3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (enabled by default).
12 (S) A severe warning (enabled by default).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
19 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
21 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
22 category is included with the classification letter in the description
23 below. E.g. C<(W closed)> means a warning in the C<closed> category.
25 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
26 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Severe warnings are always enabled, unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %x
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '%c' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only
60 after certain types. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
76 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
79 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
81 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
82 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
83 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
84 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
86 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
88 (S ambiguous) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
89 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
90 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
92 =item Ambiguous use of %c resolved as operator %c
94 (S ambiguous) C<%>, C<&>, and C<*> are both infix operators (modulus,
95 bitwise and, and multiplication) I<and> initial special characters
96 (denoting hashes, subroutines and typeglobs), and you said something
97 like C<*foo * foo> that might be interpreted as either of them. We
98 assumed you meant the infix operator, but please try to make it more
99 clear -- in the example given, you might write C<*foo * foo()> if you
100 really meant to multiply a glob by the result of calling a function.
102 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s} resolved to %c%s
104 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<@{foo}>, which might be
105 asking for the variable C<@foo>, or it might be calling a function
106 named foo, and dereferencing it as an array reference. If you wanted
107 the variable, you can just write C<@foo>. If you wanted to call the
108 function, write C<@{foo()}> ... or you could just not have a variable
109 and a function with the same name, and save yourself a lot of trouble.
111 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s[...]} resolved to %c%s[...]
113 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s{...}} resolved to %c%s{...}
115 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<${foo[2]}> (where foo represents
116 the name of a Perl keyword), which might be looking for element number
117 2 of the array named C<@foo>, in which case please write C<$foo[2]>, or you
118 might have meant to pass an anonymous arrayref to the function named
119 foo, and then do a scalar deref on the value it returns. If you meant
120 that, write C<${foo([2])}>.
122 In regular expressions, the C<${foo[2]}> syntax is sometimes necessary
123 to disambiguate between array subscripts and character classes.
124 C</$length[2345]/>, for instance, will be interpreted as C<$length> followed
125 by the character class C<[2345]>. If an array subscript is what you
126 want, you can avoid the warning by changing C</${length[2345]}/> to the
127 unsightly C</${\$length[2345]}/>, by renaming your array to something
128 that does not coincide with a built-in keyword, or by simply turning
129 off warnings with C<no warnings 'ambiguous';>.
131 =item Ambiguous use of -%s resolved as -&%s()
133 (S ambiguous) You wrote something like C<-foo>, which might be the
134 string C<"-foo">, or a call to the function C<foo>, negated. If you meant
135 the string, just write C<"-foo">. If you meant the function call,
138 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
140 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
141 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
142 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
144 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
146 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
147 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
148 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
149 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
150 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
152 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
159 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
161 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
162 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
163 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
164 a scalar value (the length of an array, or the population info of a
165 hash) and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
166 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
169 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
171 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
173 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
175 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element or a
176 subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
182 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
184 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
190 or a hash or array slice, such as:
192 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
193 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
195 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
197 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
198 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
201 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
203 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
204 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
205 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
207 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
209 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O
210 system you forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers
211 take care of transforming data between external and internal
212 representations.) Perl stopped parsing the layer list at this
213 point and did not attempt to push this layer. If your program
214 didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the
215 result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
217 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
219 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
220 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
222 =item A sequence of multiple spaces in a charnames alias definition is deprecated
224 (D deprecated) You defined a character name which had multiple space
225 characters in a row. Change them to single spaces. Usually these
226 names are defined in the C<:alias> import argument to C<use charnames>, but
227 they could be defined by a translator installed into C<$^H{charnames}>.
228 See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
230 =item assertion botched: %s
232 (X) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
234 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
236 (X) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
238 =item Assigning non-zero to $[ is no longer possible
240 (F) When the "array_base" feature is disabled (e.g., under C<use v5.16;>)
241 the special variable C<$[>, which is deprecated, is now a fixed zero value.
243 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
245 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
246 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
247 know which context to supply to the right side.
249 =item A thread exited while %d threads were running
251 (W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily
252 the main thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
253 Usually it's a good idea first to collect the return values of the
254 created threads by joining them, and only then to exit from the main
255 thread. See L<threads>.
257 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
259 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
260 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
262 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
264 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
265 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
266 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
272 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
274 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
275 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
278 bless $self, "$proto";
280 =item Attempt to clear deleted array
282 (S debugging) An array was assigned to when it was being freed.
283 Freed values are not supposed to be visible to Perl code. This
284 can also happen if XS code calls C<av_clear> from a custom magic
285 callback on the array.
287 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
289 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
290 which is not in its key set.
292 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
294 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
295 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
297 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%x
299 (S internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
300 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
301 outside any of those arenas.
303 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string '%s'%s
305 (S internal) Perl maintains a reference-counted internal table of
306 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
307 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
308 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
310 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely: SV 0x%x
312 (S debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
313 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
314 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
315 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
318 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
320 (S internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
322 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar: SV 0x%x
324 (S internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
325 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
326 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
327 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
328 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
329 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
332 =item Attempt to join self
334 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
335 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
336 to move the join() to some other thread.
338 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
340 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
341 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
342 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
343 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
344 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
347 =item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
349 (F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
350 compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
351 unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
354 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
356 (W misc) You tried to set the length of an array which has
357 been freed. You can do this by storing a reference to the
358 scalar representing the last index of an array and later
359 assigning through that reference. For example
361 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
364 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
366 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
367 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
368 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
370 =item Attribute "locked" is deprecated
372 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the
373 "locked" attribute on a code reference. The :locked attribute is
374 obsolete, has had no effect since 5005 threads were removed, and
375 will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
377 =item Attribute "unique" is deprecated
379 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify
380 the "unique" attribute on an array, hash or scalar reference.
381 The :unique attribute has had no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and
382 will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
384 =item av_reify called on tied array
386 (S debugging) This indicates that something went wrong and Perl got I<very>
387 confused about C<@_> or C<@DB::args> being tied.
389 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
391 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
392 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
393 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
394 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
396 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
398 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
399 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
400 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
402 =item Bad filehandle: %s
404 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
405 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
406 open(), or did it in another package.
408 =item Bad free() ignored
410 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
411 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
412 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
414 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
415 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
416 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
420 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
422 =item Badly placed ()'s
424 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
425 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
428 =item Bad name after %s
430 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
431 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
440 $sym = "mypack::$var";
442 =item Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
444 (F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the
447 =item Bad realloc() ignored
449 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that
450 had never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can
451 be disabled by setting the environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
453 =item Bad symbol for array
455 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
456 wasn't a symbol table entry.
458 =item Bad symbol for dirhandle
460 (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
461 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
463 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
465 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
466 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
468 =item Bad symbol for hash
470 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
471 wasn't a symbol table entry.
473 =item Bareword found in conditional
475 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
476 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
477 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
481 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
484 use constant TYPO => 1;
485 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
487 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
489 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
491 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
492 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
493 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
495 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
497 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
498 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
499 you need to predeclare a package?
501 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
503 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
504 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
507 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
509 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
510 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
511 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
512 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
513 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
515 =item \1 better written as $1
517 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
518 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
519 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
520 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
521 there are more than 9 backreferences.
523 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
525 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
526 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
527 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
529 =item bind() on closed socket %s
531 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
532 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
534 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
536 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
537 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
539 =item "\b{" is deprecated; use "\b\{" or "\b[{]" instead in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
541 =item "\B{" is deprecated; use "\B\{" or "\B[{]" instead in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
543 (D deprecated) Use of an unescaped "{" immediately following
544 a C<\b> or C<\B> is now deprecated so as to reserve its use for Perl
545 itself in a future release. You can either precede the brace
546 with a backslash, or enclose it in square brackets; the latter
547 is the way to go if the pattern delimiters are C<{}>.
549 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
551 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
553 =item Bizarre copy of %s
555 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
558 =item Bizarre SvTYPE [%d]
560 (P) When starting a new thread or return values from a thread, Perl
561 encountered an invalid data type.
563 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
565 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
566 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
567 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
569 =item Callback called exit
571 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
572 exited by calling exit.
574 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
576 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
577 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
578 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
579 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
580 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
581 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
582 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
583 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
585 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
587 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
588 compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
589 attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
590 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
592 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
594 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
595 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
597 =item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
599 (F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference
600 in it, then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax.
601 The access triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is
602 no legal conversion from that type of reference to a typeglob.
604 =item Cannot copy to %s
606 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
607 be directly assigned to.
609 =item Cannot find encoding "%s"
611 (S io) You tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to a filehandle,
612 either with open() or binmode().
614 =item Cannot set tied @DB::args
616 (F) C<caller> tried to set C<@DB::args>, but found it tied. Tying C<@DB::args>
617 is not supported. (Before this error was added, it used to crash.)
619 =item Cannot tie unreifiable array
621 (P) You somehow managed to call C<tie> on an array that does not
622 keep a reference count on its arguments and cannot be made to
623 do so. Such arrays are not even supposed to be accessible to
624 Perl code, but are only used internally.
626 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
628 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
629 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
630 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
632 =item Can't bless non-reference value
634 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
635 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
637 =item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
639 (F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
640 a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
642 =item Can't "break" outside a given block
644 (F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
646 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
648 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
649 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
650 like this will reproduce the error:
653 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
654 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
656 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
658 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
659 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
660 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
661 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
663 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
665 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
666 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
667 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
668 Something like this will reproduce the error:
671 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
672 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
674 =item Can't chdir to %s
676 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but F</foo/bar> is not a directory
677 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
679 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
681 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
684 =item Can't coerce %s to %s in %s
686 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
687 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
697 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
699 =item Can't "continue" outside a when block
701 (F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
704 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
706 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
707 quotas or other plumbing problems.
