characters. Those are legal codepoints, but are
4712 reserved for internal use; so, applications shouldn't attempt to exchange
4713 them. If you know what you are doing you can turn
4714 off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4716 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
4718 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
4721 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
4723 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
4724 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
4725 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->, C<< <& >>, C<< >& >>.
4727 =item Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
4729 (W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
4730 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
4731 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
4732 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
4733 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
4734 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
4736 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
4738 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
4739 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
4740 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
4741 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
4743 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
4745 (W) You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
4747 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4749 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
4750 is not known. The condition may be lookahead or lookbehind (the condition
4751 is true if the lookahead or lookbehind is true), a (?{...}) construct (the
4752 condition is true if the code evaluates to a true value), or a number (the
4753 condition is true if the set of capturing parentheses named by the number
4756 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4757 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4759 =item Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
4761 (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4762 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4764 =item Unknown Unicode option value %x
4766 (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4767 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4769 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
4771 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
4772 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
4774 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a module
4775 (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have imported this module
4777 =item Unknown verb pattern '%s' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4779 (F) You either made a typo or have incorrectly put a C<*> quantifier
4780 after an open brace in your pattern. Check the pattern and review
4781 L<perlre> for details on legal verb patterns.
4785 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4787 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
4788 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
4789 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
4790 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4792 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4794 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
4795 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
4796 matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4797 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4799 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
4801 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
4802 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
4803 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
4804 you were last editing.
4806 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
4808 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
4809 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
4810 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
4813 =item Unrecognized character %s; marked by <-- HERE after %s near column %d
4815 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
4816 in your Perl script (or eval) near the specified column. Perhaps you tried
4817 to run a compressed script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
4819 =item Unrecognized escape \%c in character class passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4821 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4822 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
4823 understood literally, but this may change in a future version of Perl.
4824 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4825 escape was discovered.
4827 =item Unrecognized escape \%c passed through
4829 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4830 recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally, but this may
4831 change in a future version of Perl.
4833 =item Unrecognized escape \%c passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4835 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4836 recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally, but this may
4837 change in a future version of Perl.
4838 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4839 escape was discovered.
4841 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
4843 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
4844 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
4847 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
4849 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
4850 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
4851 bad switch on your behalf.)
4853 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
4855 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
4856 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
4857 PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
4859 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
4861 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
4863 =item Unsupported function %s
4865 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
4866 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
4868 =item Unsupported function fork
4870 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
4872 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
4873 of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
4874 changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
4876 =item Unsupported script encoding %s
4878 (F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
4879 declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot read.
4881 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
4883 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
4884 least that's what Configure thought.
4886 =item Unterminated attribute list
4888 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
4889 start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
4890 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
4891 attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
4893 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
4895 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
4896 an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
4897 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
4898 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
4900 =item Unterminated compressed integer
4902 (F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
4903 compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
4904 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4906 =item Unterminated verb pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4908 (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB)> but did not terminate
4909 the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
4911 =item Unterminated verb pattern argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4913 (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB:ARG)> but did not terminate
4914 the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
4916 =item Unterminated \g{...} pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4918 (F) You missed a close brace on a \g{..} pattern (group reference) in
4919 a regular expression. Fix the pattern and retry.
4921 =item Unterminated <> operator
4923 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
4924 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
4925 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
4926 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
4928 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
4930 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
4931 still valid when C<untie> was called.
4933 =item Usage: POSIX::%s(%s)
4935 (F) You called a POSIX function with incorrect arguments.
4936 See L<POSIX/FUNCTIONS> for more information.
4938 =item Usage: Win32::%s(%s)
4940 (F) You called a Win32 function with incorrect arguments.
4941 See L<Win32> for more information.
4943 =item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4945 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
4946 meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
4948 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
4952 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
4954 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4955 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4957 =item Useless localization of %s
4959 (W syntax) The localization of lvalues such as C<local($x=10)> is
4960 legal, but in fact the local() currently has no effect. This may change at
4961 some point in the future, but in the meantime such code is discouraged.