709 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
711 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
712 "state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
714 =item Can't "default" outside a topicalizer
716 (F) You have used a C<default> block that is neither inside a
717 C<foreach> loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is
718 issued on exit from the C<default> block, so you won't get the
719 error if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
721 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
723 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
724 a file in /dev, a FIFO or an uneditable directory. The file was ignored.
726 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
728 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
731 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
733 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
734 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
735 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
737 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
739 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
740 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
741 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
743 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
745 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
746 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
748 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
750 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
751 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
754 =item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
756 (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
757 or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
758 little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
759 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
761 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
763 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
764 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
765 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
766 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
767 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
768 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
773 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
774 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
775 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
777 =item Can't execute %s
779 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
780 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
782 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
784 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
785 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
787 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
789 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
790 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property?
791 See L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
792 for a complete list of available official properties.
794 =item Can't find label %s
796 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
797 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
799 =item Can't find %s on PATH
801 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
804 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
806 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
807 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
808 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
810 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
812 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
813 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
814 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
816 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
818 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
819 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag or there
820 may not be a linebreak after it. A good programmer's editor will have
821 a way to help you find these characters (or lack of characters). See
822 L<perlop> for the full details on here-documents.
824 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
826 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode
827 property (for example C<\p{Lu}> matches all uppercase
828 letters). If you did mean to use a Unicode property, see
829 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
830 for a complete list of available properties. If you didn't
831 mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either by
832 C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, or
837 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
840 =item Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
842 (W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be retried
845 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
847 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
848 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
849 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
850 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
851 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
852 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
853 the access-checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
854 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
855 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
856 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
857 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access-checking routine gave up
858 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access-checking
859 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
860 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
861 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
863 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
865 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
866 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
868 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
870 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
871 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
873 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
875 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
876 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
878 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
880 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
881 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
882 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
883 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
885 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
887 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
890 =item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
892 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
893 comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
894 as the reduce() function in List::Util).
896 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
898 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
899 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
900 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
901 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
903 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
905 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
906 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
907 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
908 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
909 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
910 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
912 =item Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
914 (F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a fatal error to
915 attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise non-numeric
918 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
920 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
921 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
922 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
923 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
924 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
925 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
928 =item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
930 (F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
931 package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
933 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
935 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension.
936 This may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one
937 that is incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known
938 to happen between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your
939 dynamic extension was built against an older version of the library
940 that is installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old
943 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
945 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
946 lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you
947 want to localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with
950 =item Can't localize through a reference
952 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
953 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
954 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
955 that $ref will still be a reference.
957 =item Can't locate %s
959 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be found.
960 Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC, unless
961 the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
962 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the
963 extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
964 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
965 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
967 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
969 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
970 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
971 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
972 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
974 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
976 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
977 for example, F<foo.so> or F<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
978 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
980 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
982 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
983 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
984 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
986 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
988 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
989 doesn't seem to exist.
991 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
993 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
994 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
996 =item Can't make list assignment to %ENV on this system
998 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
1001 =item Can't make loaded symbols global on this platform while loading %s
1003 (S) A module passed the flag 0x01 to DynaLoader::dl_load_file() to request
1004 that symbols from the stated file are made available globally within the
1005 process, but that functionality is not available on this platform. Whilst
1006 the module likely will still work, this may prevent the perl interpreter
1007 from loading other XS-based extensions which need to link directly to
1008 functions defined in the C or XS code in the stated file.
1010 =item Can't modify %s in %s
1012 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
1013 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
1015 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
1017 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
1020 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
1022 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
1023 such. See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1025 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
1027 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
1030 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
1032 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
1033 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1034 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
1035 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1036 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
1037 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
1041 (F) You tried to run a perl built with MAD support with
1042 the PERL_XMLDUMP environment variable set, but the file
1043 named by that variable could not be opened.
1045 =item Can't open %s: %s
1047 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
1048 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
1049 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually
1050 this is because you don't have read permission for a file which
1051 you named on the command line.
1053 (F) You tried to call perl with the B<-e> switch, but F</dev/null> (or
1054 your operating system's equivalent) could not be opened.
1056 =item Can't open a reference
1058 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
1059 using the 3-arg open() syntax:
1063 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
1064 open is not supported.
1066 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
1068 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
1069 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
1070 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
1071 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
1073 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
1075 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1076 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
1077 the command line for writing.
1079 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
1081 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1082 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
1083 command line for reading.
1085 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
1087 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1088 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
1089 the command line for writing.
1091 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
1093 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1094 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
1097 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
1099 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
1101 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
1102 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1103 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1105 =item Can't read CRTL environ
1107 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1108 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1109 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1110 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1113 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1115 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1116 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1117 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1118 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1119 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1120 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1122 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1124 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1125 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1126 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1128 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1130 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1131 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1133 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1135 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1136 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1138 =item Can't reset %ENV on this system
1140 (F) You called C<reset('E')> or similar, which tried to reset
1141 all variables in the current package beginning with "E". In
1142 the main package, that includes %ENV. Resetting %ENV is not
1143 supported on some systems, notably VMS.
1145 =item Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
1147 (F)(P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1148 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1149 package. If the method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1151 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1153 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1154 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1157 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1159 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1160 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1162 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1164 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue
1165 subroutine, but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl
1166 think you meant to return only one value. You probably meant to
1167 write parentheses around the call to the subroutine, which tell
1168 Perl that the call should be in list context.
1170 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1172 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1173 open already. Bizarre.
1175 =item Can't take log of %g
1177 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1178 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1179 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1182 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1184 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1185 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1186 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1188 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1190 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1191 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1192 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1194 =item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1196 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1197 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1198 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1199 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1201 =item Can't use '%c' after -mname
1203 (F) You tried to call perl with the B<-m> switch, but you put something
1204 other than "=" after the module name.
1206 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1208 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1209 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1210 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1212 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1214 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1215 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1217 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1219 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1220 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1222 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1224 (F) The first time the C<%!> hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1225 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1226 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1228 =item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1230 (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1231 byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1232 allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1234 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1236 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1239 =item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1241 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1242 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1243 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1244 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1247 =item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1249 (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1250 that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1251 For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1252 is inside a big-endian group.
1254 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1256 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1257 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1258 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1259 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1262 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1264 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1265 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1266 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1268 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1270 (F) You've told Perl to dereference a string, something which
1271 C<use strict> blocks to prevent it happening accidentally. See
1272 L<perlref/"Symbolic references">. This can be triggered by an C<@> or C<$>
1273 in a double-quoted string immediately before interpolating a variable,
1274 for example in C<"user @$twitter_id">, which says to treat the contents
1275 of C<$twitter_id> as an array reference; use a C<\> to have a literal C<@>
1276 symbol followed by the contents of C<$twitter_id>: C<"user \@$twitter_id">.
1278 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1280 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1281 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1282 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1284 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1286 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1287 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1288 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1289 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1290 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1293 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1295 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1296 references can be weakened.
1298 =item Can't "when" outside a topicalizer
1300 (F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1301 loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1302 from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1303 or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1305 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1307 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1308 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1309 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1311 =item Character following "\c" must be ASCII
1313 (F)(D deprecated, syntax) In C<\cI<X>>, I<X> must be an ASCII character.
1314 It is planned to make this fatal in all instances in Perl v5.20. In
1315 the cases where it isn't fatal, the character this evaluates to is
1316 derived by exclusive or'ing the code point of this character with 0x40.
1318 Note that non-alphabetic ASCII characters are discouraged here as well,
1319 and using non-printable ones will be deprecated starting in v5.18.
1321 =item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1327 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1328 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1329 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1333 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1336 =item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1342 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1343 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1344 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1346 pack("c", $x & 255);
1348 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1351 =item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1353 (W unpack) You tried something like
1355 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1357 where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1358 below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the
1359 value modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1361 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1363 =item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1369 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode
1370 expects all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved
1373 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1375 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1377 (W pack) You tried something like
1379 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1381 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1382 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1383 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1385 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1387 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1389 (W unpack) You tried something like
1391 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1393 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1394 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1395 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1397 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1399 =item "\c{" is deprecated and is more clearly written as ";"
1401 (D deprecated, syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way
1402 to specify non-printable characters. You used it with a "{" which
1403 evaluates to ";", which is printable. It is planned to remove the
1404 ability to specify a semi-colon this way in Perl 5.20. Just use a
1405 semi-colon or a backslash-semi-colon without the "\c".
1407 =item "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"
1409 (W syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way to specify
1410 non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which is better
1411 written as simply itself, perhaps preceded by a backslash for non-word
1414 =item Cloning substitution context is unimplemented
1416 (F) Creating a new thread inside the C<s///> operator is not supported.
1418 =item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1420 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1421 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1423 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1425 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1427 =item Closure prototype called
1429 (F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to an attribute
1430 handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure is created.
1431 This subroutine cannot be called.
1433 =item Code missing after '/'
1435 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be
1436 another template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1438 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, all \p{} matches fail; all \P{} matches
1441 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
1443 (S utf8, non_unicode) You had a code point above the Unicode maximum
1446 Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code points, up
1447 to the limit of what is storable in an unsigned integer on your system,
1448 but these may not be accepted by other languages/systems. At one time,
1449 it was legal in some standards to have code points up to 0x7FFF_FFFF,
1450 but not higher. Code points above 0xFFFF_FFFF require larger than a
1453 None of the Unicode or Perl-defined properties will match a non-Unicode
1454 code point. For example,
1456 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\p{Any}/
1458 will not match, because the code point is not in Unicode. But
1460 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\P{Any}/
1464 This may be counterintuitive at times, as both these fail:
1466 chr(0x110000) =~ /\p{ASCII_Hex_Digit=True}/ # Fails.
1467 chr(0x110000) =~ /\p{ASCII_Hex_Digit=False}/ # Also fails!
1469 and both these succeed:
1471 chr(0x110000) =~ /\P{ASCII_Hex_Digit=True}/ # Succeeds.
1472 chr(0x110000) =~ /\P{ASCII_Hex_Digit=False}/ # Also succeeds!
1474 =item %s: Command not found
1476 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> or another shell
1477 shell instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
1478 into Perl yourself. The #! line at the top of your file could look like
1482 =item Compilation failed in require
1484 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1485 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1486 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1488 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1490 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1491 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1492 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1493 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1494 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1495 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1496 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1497 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1498 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1500 =item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1502 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to
1503 call cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked.
1504 The cond_broadcast() function is used to wake up another thread
1505 that is waiting in a cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't
1506 sent before the other thread has a chance to enter the wait, it
1507 is usual for the signaling thread first to wait for a lock on
1508 variable. This lock attempt will only succeed after the other
1509 thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the lock.
1511 =item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1513 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to
1514 call cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The
1515 cond_signal() function is used to wake up another thread that
1516 is waiting in a cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't
1517 sent before the other thread has a chance to enter the wait, it
1518 is usual for the signaling thread first to wait for a lock on
1519 variable. This lock attempt will only succeed after the other
1520 thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the lock.
1522 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1524 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1525 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1526 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1528 =item Constant(%s): Call to &{$^H{%s}} did not return a defined value
1530 (F) The subroutine registered to handle constant overloading
1531 (see L<overload>) or a custom charnames handler (see
1532 L<charnames/CUSTOM TRANSLATORS>) returned an undefined value.
1534 =item Constant(%s): $^H{%s} is not defined
1536 (F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to define an
1537 overloaded constant. Perhaps you forgot to load the corresponding
1538 L<overload> pragma?.
1540 =item Constant is not %s reference
1542 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1543 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1544 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1545 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1546 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1548 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1550 (W redefine)(S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously
1551 been eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions">
1552 for commentary and workarounds.
1554 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1556 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1557 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1560 =item Constant(%s) unknown
1562 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting
1563 to define an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the
1564 character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you
1565 forgot to load the corresponding L<overload> pragma?.
1567 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1569 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1570 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1572 =item &CORE::%s cannot be called directly
1574 (F) You tried to call a subroutine in the C<CORE::> namespace
1575 with C<&foo> syntax or through a reference. Some subroutines
1576 in this package cannot yet be called that way, but must be
1577 called as barewords. Something like this will work:
1579 BEGIN { *shove = \&CORE::push; }
1580 shove @array, 1,2,3; # pushes on to @array
1582 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1584 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1586 =item Corrupted regexp opcode %d > %d
1588 (P) This is either an error in Perl, or, if you're using
1589 one, your L<custom regular expression engine|perlreapi>. If not the
1590 latter, report the problem through the L<perlbug> utility.
1592 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1594 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1595 expression compiler gave it.
1597 =item corrupted regexp program
1599 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1602 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
1604 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1606 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1608 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1609 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1612 =item Deep recursion on anonymous subroutine
1614 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1616 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1617 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1618 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1619 which case it indicates something else.
1621 This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the F<perl> binary,
1622 setting the C pre-processor macro C<PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN> to the desired value.
1624 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1626 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1627 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1628 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1630 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1632 (D deprecated) C<defined()> is not usually right on hashes and has been
1633 discouraged since 5.004.
1635 Although C<defined %hash> is false on a plain not-yet-used hash, it
1636 becomes true in several non-obvious circumstances, including iterators,
1637 weak references, stash names, even remaining true after C<undef %hash>.
1638 These things make C<defined %hash> fairly useless in practice.
1640 If a check for non-empty is what you wanted then just put it in boolean
1641 context (see L<perldata/Scalar values>):
1647 If you had C<defined %Foo::Bar::QUUX> to check whether such a package
1648 variable exists then that's never really been reliable, and isn't
1649 a good way to enquire about the features of a package, or whether
1653 =item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
1656 (F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
1657 most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
1658 of the C<....> part.
1660 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
1663 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1665 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1666 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1668 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1670 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1671 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1672 that triggers this error.
1674 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1676 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>. There
1677 has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1678 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1679 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1680 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1681 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1682 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1684 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1688 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1690 Beginning with perl 5.9.4, you can also use C<state> variables to have
1691 lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1693 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1695 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1697 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1698 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather
1699 than to create a dangling reference.
1701 =item Did not produce a valid header
1705 =item %s did not return a true value
1707 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1708 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1709 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1710 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1712 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1714 (W misc) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or
1717 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1719 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1720 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1723 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1725 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1726 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1731 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1732 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
1734 =item Document contains no data
1738 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1740 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1741 define a C<$VERSION>.
1743 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1745 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1746 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1748 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1750 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1752 =item do_study: out of memory
1754 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1756 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1758 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1759 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1760 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1761 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1762 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1763 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1764 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1765 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1767 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1769 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1770 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1772 =item dump is not supported
1774 (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1776 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1778 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1781 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1783 (W unpack) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a
1784 type in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1786 =item elseif should be elsif
1788 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks
1789 it's ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1790 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1791 unlikely to be what you want.
1793 =item Empty \%c{} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1795 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1796 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1797 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1799 =item entering effective %s failed
1801 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1802 effective uids or gids failed.
1804 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1806 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1807 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1808 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1810 =item Error converting file specification %s
1812 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1813 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1814 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1815 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1816 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1818 =item Escape literal pattern white space under /x
1820 (D deprecated) You compiled a regular expression pattern with C</x> to
1821 ignore white space, and you used, as a literal, one of the characters
1822 that Perl plans to eventually treat as white space. The character must
1823 be escaped somehow, or it will work differently on a future Perl that
1824 does treat it as white space. The easiest way is to insert a backslash
1825 immediately before it, or to enclose it with square brackets. This
1826 change is to bring Perl into conformance with Unicode recommendations.
1827 Here are the five characters that generate this warning:
1829 U+200E LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK,
1830 U+200F RIGHT-TO-LEFT MARK,
1831 U+2028 LINE SEPARATOR,
1833 U+2029 PARAGRAPH SEPARATOR.
1835 =item Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1837 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1838 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1839 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1841 =item Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
1843 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1844 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1845 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk,
1846 it is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by using the
1847 C<re 'eval'> pragma or by explicitly building the pattern from an
1848 interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval(). See
1849 L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1851 =item Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
1853 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1854 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1855 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1857 =item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
1860 (F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
1861 any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
1863 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
1866 =item Excessively long <> operator
1868 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1869 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1870 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1871 variable and glob that.
1873 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1875 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented on some systems, e.g., Symbian
1876 OS. See L<perlport>.
1878 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
1880 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1882 =item Exiting eval via %s
1884 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1885 goto, or a loop control statement.
1887 =item Exiting format via %s
1889 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1890 goto, or a loop control statement.
1892 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1894 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1895 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1896 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1898 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1900 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1901 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1903 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1905 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1906 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1908 =item Expecting close bracket in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1910 (F) You wrote something like
1914 to denote a capturing group of the form
1915 L<C<(?I<PARNO>)>|perlre/(?PARNO) (?-PARNO) (?+PARNO) (?R) (?0)>,
1916 but omitted the C<")">.
1918 =item Expecting '(?flags:(?[...' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1920 (F) The C<(?[...])> extended character class regular expression construct
1921 only allows character classes (including character class escapes like
1922 C<\d>), operators, and parentheses. The one exception is C<(?flags:...)>
1923 containing at least one flag and exactly one C<(?[...])> construct.
1924 This allows a regular expression containing just C<(?[...])> to be
1925 interpolated. If you see this error message, then you probably
1926 have some other C<(?...)> construct inside your character class. See
1927 L<perlrecharclass/Extended Bracketed Character Classes>.
1929 =item Experimental "%s" subs not enabled
1931 (F) To use lexical subs, you must first enable them:
1933 no warnings 'experimental::lexical_subs';
1934 use feature 'lexical_subs';
1937 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1939 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1940 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1941 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1942 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1944 =item %s: Expression syntax
1946 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1947 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1949 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1951 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
1952 CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
1953 queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
1955 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1957 (W regexp)(F) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1958 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1959 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". In a C<(?[...])>
1960 construct, this is an error, rather than a warning. Consider quoting
1961 the "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression
1962 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1964 =item Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
1966 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1967 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1968 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1969 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1971 =item fcntl is not implemented
1973 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1974 PDP-11 or something?
1976 =item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
1978 (F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
1981 =item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1983 (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string starts with a length indicator
1984 which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1985 a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1986 C<u63> as the format.
1988 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1990 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1991 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1992 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1993 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1995 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1997 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1998 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1999 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with ">". If you intended only to
2000 read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>. Another possibility
2001 is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0 (also known as STDIN) for
2002 output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
2004 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
2006 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
2007 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
2010 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
2012 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
2013 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
2015 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
2017 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
2018 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
2019 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
2022 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
2024 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
2025 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
2026 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
2029 =item Format not terminated
2031 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
2032 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
2034 =item Format %s redefined
2036 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
2039 no warnings 'redefine';
2040 eval "format NAME =...";
2043 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
2053 (or something like that).
2055 =item %s found where operator expected
2057 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
2058 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
2059 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
2060 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
2062 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
2064 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
2066 =item gethostent not implemented
2068 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
2069 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
2072 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
2074 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
2075 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
2077 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
2079 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
2080 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
2082 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
2084 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
2085 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2086 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
2088 =item given is experimental
2090 (S experimental::smartmatch) C<given> depends on smartmatch, which
2091 is experimental, so its behavior may change or even be removed
2092 in any future release of perl. See the explanation under
2093 L<perlsyn/Experimental Details on given and when>.
2095 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
2097 (F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
2098 that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
2099 declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
2100 which package the global variable is in (using "::").