4963 =item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4965 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
4966 meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
4968 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
4972 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
4974 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4975 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4977 =item Useless use of /d modifier in transliteration operator
4979 (W misc) You have used the /d modifier where the searchlist has the
4980 same length as the replacelist. See L<perlop> for more information
4981 about the /d modifier.
4983 =item Useless use of %s in void context
4985 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
4986 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
4987 value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
4988 often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
4989 to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
4990 get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
4995 when you meant to say
4997 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
4999 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
5000 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
5005 when you should have said
5009 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
5010 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
5011 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
5012 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
5013 L<perlref> for more on this.
5015 This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
5016 since they are often used in statements like
5018 1 while sub_with_side_effects();
5020 String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
5023 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
5025 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
5027 =item Useless use of sort in scalar context
5029 (W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
5033 This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
5035 =item Useless use of %s with no values
5037 (W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
5038 apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
5039 usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
5040 possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
5041 if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
5042 you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
5044 =item "use" not allowed in expression
5046 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
5047 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
5049 =item Use of assignment to $[ is deprecated
5051 (D deprecated) The C<$[> variable (index of the first element in an array)
5052 is deprecated. See L<perlvar/"$[">.
5054 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
5056 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted
5057 form if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
5059 =item Use of comma-less variable list is deprecated
5061 (D deprecated) The values you give to a format should be
5062 separated by commas, not just aligned on a line.
5064 =item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
5066 (D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
5067 $ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
5068 behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
5071 Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
5072 blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
5074 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
5076 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution. The /c
5077 modifier is not presently meaningful in substitutions.
5079 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
5081 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't
5082 use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is
5083 used. (This may change in the future.)
5085 =item Use of := for an empty attribute list is not allowed
5087 (F) The construction C<my $x := 42> used to parse as equivalent to
5088 C<my $x : = 42> (applying an empty attribute list to C<$x>).
5089 This construct was deprecated in 5.12.0, and has now been made a syntax
5090 error, so C<:=> can be reclaimed as a new operator in the future.
5092 If you need an empty attribute list, for example in a code generator, add
5093 a space before the C<=>.
5095 =item Use of ?PATTERN? without explicit operator is deprecated
5097 (D deprecated) You have written something like C<?\w?>, for a regular
5098 expression that matches only once. Starting this term directly with
5099 the question mark delimiter is now deprecated, so that the question mark
5100 will be available for use in new operators in the future. Write C<m?\w?>
5101 instead, explicitly using the C<m> operator: the question mark delimiter
5102 still invokes match-once behaviour.
5104 =item Use of freed value in iteration
5106 (F) Perhaps you modified the iterated array within the loop?
5107 This error is typically caused by code like the following:
5110 @a = () for (1,2,@a);
5112 You are not supposed to modify arrays while they are being iterated over.
5113 For speed and efficiency reasons, Perl internally does not do full
5114 reference-counting of iterated items, hence deleting such an item in the
5115 middle of an iteration causes Perl to see a freed value.
5117 =item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
5119 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
5120 to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
5122 =item Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
5124 (W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a C<split>
5125 operator. Since C<split> always tries to match the pattern
5126 repeatedly, the C</g> has no effect.
5128 =item Use of "goto" to jump into a construct is deprecated
5130 (D deprecated) Using C<goto> to jump from an outer scope into an inner
5131 scope is deprecated and should be avoided.
5133 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
5135 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines
5136 are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the
5137 subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g.
5138 C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<<
5141 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
5142 methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
5143 code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
5144 currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
5147 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
5148 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
5149 to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
5150 named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
5153 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
5154 you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
5155 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
5157 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
5159 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
5160 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
5162 =item Use of %s is deprecated
5164 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
5165 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
5166 old way has bad side effects.