2102 =item glob failed (%s)
2104 (S glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used
2105 for C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
2106 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
2107 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
2108 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell)
2109 is broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables
2110 in config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as
2111 if it were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them
2112 all empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
2113 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
2114 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
2116 =item Glob not terminated
2118 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
2119 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
2120 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
2121 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
2123 =item gmtime(%f) too large
2125 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was larger than
2126 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
2127 date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2128 not-a-number value).
2130 =item gmtime(%f) too small
2132 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was smaller than
2133 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong date.
2135 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
2137 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
2138 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
2140 =item goto must have label
2142 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
2143 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
2145 =item Goto undefined subroutine%s
2147 (F) You tried to call a subroutine with C<goto &sub> syntax, but
2148 the indicated subroutine hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2149 has since been undefined.
2151 =item Group name must start with a non-digit word character in regex; marked by
2154 (F) Group names must follow the rules for perl identifiers, meaning
2155 they must start with a non-digit word character. A common cause of
2156 this error is using (?&0) instead of (?0). See L<perlre>.
2158 =item ()-group starts with a count
2160 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is supposed to follow
2161 something: a template character or a ()-group. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2163 =item %s had compilation errors.
2165 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
2167 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
2169 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
2170 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
2171 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
2173 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
2175 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
2176 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
2178 =item %s has too many errors
2180 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
2181 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
2183 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
2185 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2186 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2187 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2189 =item Identifier too long
2191 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
2192 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
2193 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
2194 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
2196 =item Ignoring zero length \N{} in character class in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2198 (W regexp) Named Unicode character escapes C<(\N{...})> may return a
2199 zero-length sequence. When such an escape is used in a character class
2200 its behaviour is not well defined. Check that the correct escape has
2201 been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
2203 =item Illegal binary digit %s
2205 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
2207 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
2209 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
2210 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
2213 =item Illegal character after '_' in prototype for %s : %s
2215 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2216 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2218 =item Illegal character \%o (carriage return)
2220 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
2221 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
2222 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
2223 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
2224 to your Perl administrator.
2226 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
2228 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2229 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2231 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
2233 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
2234 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
2236 =item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
2238 (F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
2240 =item Illegal division by zero
2242 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
2243 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
2246 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
2248 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
2249 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
2250 number stopped before the illegal character.
2252 =item Illegal modulus zero
2254 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
2255 numbers don't take to this kindly.
2257 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
2259 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
2260 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
2262 =item Illegal octal digit %s
2264 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2266 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
2268 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2269 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
2271 =item Illegal pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2273 (F) You wrote something like
2277 The C<"+"> is valid only when followed by digits, indicating a
2278 capturing group. See
2279 L<C<(?I<PARNO>)>|perlre/(?PARNO) (?-PARNO) (?+PARNO) (?R) (?0)>.
2281 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: -%c
2283 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
2284 following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtw]>.
2286 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
2288 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
2289 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
2290 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
2292 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
2294 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
2295 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
2296 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
2299 =item (in cleanup) %s
2301 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
2302 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
2303 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
2304 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
2305 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
2307 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
2308 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
2310 =item Incomplete expression within '(?[ ])' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2312 (F) There was a syntax error within the C<(?[ ])>. This can happen if the
2313 expression inside the construct was completely empty, or if there are
2314 too many or few operands for the number of operators. Perl is not smart
2315 enough to give you a more precise indication as to what is wrong.
2317 =item Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on
2320 (F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not
2321 C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See the C3
2322 documentation in L<mro> for more information.
2324 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
2326 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
2327 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
2328 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
2330 =item Infinite recursion in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2332 (F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input
2333 text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive patterns
2334 either consume text or fail.
2336 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
2339 =item Initialization of state variables in list context currently forbidden
2341 (F) Currently the implementation of "state" only permits the
2342 initialization of scalar variables in scalar context. Re-write
2343 C<state ($a) = 42> as C<state $a = 42> to change from list to scalar
2344 context. Constructions such as C<state (@a) = foo()> will be
2345 supported in a future perl release.
2347 =item Insecure dependency in %s
2349 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
2350 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
2351 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
2352 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
2353 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
2354 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
2355 L<perlsec> for more information.
2357 =item Insecure directory in %s
2359 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2360 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
2361 the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
2364 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
2366 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2367 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
2368 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
2369 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
2370 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
2372 =item Insecure user-defined property %s
2374 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
2375 expression that contains a call to a user-defined character property
2376 function, i.e. C<\p{IsFoo}> or C<\p{InFoo}>.
2377 See L<perlunicode/User-Defined Character Properties> and L<perlsec>.
2379 =item In '(?...)', splitting the initial '(?' is deprecated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2381 (D regexp, deprecated) The two-character sequence C<"(?"> in
2382 this context in a regular expression pattern should be an
2383 indivisible token, with nothing intervening between the C<"(">
2384 and the C<"?">, but you separated them. Due to an accident of
2385 implementation, this prohibition was not enforced, but we do
2386 plan to forbid it in a future Perl version. This message
2387 serves as giving you fair warning of this pending change.
2389 =item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2391 (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2392 or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2393 integers for your architecture.
2395 =item Integer overflow in %s number
2397 (S overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2398 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2399 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2400 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2401 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
2402 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2403 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2404 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2407 =item Integer overflow in srand
2409 (S overflow) The number you have passed to srand is too big to fit
2410 in your architecture's integer representation. The number has been
2411 replaced with the largest integer supported (0xFFFFFFFF on 32-bit
2412 architectures). This means you may be getting less randomness than
2413 you expect, because different random seeds above the maximum will
2414 return the same sequence of random numbers.
2416 =item Integer overflow in version
2418 =item Integer overflow in version %d
2420 (W overflow) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for
2421 the size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
2422 because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use an
2423 element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by trying
2424 to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like 100/9.
2426 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2428 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
2429 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
2432 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2434 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2435 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2436 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2437 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2438 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2439 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
2441 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2443 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2444 <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
2447 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
2449 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
2450 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
2451 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
2452 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
2454 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2456 (F) The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2457 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2459 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2461 (F) The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2462 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2464 =item Invalid character in charnames alias definition; marked by <-- HERE in '%s
2466 (F) You tried to create a custom alias for a character name, with
2467 the C<:alias> option to C<use charnames> and the specified character in
2468 the indicated name isn't valid. See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
2470 =item Invalid character in \N{...}; marked by <-- HERE in \N{%s}
2472 (F) Only certain characters are valid for character names. The
2473 indicated one isn't. See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
2475 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2477 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2478 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
2480 =item Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
2483 (W regexp) The numeric escape (for example C<\xHH>) of value < 256
2484 didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion
2485 from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma.
2486 The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD) instead.
2487 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
2488 escape was discovered.
2490 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
2492 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
2495 (F) The character constant represented by C<...> is not a valid hexadecimal
2496 number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use a character other than
2497 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
2499 =item Invalid module name %s with -%c option: contains single ':'
2501 (F) The module argument to perl's B<-m> and B<-M> command-line options
2502 cannot contain single colons in the module name, but only in the
2503 arguments after "=". In other words, B<-MFoo::Bar=:baz> is ok, but
2504 B<-MFoo:Bar=baz> is not.
2506 =item Invalid mro name: '%s'
2508 (F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")> or C<use mro 'foo'>,
2509 where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO). Currently,
2510 the only valid ones supported are C<dfs> and C<c3>, unless you have loaded
2511 a module that is a MRO plugin. See L<mro> and L<perlmroapi>.
2513 =item Invalid negative number (%s) in chr
2515 (W utf8) You passed a negative number to C<chr>. Negative numbers are
2516 not valid characters numbers, so it return the Unicode replacement
2519 =item invalid option -D%c, use -D'' to see choices
2521 (S debugging) Perl was called with invalid debugger flags. Call perl
2522 with the B<-D> option with no flags to see the list of acceptable values.
2523 See also L<perlrun/-Dletters>.
2525 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2527 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2528 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2529 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2530 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
2531 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2533 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2535 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2536 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2538 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2540 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2541 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2542 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2545 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2547 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other
2548 than a colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2549 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2550 list was terminated too soon.
2552 =item Invalid strict version format (%s)
2554 (F) A version number did not meet the "strict" criteria for versions.
2555 A "strict" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2556 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2557 v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least three components.
2558 The parenthesized text indicates which criteria were not met.
2559 See the L<version> module for more details on allowed version formats.
2561 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2563 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2564 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2566 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2569 =item Invalid version format (%s)
2571 (F) A version number did not meet the "lax" criteria for versions.
2572 A "lax" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2573 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2574 v-string. If the v-string has fewer than three components, it
2575 must have a leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading 'v' is
2576 optional. Both decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a
2577 trailing "alpha" component separated by an underscore character
2578 after a fractional or dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized
2579 text indicates which criteria were not met. See the L<version> module
2580 for more details on allowed version formats.
2582 =item Invalid version object
2584 (F) The internal structure of the version object was invalid.
2585 Perhaps the internals were modified directly in some way or
2586 an arbitrary reference was blessed into the "version" class.
2588 =item In '(*VERB...)', splitting the initial '(*' is deprecated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2590 (D regexp, deprecated) The two-character sequence C<"(*"> in
2591 this context in a regular expression pattern should be an
2592 indivisible token, with nothing intervening between the C<"(">
2593 and the C<"*">, but you separated them. Due to an accident of
2594 implementation, this prohibition was not enforced, but we do
2595 plan to forbid it in a future Perl version. This message
2596 serves as giving you fair warning of this pending change.
2598 =item ioctl is not implemented
2600 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2601 strange for a machine that supports C.