5168 =item Use of %s on a handle without * is deprecated
5170 (D deprecated) You used C<tie>, C<tied> or C<untie> on a scalar but that
5171 scalar happens to hold a typeglob, which means its filehandle will
5172 be tied. If you mean to tie a handle, use an explicit * as in
5175 This is a long-standing bug that will be removed in Perl 5.16, as
5176 there is currently no way to tie the scalar itself when it holds
5177 a typeglob, and no way to untie a scalar that has had a typeglob
5180 =item Use of -l on filehandle %s
5182 (W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
5183 it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
5184 The operation returned C<undef>. Use a filename instead.
5186 =item Use of "package" with no arguments is deprecated
5188 (D deprecated) You used the C<package> keyword without specifying a package
5189 name. So no namespace is current at all. Using this can cause many
5190 otherwise reasonable constructs to fail in baffling ways. C<use strict;>
5193 =item Use of qw(...) as parentheses is deprecated
5195 (D deprecated) You have something like C<foreach $x qw(a b c) {...}>,
5196 using a C<qw(...)> list literal where a parenthesised expression is
5197 expected. Historically the parser fooled itself into thinking that
5198 C<qw(...)> literals were always enclosed in parentheses, and as a result
5199 you could sometimes omit parentheses around them. (You could never do
5200 the C<foreach qw(a b c) {...}> that you might have expected, though.)
5201 The parser no longer lies to itself in this way. Wrap the list literal
5202 in parentheses, like C<foreach $x (qw(a b c)) {...}>.
5204 =item Use of reference "%s" as array index
5206 (W misc) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
5207 isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
5208 to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
5210 If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
5211 C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
5212 either, because you can overload the numification and stringification
5213 operators and then you presumably know what you are doing.
5215 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
5217 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
5218 versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
5219 explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
5220 use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
5221 suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
5222 a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
5224 =item Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
5226 (W taint, deprecated) You have supplied C<system()> or C<exec()> with multiple
5227 arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used to be allowed
5228 but will become a fatal error in a future version of perl. Untaint your
5229 arguments. See L<perlsec>.
5231 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
5233 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
5234 defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
5235 To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
5237 To help you figure out what was undefined, perl will try to tell you the
5238 name of the variable (if any) that was undefined. In some cases it cannot
5239 do this, so it also tells you what operation you used the undefined value
5240 in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your program and the operation
5241 displayed in the warning may not necessarily appear literally in your
5242 program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is usually optimized into C<"that "
5243 . $foo>, and the warning will refer to the C<concatenation (.)> operator,
5244 even though there is no C<.> in your program.
5246 =item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
5248 (D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
5249 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
5250 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will
5251 be removed in a future version.
5253 =item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
5255 (D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
5256 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
5257 allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will be
5258 removed in a future version.
5260 =item Using !~ with %s doesn't make sense
5262 (F) Using the C<!~> operator with C<s///r>, C<tr///r> or C<y///r> is
5263 currently reserved for future use, as the exact behaviour has not
5264 been decided. (Simply returning the boolean opposite of the
5265 modified string is usually not particularly useful.)
5267 =item Using just the first character returned by \N{} in character class
5269 (W) A charnames handler may return a sequence of more than one character.
5270 Currently all but the first one are discarded when used in a regular
5271 expression pattern bracketed character class.
5273 =item Using just the first characters returned by \N{}
5275 (W) A charnames handler may return a sequence of characters. There is a finite
5276 limit as to the number of characters that can be used, which this sequence
5277 exceeded. In the message, the characters in the sequence are separated by
5278 dots, and each is shown by its ordinal in hex. Anything to the left of the
5279 C<HERE> was retained; anything to the right was discarded.
5281 =item Unicode surrogate U+%X is illegal in UTF-8
5283 =item UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
5285 (W utf8) You had a UTF-16 surrogate in a context where they are
5286 not considered acceptable. These code points, between U+D800 and
5287 U+DFFF (inclusive), are used by Unicode only for UTF-16. However, Perl
5288 internally allows all unsigned integer code points (up to the size limit
5289 available on your platform), including surrogates. But these can cause
5290 problems when being input or output, which is likely where this message
5291 came from. If you really really know what you are doing you can turn
5292 off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
5294 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
5296 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
5297 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
5298 can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
5299 false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
5300 constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
5301 C<defined> operator.
5303 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
5305 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
5306 %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
5307 longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
5310 =item Variable "%s" is not available
5312 (W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is
5313 attempting to capture an outer lexical that is not currently available.