2603 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
2605 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2606 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
2608 =item IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
2610 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2611 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO, Perl must be configured
2614 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2616 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2617 neither as a system call nor an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2619 =item $* is no longer supported
2621 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older
2622 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. In
2623 previous versions of perl the use of C<$*> enabled or disabled multi-line
2624 matching within a string.
2626 Instead of using C<$*> you should use the C</m> (and maybe C</s>) regexp
2627 modifiers. You can enable C</m> for a lexical scope (even a whole file)
2628 with C<use re '/m'>. (In older versions: when C<$*> was set to a true value
2629 then all regular expressions behaved as if they were written using C</m>.)
2631 =item $# is no longer supported
2633 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older
2634 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported. You
2635 should use the printf/sprintf functions instead.
2637 =item '%s' is not a code reference
2639 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of
2640 overload::constant needs to be a code reference. Either
2641 an anonymous subroutine, or a reference to a subroutine.
2643 =item '%s' is not an overloadable type
2645 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2648 =item -i used with no filenames on the command line, reading from STDIN
2650 (S inplace) The C<-i> option was passed on the command line, indicating
2651 that the script is intended to edit files in place, but no files were
2652 given. This is usually a mistake, since editing STDIN in place doesn't
2653 make sense, and can be confusing because it can make perl look like
2654 it is hanging when it is really just trying to read from STDIN. You
2655 should either pass a filename to edit, or remove C<-i> from the command
2656 line. See L<perlrun> for more details.
2658 =item Junk on end of regexp in regex m/%s/
2660 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2662 =item Label not found for "last %s"
2664 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2665 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2668 =item Label not found for "next %s"
2670 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2671 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2674 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
2676 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2677 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2680 =item leaving effective %s failed
2682 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2683 effective uids or gids failed.
2685 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
2687 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2688 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2689 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2691 =item length() used on %s
2693 (W syntax) You used length() on either an array or a hash when you
2694 probably wanted a count of the items.
2696 Array size can be obtained by doing:
2700 The number of items in a hash can be obtained by doing:
2704 =item Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
2706 (F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse
2707 (using L<lex_stuff_pvn|perlapi/lex_stuff_pvn> or similar), but tried to insert a character that
2708 couldn't be part of the current input. This is an inherent pitfall
2709 of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the reasons to avoid it. Where
2710 it is necessary to stuff, stuffing only plain ASCII is recommended.
2712 =item Lexing code internal error (%s)
2714 (F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a
2717 =item listen() on closed socket %s
2719 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2720 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2723 =item List form of piped open not implemented
2725 (F) On some platforms, notably Windows, the three-or-more-arguments
2726 form of C<open> does not support pipes, such as C<open($pipe, '|-', @args)>.
2727 Use the two-argument C<open($pipe, '|prog arg1 arg2...')> form instead.
2729 =item localtime(%f) too large
2731 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was larger
2732 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2733 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2734 not-a-number value).
2736 =item localtime(%f) too small
2738 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was smaller
2739 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2742 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
2744 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2745 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2747 =item Lost precision when %s %f by 1
2749 (W imprecision) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by one
2750 is too large for the underlying floating point representation to store
2751 accurately, hence the target of C<++> or C<--> is unchanged. Perl issues this
2752 warning because it has already switched from integers to floating point
2753 when values are too large for integers, and now even floating point is
2754 insufficient. You may wish to switch to using L<Math::BigInt> explicitly.
2756 =item lstat() on filehandle%s
2758 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2759 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2760 instead on the filehandle.)
2762 =item lvalue attribute %s already-defined subroutine
2764 (W misc) Although L<attributes.pm|attributes> allows this, turning the lvalue
2765 attribute on or off on a Perl subroutine that is already defined
2766 does not always work properly. It may or may not do what you
2767 want, depending on what code is inside the subroutine, with exact
2768 details subject to change between Perl versions. Only do this
2769 if you really know what you are doing.
2771 =item lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined
2773 (W misc) Using the C<:lvalue> declarative syntax to make a Perl
2774 subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it has been defined is
2775 not permitted. To make the subroutine an lvalue subroutine,
2776 add the lvalue attribute to the definition, or put the C<sub
2777 foo :lvalue;> declaration before the definition.
2779 See also L<attributes.pm|attributes>.
2781 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2783 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2784 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2786 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2788 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2789 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2791 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2793 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2800 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2801 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2802 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2803 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2805 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2807 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2808 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2809 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2810 when the function is called.
2812 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2814 (S utf8)(F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2815 encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
2817 One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2818 you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
2819 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2821 If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2822 sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2823 set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2826 See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
2828 =item Malformed UTF-8 character immediately after '%s'
2830 (F) You said C<use utf8>, but the program file doesn't comply with UTF-8
2831 encoding rules. The message prints out the properly encoded characters
2832 just before the first bad one. If C<utf8> warnings are enabled, a
2833 warning is generated that gives more details about the type of
2836 =item Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N{%s} immediately after '%s'
2838 (F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
2840 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2842 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2843 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2845 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2847 (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2848 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2850 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2852 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2853 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2855 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2857 (F) Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2858 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2860 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2862 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2863 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
2864 shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
2867 =item Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded
2869 (F) Perl aborted due to too high a number of signals pending. This
2870 usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
2871 too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
2872 resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
2873 safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
2875 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2877 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2878 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2881 =item '%' may not be used in pack
2883 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2884 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2885 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2887 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2889 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2890 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2892 =item Method %s not permitted
2896 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2898 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2899 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2900 ended earlier on the current line.
2902 =item Misplaced _ in number
2904 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2905 separate two digits.
2907 =item Missing argument in %s
2909 (W uninitialized) A printf-type format required more arguments than were
2912 =item Missing argument to -%c
2914 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2915 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2917 =item Missing braces on \N{}
2919 =item Missing braces on \N{} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2921 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2922 double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space
2923 (or comment) between the C<\N> and the C<{> in a regex with the C</x> modifier.
2924 This modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately
2927 =item Missing braces on \o{}
2929 (F) A C<\o> must be followed immediately by a C<{> in double-quotish context.
2931 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2933 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2934 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2936 =item Missing command in piped open
2938 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2939 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2942 =item Missing control char name in \c
2944 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2947 =item Missing name in "%s sub"
2949 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2950 they have a name with which they can be found.
2952 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2954 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2955 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2956 can vary from one line to the next.
2958 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2960 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2961 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2963 =item Missing right brace on \%c{} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2965 (F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}>, C<\P{...}>, or C<\N{...}>.
2967 =item Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N
2969 (F) C<\N> has two meanings.
2971 The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed in braces,
2972 meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that
2973 name. Thus C<\N{ASTERISK}> is another way of writing C<*>, valid in both
2974 double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns,
2975 it doesn't have the meaning an unescaped C<*> does.
2977 Starting in Perl 5.12.0, C<\N> also can have an additional meaning (only)
2978 in patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short
2979 for C<[^\n]>, and like C<.> but is not affected by the C</s> regex modifier.)
2981 This can lead to some ambiguities. When C<\N> is not followed immediately
2982 by a left brace, Perl assumes the C<[^\n]> meaning. Also, if the braces
2983 form a valid quantifier such as C<\N{3}> or C<\N{5,}>, Perl assumes that this
2984 means to match the given quantity of non-newlines (in these examples,
2985 3; and 5 or more, respectively). In all other case, where there is a
2986 C<\N{> and a matching C<}>, Perl assumes that a character name is desired.
2988 However, if there is no matching C<}>, Perl doesn't know if it was
2989 mistakenly omitted, or if C<[^\n]{> was desired, and raises this error.
2990 If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant the latter,
2991 escape the brace with a backslash, like so: C<\N\{>
2993 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2995 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2996 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2999 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
3001 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3002 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
3003 the previous line just because you saw this message.
3005 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
3007 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
3008 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
3009 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
3011 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
3014 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
3016 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
3017 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
3020 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
3021 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to
3024 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
3026 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
3027 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
3030 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
3032 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
3033 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
3035 =item Module name must be constant
3037 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
3039 =item Module name required with -%c option
3041 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
3042 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
3043 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
3045 =item More than one argument to '%s' open
3047 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
3048 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
3049 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
3050 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
3052 =item msg%s not implemented
3054 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
3056 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
3058 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
3059 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
3061 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
3063 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
3064 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
3065 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3067 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
3069 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
3072 =item "my %s" used in sort comparison
3074 (W syntax) The package variables $a and $b are used for sort comparisons.
3075 You used $a or $b in as an operand to the C<< <=> >> or C<cmp> operator inside a
3076 sort comparison block, and the variable had earlier been declared as a
3077 lexical variable. Either qualify the sort variable with the package
3078 name, or rename the lexical variable.
3080 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
3082 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
3083 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
3084 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
3086 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
3088 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
3089 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
3090 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
3091 provided for this purpose.
3093 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
3094 %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
3095 the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
3096 will not trigger this warning.
3098 =item Need exactly 3 octal digits in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3100 (F) Within S<C<(?[ ])>>, all constants interpreted as octal need to be
3101 exactly 3 digits long. This helps catch some ambiguities. If your
3102 constant is too short, add leading zeros, like
3104 (?[ [ \078 ] ]) # Syntax error!
3105 (?[ [ \0078 ] ]) # Works
3106 (?[ [ \007 8 ] ]) # Clearer
3108 The maximum number this construct can express is C<\777>. If you
3109 need a larger one, you need to use L<\o{}|perlrebackslash/Octal escapes> instead. If you meant
3110 two separate things, you need to separate them:
3112 (?[ [ \7776 ] ]) # Syntax error!
3113 (?[ [ \o{7776} ] ]) # One meaning
3114 (?[ [ \777 6 ] ]) # Another meaning
3115 (?[ [ \777 \006 ] ]) # Still another
3117 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
3119 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
3120 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3122 =item Negative length
3124 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
3125 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
3127 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
3129 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
3130 greater than or equal to zero.
3132 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3134 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses.
3135 So things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows
3136 whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
3138 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
3139 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
3141 =item %s never introduced
3143 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
3144 scope before it could possibly have been used.
3146 =item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
3148 (F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
3149 real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
3152 =item \N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...} in regex;
3153 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3155 (F) The new (5.12) meaning of C<\N> as C<[^\n]> is not valid in
3156 a bracketed character class, for the same reason that C<.> in
3157 a character class loses its specialness: it matches almost
3158 everything, which is probably not what you want.
3160 =item \N{NAME} must be resolved by the lexer in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3162 (F) When compiling a regex pattern, an unresolved named character or
3163 sequence was encountered. This can happen in any of several ways that
3164 bypass the lexer, such as using single-quotish context, or an extra
3165 backslash in double-quotish:
3167 $re = '\N{SPACE}'; # Wrong!
3168 $re = "\\N{SPACE}"; # Wrong!
3171 Instead, use double-quotes with a single backslash:
3173 $re = "\N{SPACE}"; # ok
3176 The lexer can be bypassed as well by creating the pattern from smaller
3180 /${re}{SPACE}/; # Wrong!
3182 It's not a good idea to split a construct in the middle like this, and
3183 it doesn't work here. Instead use the solution above.
3185 Finally, the message also can happen under the C</x> regex modifier when the
3186 C<\N> is separated by spaces from the C<{>, in which case, remove the spaces.
3188 /\N {SPACE}/x; # Wrong!
3191 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
3193 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
3194 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
3195 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
3196 securable. See L<perlsec>.
3198 =item No code specified for -%c
3200 (F) Perl's B<-e> and B<-E> command-line options require an argument. If
3201 you want to run an empty program, pass the empty string as a separate
3202 argument or run a program consisting of a single 0 or 1:
3208 =item No comma allowed after %s
3210 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is
3211 not allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
3212 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
3214 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported
3215 a constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
3216 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating
3217 system does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did
3218 use an explicit import list for the constants you expect to see;
3219 please see L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an
3220 explicit import list would probably have caught this error earlier
3221 it naturally does not remedy the fact that your operating system
3222 still does not support that constant. Maybe you have a typo in
3223 the constants of the symbol import list of B<use> or B<import> or in the
3224 constant name at the line where this error was triggered?
3226 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
3228 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3229 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
3230 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
3232 =item No DB::DB routine defined
3234 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3235 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3236 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
3239 =item No dbm on this machine
3241 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
3242 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
3244 =item No DB::sub routine defined
3246 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3247 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3248 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
3249 of each ordinary subroutine call.
3251 =item No directory specified for -I
3253 (F) The B<-I> command-line switch requires a directory name as part of the
3254 I<same> argument. Use B<-Ilib>, for instance. B<-I lib> won't work.
3256 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
3258 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3259 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
3260 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
3262 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
3264 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
3265 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3267 =item No input file after < on command line
3269 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3270 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
3271 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
3273 =item No next::method '%s' found for %s
3275 (F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
3276 in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
3277 it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
3278 or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
3280 =item Non-hex character in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3282 (F) In a regular expression, there was a non-hexadecimal character where
3283 a hex one was expected, like
3288 =item Non-octal character in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3290 (F) In a regular expression, there was a non-octal character where
3291 an octal one was expected, like
3295 =item Non-octal character '%c'. Resolved as "%s"
3297 (W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character was
3298 unexpectedly encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value
3301 =item "no" not allowed in expression
3303 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
3304 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
3306 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
3308 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
3309 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
3310 select. See L<perlfunc/select>.
3312 =item No output file after > on command line
3314 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3315 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
3316 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
3318 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
3320 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3321 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
3322 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
3324 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
3326 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
3327 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
3328 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
3330 =item No Perl script found in input
3332 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
3333 with #! and containing the word "perl".
3335 =item No setregid available
3337 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
3340 =item No setreuid available
3342 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
3345 =item No such class %s
3347 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state"
3348 declaration, but this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
3350 =item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
3352 (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed
3353 variable but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type.
3354 The indicated package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the
3357 =item No such hook: %s
3359 (F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl.
3360 Currently, Perl accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks.
3362 =item No such pipe open
3364 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
3365 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
3366 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
3368 =item No such signal: SIG%s
3370 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
3371 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
3372 names on your system.
3374 =item Not a CODE reference
3376 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3377 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3378 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3381 =item Not a GLOB reference
3383 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
3384 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
3385 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
3386 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3388 =item Not a HASH reference
3390 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
3391 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
3392 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3394 =item Not an ARRAY reference
3396 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
3397 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3398 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3400 =item Not an unblessed ARRAY reference
3402 (F) You passed a reference to a blessed array to C<push>, C<shift> or
3403 another array function. These only accept unblessed array references
3404 or arrays beginning explicitly with C<@>.
3406 =item Not a SCALAR reference
3408 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
3409 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3410 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3412 =item Not a subroutine reference
3414 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3415 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3416 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3419 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
3421 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
3422 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
3424 =item Not enough arguments for %s
3426 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
3428 =item Not enough format arguments
3430 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
3431 supplied. See L<perlform>.
3435 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3436 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3439 =item (?[...]) not valid in locale in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3441 (F) C<(?[...])> cannot be used within the scope of a C<S<use locale>> or with
3442 an C</l> regular expression modifier, as that would require deferring
3443 to run-time the calculation of what it should evaluate to, and it is
3444 regex compile-time only.
3446 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
3448 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
3449 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
3450 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
3451 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
3452 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
3454 =item Null filename used
3456 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
3457 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
3459 =item NULL OP IN RUN
3461 (S debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
3464 =item Null picture in formline
3466 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
3467 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
3468 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
3472 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
3474 =item NULL regexp argument
3476 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
3478 =item NULL regexp parameter
3480 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
3482 =item Number too long
3484 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
3485 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
3486 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
3487 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
3490 =item Number with no digits
3492 (F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like
3493 a number. This happens, for example with C<\o{}>, with no number between
3496 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
3498 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
3499 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
3500 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
3502 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
3504 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
3505 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
3507 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
3509 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3510 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3512 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
3514 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3515 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3517 =item Offset outside string
3519 (F)(W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
3520 with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
3521 imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
3522 take place when going past the end of the string when either
3523 C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
3524 for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
3527 =item %s() on unopened %s
3529 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
3530 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
3531 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
3533 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
3535 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
3536 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3540 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3544 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3546 =item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
3548 (D io, deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
3549 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
3550 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3553 =item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
3555 (D io, deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
3556 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
3557 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3560 =item Operand with no preceding operator in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3562 (F) You wrote something like
3564 (?[ \p{Digit} \p{Thai} ])
3566 There are two operands, but no operator giving how you want to combine
3569 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
3571 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
3572 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
3573 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
3574 the C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
3576 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for non-Unicode code point 0x%X
3578 (S utf8, non_unicode) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3579 semantics on a code point that is not in Unicode, so what it should do
3580 is not defined. Perl has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn you.
3582 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3583 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3585 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3586 C<no warnings 'non_unicode';>.
3588 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
3590 (S utf8, surrogate) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3591 semantics on a Unicode surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use of
3592 surrogates for anything but storing strings in UTF-16, but semantics
3593 are (reluctantly) defined for the surrogates, and they are to do
3594 nothing for this operation. Because the use of surrogates can be
3595 dangerous, Perl warns.
3597 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3598 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3600 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3601 C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
3603 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
3605 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
3606 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
3607 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
3608 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
3611 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
3613 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
3614 in the current lexical scope.
3616 =item Out of memory!
3618 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3619 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
3620 no option but to exit immediately.
3622 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
3623 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
3624 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
3625 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
3626 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
3628 =item Out of memory during %s extend
3630 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
3631 the largest possible memory allocation.
3633 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
3635 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3636 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
3637 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
3638 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
3640 =item Out of memory during request for %s
3642 (X)(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
3643 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
3646 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
3647 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
3648 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
3649 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
3650 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
3651 where the failed request happened.
3653 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
3655 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
3656 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
3657 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
3659 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
3661 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
3662 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
3665 =item '.' outside of string in pack
3667 (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
3668 position to before the start of the packed string being built.
3670 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
3672 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3673 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3675 =item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
3677 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3678 the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
3679 UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3681 =item overload arg '%s' is invalid
3683 (W overload) The L<overload> pragma was passed an argument it did not
3684 recognize. Did you mistype an operator?
3686 =item Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
3688 (F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was dereferenced,
3689 but the overloaded operation did not return a reference. See
3692 =item Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
3694 (F) An object with a C<qr> overload was used as part of a match, but the
3695 overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See L<overload>.
3697 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
3699 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
3700 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
3701 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
3702 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
3704 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
3706 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3707 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3711 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
3712 page. See L<perlform>.
3716 (P) An internal error.
3718 =item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
3720 (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
3721 an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
3722 platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
3723 enter this branch on this platform.
3725 =item panic: child pseudo-process was never scheduled
3727 (P) A child pseudo-process in the ithreads implementation on Windows
3728 was not scheduled within the time period allowed and therefore was not
3729 able to initialize properly.
3731 =item panic: ck_grep, type=%u
3733 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
3735 =item panic: ck_split, type=%u
3737 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
3739 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index %ld
3741 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
3742 there are in the savestack.
3744 =item panic: del_backref
3746 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
3751 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
3752 it wasn't an eval context.
3754 =item panic: do_subst
3756 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
3759 =item panic: do_trans_%s
3761 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
3764 =item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
3766 (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
3771 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
3773 =item panic: goto, type=%u, ix=%ld
3775 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
3776 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
3778 =item panic: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
3780 (P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries tried
3781 repeatedly, but each time something re-created entries in the glob.