5314 This can happen for one of two reasons. First, the outer lexical may be
5315 declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that has not yet been created.
5316 (Remember that named subs are created at compile time, while anonymous
5317 subs are created at run-time.) For example,
5319 sub { my $a; sub f { $a } }
5321 At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current value of $a,
5322 since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely,
5323 the following won't give a warning since the anonymous subroutine has by
5324 now been created and is live:
5326 sub { my $a; eval 'sub f { $a }' }->();
5328 The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a variable that has
5329 gone out of scope, for example,
5337 Here, when the '$a' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not currently being
5338 executed, so its $a is not available for capture.
5340 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
5342 (W misc) With "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
5343 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
5344 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
5345 that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
5346 front of your variable.
5348 =item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in m/%s/
5350 (F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
5351 known at compile time. See L<perlre>.
5353 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
5355 (W misc) A "my", "our" or "state" variable has been redeclared in the current
5356 scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the previous
5357 instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note that the
5358 earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope or until
5359 all closure referents to it are destroyed.
5361 =item Variable syntax
5363 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
5364 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
5367 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
5369 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
5370 lexical variable defined in an outer named subroutine.
5372 When the inner subroutine is called, it will see the value of
5373 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
5374 call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
5375 outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
5376 longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
5377 variable will no longer be shared.
5379 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
5380 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
5381 reference variables in outer subroutines are created, they
5382 are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
5384 =item Verb pattern '%s' has a mandatory argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5386 (F) You used a verb pattern that requires an argument. Supply an argument
5387 or check that you are using the right verb.
5389 =item Verb pattern '%s' may not have an argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5391 (F) You used a verb pattern that is not allowed an argument. Remove the
5392 argument or check that you are using the right verb.
5394 =item Version number must be a constant number
5396 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
5397 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
5400 =item Version string '%s' contains invalid data; ignoring: '%s'
5402 (W misc) The version string contains invalid characters at the end, which
5405 =item Warning: something's wrong
5407 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
5408 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
5410 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
5412 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
5413 the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
5416 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
5418 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
5419 looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
5420 term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
5421 function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
5425 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
5429 but in actual fact, you got
5433 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
5435 =item Wide character in %s
5437 (S utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting
5438 one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print). The easiest
5439 way to quiet this warning is simply to add the C<:utf8> layer to the
5440 output, e.g. C<binmode STDOUT, ':utf8'>. Another way to turn off the
5441 warning is to add C<no warnings 'utf8';> but that is often closer to
5442 cheating. In general, you are supposed to explicitly mark the
5443 filehandle with an encoding, see L<open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>.
5445 =item Within []-length '%c' not allowed
5447 (F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by C<[TEMPLATE]> only if
5448 C<TEMPLATE> always matches the same amount of packed bytes that can be
5449 determined from the template alone. This is not possible if it contains an
5450 of the codes @, /, U, u, w or a *-length. Redesign the template.
5452 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
5454 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
5455 before now. Check your control flow.
5457 =item %s "\x%X" does not map to Unicode
5459 (F) When reading in different encodings Perl tries to map everything
5460 into Unicode characters. The bytes you read in are not legal in
5461 this encoding, for example
5463 utf8 "\xE4" does not map to Unicode
5465 if you try to read in the a-diaereses Latin-1 as UTF-8.
5467 =item 'X' outside of string
5469 (F) You had a (un)pack template that specified a relative position before
5470 the beginning of the string being (un)packed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5472 =item 'x' outside of string in unpack
5474 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
5475 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5477 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
5479 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
5480 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
5481 about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
5484 =item You need to quote "%s"
5486 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
5487 Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
5488 which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
5489 assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
5490 what you want, put an & in front.)
5492 =item Your random numbers are not that random
5494 (F) When trying to initialise the random seed for hashes, Perl could
5495 not get any randomness out of your system. This usually indicates
5496 Something Very Wrong.
5502 L<warnings>, L<perllexwarn>.