3782 Most likely the glob contains an object with a reference back to
3783 the glob and a destructor that adds a new object to the glob.
3785 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD, %s
3787 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
3789 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT, %s
3791 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
3793 =item panic: kid popen errno read
3795 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
3797 =item panic: last, type=%u
3799 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
3800 it wasn't a block context.
3802 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
3804 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
3807 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency %u
3809 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
3810 invalid enum on the top of it.
3812 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
3814 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
3815 references to an object.
3817 =item panic: malloc, %s
3819 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
3821 =item panic: memory wrap
3823 (P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
3825 =item panic: pad_alloc, %p!=%p
3827 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3828 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3830 =item panic: pad_free curpad, %p!=%p
3832 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3833 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3835 =item panic: pad_free po
3837 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3839 =item panic: pad_reset curpad, %p!=%p
3841 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3842 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3844 =item panic: pad_sv po
3846 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3848 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad, %p!=%p
3850 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3851 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3853 =item panic: pad_swipe po
3855 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3857 =item panic: pp_iter, type=%u
3859 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
3861 =item panic: pp_match%s
3863 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
3866 =item panic: pp_split, pm=%p, s=%p
3868 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
3870 =item panic: realloc, %s
3872 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
3874 =item panic: reference miscount on nsv in sv_replace() (%d != 1)
3876 (P) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
3877 reference count other than 1.
3879 =item panic: restartop in %s
3881 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
3882 didn't supply the destination.
3884 =item panic: return, type=%u
3886 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
3887 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
3889 =item panic: scan_num, %s
3891 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
3893 =item panic: Sequence (?{...}): no code block found
3895 (P) while compiling a pattern that has embedded (?{}) or (??{}) code
3896 blocks, perl couldn't locate the code block that should have already been
3897 seen and compiled by perl before control passed to the regex compiler.
3899 =item panic: strxfrm() gets absurd - a => %u, ab => %u
3901 (P) The interpreter's sanity check of the C function strxfrm() failed.
3902 In your current locale the returned transformation of the string "ab"
3903 is shorter than that of the string "a", which makes no sense.
3905 =item panic: sv_chop %s
3907 (P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the
3908 scalar's string buffer.
3910 =item panic: sv_insert, midend=%p, bigend=%p
3912 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
3915 =item panic: top_env
3917 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
3919 =item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
3921 (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't
3922 permitted at run time.
3924 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
3926 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
3927 to even) byte length.
3929 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
3931 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an odd (as opposed
3932 to even) byte length.
3934 =item panic: yylex, %s
3936 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
3938 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
3940 (W parenthesis) You said something like
3946 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
3948 Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
3950 =item Parsing code internal error (%s)
3952 (F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API in
3955 =item Passing malformed UTF-8 to "%s" is deprecated
3957 (D deprecated, utf8) This message indicates a bug either in the Perl
3958 core or in XS code. Such code was trying to find out if a character,
3959 allegedly stored internally encoded as UTF-8, was of a given type, such
3960 as being punctuation or a digit. But the character was not encoded in
3961 legal UTF-8. The C<%s> is replaced by a string that can be used by
3962 knowledgeable people to determine what the type being checked against
3963 was. If C<utf8> warnings are enabled, a further message is raised,
3964 giving details of the malformation.
3966 =item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex;
3967 marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3969 (F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
3970 consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before
3971 the nesting limit is exceeded.
3973 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
3976 =item C<-p> destination: %s
3978 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
3979 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
3980 redirected it with select().)
3982 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
3984 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3985 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
3986 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
3988 =item Perl folding rules are not up-to-date for 0x%X; please use the perlbug
3989 utility to report; in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3991 (D regexp, deprecated) You used a regular expression with
3992 case-insensitive matching, and there is a bug in Perl in which the
3993 built-in regular expression folding rules are not accurate. This
3994 may lead to incorrect results. Please report this as a bug using the
3995 L<perlbug> utility. (This message is marked deprecated, so that it by
3996 default will be turned-on.)
3998 =item Perl_my_%s() not available
4000 (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
4001 so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
4002 conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
4003 '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4005 =item Perl %s required (did you mean %s?)--this is only %s, stopped
4007 (F) The code you are trying to run has asked for a newer version of
4008 Perl than you are running. Perhaps C<use 5.10> was written instead
4009 of C<use 5.010> or C<use v5.10>. Without the leading C<v>, the number is
4010 interpreted as a decimal, with every three digits after the
4011 decimal point representing a part of the version number. So 5.10
4012 is equivalent to v5.100.
4014 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
4016 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
4017 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
4018 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
4020 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
4022 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
4023 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
4025 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
4027 (X) See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
4029 =item Perls since %s too modern--this is %s, stopped
4031 (F) The code you are trying to run claims it will not run
4032 on the version of Perl you are using because it is too new.
4033 Maybe the code needs to be updated, or maybe it is simply
4034 wrong and the version check should just be removed.
4036 =item perl: warning: Non hex character in '$ENV{PERL_HASH_SEED}', seed only partially set
4038 (S) PERL_HASH_SEED should match /^\s*(?:0x)?[0-9a-fA-F]+\s*\z/ but it
4039 contained a non hex character. This could mean you are not using the
4040 hash seed you think you are.
4042 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
4044 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
4046 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
4047 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
4050 are supported and installed on your system.
4051 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
4053 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
4054 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
4055 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
4056 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
4057 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
4058 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
4059 Perl can and will use, and the script will be run. Before you really
4060 fix the problem, however, you will get the same error message each
4061 time you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
4062 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
4064 =item perl: warning: strange setting in '$ENV{PERL_PERTURB_KEYS}': '%s'
4066 (S) Perl was run with the environment variable PERL_PERTURB_KEYS defined
4067 but containing an unexpected value. The legal values of this setting
4070 Numeric | String | Result
4071 --------+---------------+-----------------------------------------
4072 0 | NO | Disables key traversal randomization
4073 1 | RANDOM | Enables full key traversal randomization
4074 2 | DETERMINISTIC | Enables repeatable key traversal randomization
4076 Both numeric and string values are accepted, but note that string values are
4077 case sensitive. The default for this setting is "RANDOM" or 1.
4079 =item pid %x not a child
4081 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
4082 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
4083 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
4085 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
4087 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
4089 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4091 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
4092 shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
4093 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
4094 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
4095 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
4097 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
4099 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
4100 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
4102 =item POSIX syntax [%c %c] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by
4105 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
4106 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
4107 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
4108 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and
4109 will cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular
4110 expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4112 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by
4115 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
4116 with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
4117 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
4118 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[."
4119 and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
4120 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4122 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by
4125 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
4126 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
4127 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
4128 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
4129 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
4130 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4132 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
4134 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
4135 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
4136 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
4137 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
4139 You probably wrote something like this:
4146 when you should have written this:
4153 If you really want comments, build your list the
4154 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
4158 'b', # another comment
4161 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
4163 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
4164 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
4165 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
4168 You probably wrote something like this:
4172 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
4173 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
4177 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
4179 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
4180 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
4181 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
4182 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
4184 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
4186 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
4187 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
4189 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
4191 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
4192 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
4193 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
4194 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
4196 =item Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
4198 (W ambiguous) You said something like C<m/$\/> in a regex.
4199 The regex C<m/foo$\s+bar/m> translates to: match the word 'foo', the output
4200 record separator (see L<perlvar/$\>) and the letter 's' (one time or more)
4201 followed by the word 'bar'.
4203 If this is what you intended then you can silence the warning by using
4204 C<m/${\}/> (for example: C<m/foo${\}s+bar/>).
4206 If instead you intended to match the word 'foo' at the end of the line
4207 followed by whitespace and the word 'bar' on the next line then you can use
4208 C<m/$(?)\/> (for example: C<m/foo$(?)\s+bar/>).
4210 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
4212 (W ambiguous) You said something like '@foo' in a double-quoted string
4213 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
4214 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
4215 to the array you apparently lost track of.
4217 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
4219 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
4223 is now misinterpreted as
4227 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
4228 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
4229 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
4232 =item Premature end of script headers
4236 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
4238 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4239 before now. Check your control flow.
4241 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
4243 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
4244 before now. Check your control flow.
4246 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
4248 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
4249 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
4250 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
4251 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
4254 =item Property '%s' is unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4256 (F) The named property which you specified via C<\p> or C<\P> is not one
4257 known to Perl. Perhaps you misspelled the name? See
4258 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
4259 for a complete list of available official
4260 properties. If it is a L<user-defined property|perlunicode/User-Defined Character Properties>
4261 it must have been defined by the time the regular expression is
4264 =item Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
4266 (W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is
4267 useless, since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments.
4269 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
4271 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
4272 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
4274 =item Prototype not terminated
4276 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
4279 =item \p{} uses Unicode rules, not locale rules
4281 (W) You compiled a regular expression that contained a Unicode property
4282 match (C<\p> or C<\P>), but the regular expression is also being told to
4283 use the run-time locale, not Unicode. Instead, use a POSIX character
4284 class, which should know about the locale's rules.
4285 (See L<perlrecharclass/POSIX Character Classes>.)
4287 Even if the run-time locale is ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), which is a subset of
4288 Unicode, some properties will give results that are not valid for that
4291 Here are a couple of examples to help you see what's going on. If the
4292 locale is ISO 8859-7, the character at code point 0xD7 is the "GREEK
4293 CAPITAL LETTER CHI". But in Unicode that code point means the
4294 "MULTIPLICATION SIGN" instead, and C<\p> always uses the Unicode
4295 meaning. That means that C<\p{Alpha}> won't match, but C<[[:alpha:]]>
4296 should. Only in the Latin1 locale are all the characters in the same
4297 positions as they are in Unicode. But, even here, some properties give
4298 incorrect results. An example is C<\p{Changes_When_Uppercased}> which
4299 is true for "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS", but since the upper
4300 case of that character is not in Latin1, in that locale it doesn't
4301 change when upper cased.
4303 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4305 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if
4306 you meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular
4307 expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4309 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4311 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of
4312 the {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular
4313 expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4315 =item Quantifier {n,m} with n > m can't match in regex
4317 =item Quantifier {n,m} with n > m can't match in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4319 (W regexp) Minima should be less than or equal to maxima. If you really
4320 want your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}.
4322 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression in regex; marked by <--
4325 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
4326 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
4327 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
4328 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
4329 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
4331 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4334 =item Range iterator outside integer range
4336 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
4337 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
4338 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
4339 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
4341 =item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4343 (W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
4344 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4346 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
4348 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
4349 before now. Check your control flow.
4351 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
4353 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4355 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
4357 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4359 =item Reallocation too large: %x
4361 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
4363 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
4365 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
4368 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
4370 (S debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
4371 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
4372 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
4374 =item Recursive call to Perl_load_module in PerlIO_find_layer
4376 (P) It is currently not permitted to load modules when creating
4377 a filehandle inside an %INC hook. This can happen with C<open my
4378 $fh, '<', \$scalar>, which implicitly loads PerlIO::scalar. Try
4379 loading PerlIO::scalar explicitly first.
4381 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
4383 (F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, Perl
4384 believes it found an infinite loop in the C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a
4385 crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth.
4387 =item refcnt_dec: fd %d%s
4389 =item refcnt: fd %d%s
4391 =item refcnt_inc: fd %d%s
4393 (P) Perl's I/O implementation failed an internal consistency check. If
4394 you see this message, something is very wrong.
4396 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
4398 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
4399 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
4400 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
4401 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
4403 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
4404 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
4405 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
4406 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
4408 =item Reference is already weak
4410 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
4411 Doing so has no effect.
4413 =item Reference to invalid group 0 in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4415 (F) You used C<\g0> or similar in a regular expression. You may refer
4416 to capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers
4417 (normal backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
4418 backreferences). Using 0 does not make sense.
4420 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4422 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
4423 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If
4424 you wanted to have the character with ordinal 7 inserted into the regular
4425 expression, prepend zeroes to make it three digits long: C<\007>
4427 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4430 =item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4432 (F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k<NAME> >> in your regular
4433 expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses
4434 such as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<< (?<NAME>...) >>. Check if the name has been
4435 spelled correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
4437 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4440 =item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by <-- HERE
4443 (F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there
4444 are not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the
4445 expression before where the C<\g{-7}> was located.
4447 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4450 =item regexp memory corruption
4452 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
4453 expression compiler gave it.
4455 =item Regexp modifier "/%c" may appear a maximum of twice
4457 =item Regexp modifier "/%c" may not appear twice
4459 (F syntax, regexp) The regular expression pattern had too many occurrences
4460 of the specified modifier. Remove the extraneous ones.
4462 =item Regexp modifier "%c" may not appear after the "-" in regex; marked by <--
4465 (F) Turning off the given modifier has the side effect of turning on
4466 another one. Perl currently doesn't allow this. Reword the regular
4467 expression to use the modifier you want to turn on (and place it before
4468 the minus), instead of the one you want to turn off.
4470 =item Regexp modifiers "/%c" and "/%c" are mutually exclusive
4472 (F syntax, regexp) The regular expression pattern had more than one of these
4473 mutually exclusive modifiers. Retain only the modifier that is
4474 supposed to be there.
4476 =item Regexp out of space in regex m/%s/
4478 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
4481 =item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompatible)
4483 (F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
4484 numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
4485 terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
4487 =item Replacement list is longer than search list
4489 (W misc) You have used a replacement list that is longer than the
4490 search list. So the additional elements in the replacement list
4493 =item '%s' resolved to '\o{%s}%d'
4495 (W misc, regexp) You wrote something like C<\08>, or C<\179> in a
4496 double-quotish string. All but the last digit is treated as a single
4497 character, specified in octal. The last digit is the next character in
4498 the string. To tell Perl that this is indeed what you want, you can use
4499 the C<\o{ }> syntax, or use exactly three digits to specify the octal
4502 =item Reversed %s= operator
4504 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
4505 always come last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
4507 =item rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4509 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either closed or not
4510 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4512 =item Scalars leaked: %d
4514 (S internal) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping
4515 of scalars: not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time
4516 Perl exited. What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which
4517 is of course bad, especially if the Perl program is intended to be
4520 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
4522 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
4523 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
4524 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
4525 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4526 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4527 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4528 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4530 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
4531 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
4532 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4535 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
4537 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
4538 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
4539 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
4540 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4541 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4542 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4543 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4545 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
4546 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
4547 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4550 =item Search pattern not terminated
4552 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
4553 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4554 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
4556 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
4557 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
4558 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
4559 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
4561 =item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
4563 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
4566 The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
4567 C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
4568 parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
4569 the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
4571 =item seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4573 (W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed or not
4574 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4576 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
4578 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
4579 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
4581 =item select not implemented
4583 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
4585 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
4587 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
4588 the current implementation.
4590 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
4592 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
4593 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
4595 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
4597 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
4598 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
4600 =item sem%s not implemented
4602 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
4604 =item send() on closed socket %s
4606 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
4607 before now. Check your control flow.
4609 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4611 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The
4612 <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4613 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4615 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4617 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
4618 but has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the
4619 regular expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4621 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4623 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
4624 <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4625 discovered. This happens when using the C<(?^...)> construct to tell
4626 Perl to use the default regular expression modifiers, and you
4627 redundantly specify a default modifier. For other
4628 causes, see L<perlre>.
4630 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex m/%s/
4632 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
4633 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See
4636 =item Sequence \%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4638 (F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument following the escape
4639 sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly written.
4641 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated with ')'
4643 (F) The end of the perl code contained within the {...} must be
4644 followed immediately by a ')'.
4646 =item Server error (a.k.a. "500 Server error")
4648 (A) This is the error message generally seen in a browser window
4649 when trying to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The
4650 actual error text varies widely from server to server. The most
4651 frequently-seen variants are "500 Server error", "Method (something)
4652 not permitted", "Document contains no data", "Premature end of script
4653 headers", and "Did not produce a valid header".
4655 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
4657 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by
4658 the user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the
4659 user account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment
4660 variables (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't
4661 in a location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or
4662 less. Please see the following for more information:
4664 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
4665 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
4666 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
4668 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
4670 =item setegid() not implemented
4672 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
4673 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4676 =item seteuid() not implemented
4678 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
4679 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4682 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
4684 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
4685 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
4688 =item setrgid() not implemented
4690 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
4691 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4694 =item setruid() not implemented
4696 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
4697 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4700 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
4702 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
4703 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
4704 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
4706 =item shm%s not implemented
4708 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
4710 =item !=~ should be !~
4712 (W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
4713 interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
4714 operators: probably not what you intended.
4716 =item <> should be quotes
4718 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
4721 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
4723 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
4724 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
4725 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
4726 probably not what you had in mind.
4728 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
4730 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
4733 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
4735 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
4736 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
4738 =item Slab leaked from cv %p
4740 (S) If you see this message, then something is seriously wrong with the
4741 internal bookkeeping of op trees. An op tree needed to be freed after
4742 a compilation error, but could not be found, so it was leaked instead.
4744 =item sleep(%u) too large
4746 (W overflow) You called C<sleep> with a number that was larger than
4747 it can reliably handle and C<sleep> probably slept for less time than
4750 =item Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks encapsulation
4752 (F) You should not use the C<~~> operator on an object that does not
4753 overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's underlying structure
4754 for the smart match.
4756 =item Smartmatch is experimental
4758 (S experimental::smartmatch) This warning is emitted if you
4759 use the smartmatch (C<~~>) operator. This is currently an experimental
4760 feature, and its details are subject to change in future releases of
4761 Perl. Particularly, its current behavior is noticed for being
4762 unnecessarily complex and unintuitive, and is very likely to be
4765 =item sort is now a reserved word
4767 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
4768 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
4770 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
4772 (F) A sort comparison subroutine written in XS must return exactly one
4773 item. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4775 =item Source filters apply only to byte streams
4777 (F) You tried to activate a source filter (usually by loading a
4778 source filter module) within a string passed to C<eval>. This is
4779 not permitted under the C<unicode_eval> feature. Consider using
4780 C<evalbytes> instead. See L<feature>.
4782 =item splice() offset past end of array
4784 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
4785 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the
4786 end of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want,
4787 try explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset.
4788 See L<perlfunc/splice>.
4792 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
4793 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
4794 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
4796 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
4798 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
4799 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
4800 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
4801 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
4804 =item "state %s" used in sort comparison
4806 (W syntax) The package variables $a and $b are used for sort comparisons.
4807 You used $a or $b in as an operand to the C<< <=> >> or C<cmp> operator inside a
4808 sort comparison block, and the variable had earlier been declared as a
4809 lexical variable. Either qualify the sort variable with the package
4810 name, or rename the lexical variable.
4812 =item "state" variable %s can't be in a package
4814 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
4815 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
4816 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
4818 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
4820 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
4821 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4823 =item Strings with code points over 0xFF may not be mapped into in-memory file handles
4825 (W utf8) You tried to open a reference to a scalar for read or append
4826 where the scalar contained code points over 0xFF. In-memory files
4827 model on-disk files and can only contain bytes.
4829 =item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
4831 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
4832 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
4833 C<can> may break this.
4835 =item Subroutine "&%s" is not available
4837 (W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is