3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (enabled by default).
12 (S) A severe warning (enabled by default).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
19 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
21 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
22 category is included with the classification letter in the description
25 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
26 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Severe warnings are always enabled, unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %x
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '%c' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only
60 after certain types. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
76 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
79 =item Ambiguous overloaded argument to %s resolved as %s
81 (W ambiguous) You called C<keys>, C<values> or C<each> on an object that had
82 overloading of C<%{}> or C<@{}> or both. In such a case, the object is
83 dereferenced according to its overloading, not its underlying reference type.
84 The warning is issued when C<%{}> overloading exists on a blessed arrayref,
85 when C<@{}> overloading exists on a blessed hashref, or when both overloadings
86 are defined (in which case C<%{}> is used). You can force the interpretation
87 of the object by explicitly dereferencing it as an array or hash instead of
88 passing the object itself to C<keys>, C<values> or C<each>.
90 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
92 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
93 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
94 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
95 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
97 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
99 (W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
100 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
101 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
103 =item Ambiguous use of %c resolved as operator %c
105 (W ambiguous) C<%>, C<&>, and C<*> are both infix operators (modulus,
106 bitwise and, and multpication), and you said something like C<*foo *
107 foo> that might be interpreted as either of them. We assumed you
108 meant the infix operator, but please try to make it more clear -- in
109 the example given, you might write C<*foo * foo()> if you really meant
110 to multiply a glob by the result of calling a function.
112 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s} resolved to %c%s
114 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<@{foo}>, which might be
115 asking for the variable C<@foo>, or it might be calling a function
116 named foo, and dereferencing it as an array reference. If you wanted
117 the varable, you can just write C<@foo>. If you wanted to call the
118 function, write C<@{foo()}> ... or you could just not have a variable
119 and a function with the same name, and save yourself a lot of trouble.
121 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s%s} resolved to %c%s%s
123 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<${foo[2]}>, which might be
124 looking for element number 2 of the array named C<@foo>, in which case
125 please write C<$foo[2]>, or you might have meant to pass an anonymous
126 arrayref to the function named foo, then do a scalar deref on the
127 value it returns. If you meant that, write C<${foo([2])}>.
129 =item Ambiguous use of -%s resolved as -&%s()
131 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<-foo>, which might be the
132 string C<"-foo"> (outside of C<use strict 'subs'>), or a call to the
133 function C<foo>, negated. If you meant the string, just write
134 C<"-foo">, and please use strict. If you meant the function call,
137 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
139 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
140 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
141 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
143 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
145 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
146 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
147 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
148 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
149 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
151 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
158 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
160 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
161 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
162 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
163 a scalar value (the length of an array, or the population info of a
164 hash) and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
165 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
168 =item Args must match #! line
170 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
171 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
172 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
173 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
175 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
177 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
179 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
181 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element or a
182 subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
188 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
190 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
196 or a hash or array slice, such as:
198 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
199 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
201 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
203 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
204 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
207 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
209 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
210 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
211 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
213 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
215 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you
216 forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take care of transforming
217 data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing
218 the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer.
219 If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be
220 the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
222 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
224 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
225 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
227 =item assertion botched: %s
229 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
231 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
233 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
235 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
237 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
238 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
239 know which context to supply to the right side.
241 =item A thread exited while %d threads were running
243 (W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily the main
244 thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
245 Usually it's a good idea to first collect the return values of the
246 created threads by joining them, and only then exit from the main
247 thread. See L<threads>.
249 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
251 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
252 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
254 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
256 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
257 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
258 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
264 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
266 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
267 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
270 bless $self, "$proto";
272 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
274 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
275 which is not in its key set.
277 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
279 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
280 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
282 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%x
284 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
285 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
286 outside any of those arenas.
288 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
290 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference counted internal table of
291 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
292 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
293 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
295 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
297 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
298 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
299 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
300 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
303 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
305 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
307 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
309 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
310 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
311 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
312 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
313 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
314 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
317 =item Attempt to join self
319 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
320 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
321 to move the join() to some other thread.
323 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
325 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
326 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
327 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
328 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
329 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
332 =item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
334 (F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
335 compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
336 unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
339 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
341 (W) You tried to set the length of an array which has been freed. You
342 can do this by storing a reference to the scalar representing the last index
343 of an array and later assigning through that reference. For example
345 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
348 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
350 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
351 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
352 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
354 =item Attribute "locked" is deprecated
356 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragam to modify the "locked"
357 attribute on a code reference. The :locked attribute is obsolete, has had no
358 effect since 5005 threads were removed, and will be removed in the next major
361 =item Attribute "unique" is deprecated
363 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragam to modify the "unique"
364 attribute on an array, hash or scalar reference. The :unique attribute has
365 had no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and will be removed in the next major
368 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
370 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
371 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
372 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
373 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
375 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
377 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
378 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
379 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
381 =item Bad filehandle: %s
383 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
384 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
385 open(), or did it in another package.
387 =item Bad free() ignored
389 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
390 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
391 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
393 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
394 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
395 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
399 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
401 =item Badly placed ()'s
403 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
404 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
407 =item Bad name after %s::
409 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
410 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
419 $sym = "mypack::$var";
421 =item Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
423 (F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the
426 =item Bad realloc() ignored
428 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
429 never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
430 by setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
432 =item Bad symbol for array
434 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
435 wasn't a symbol table entry.
437 =item Bad symbol for dirhandle
439 (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
440 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
443 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
445 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
446 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
448 =item Bad symbol for hash
450 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
451 wasn't a symbol table entry.
453 =item Bareword found in conditional
455 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
456 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
457 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
461 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
464 use constant TYPO => 1;
465 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
467 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
469 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
471 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
472 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
473 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
475 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
477 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
478 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
479 you need to predeclare a package?
481 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
483 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
484 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
487 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
489 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
490 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
491 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
492 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
493 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
495 =item \1 better written as $1
497 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
498 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
499 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
500 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
501 there are more than 9 backreferences.
503 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
505 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
506 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
507 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
509 =item bind() on closed socket %s
511 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
512 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
514 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
516 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
517 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
519 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
521 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
523 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
525 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
528 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
530 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
531 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
532 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
534 =item Callback called exit
536 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
537 exited by calling exit.
539 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
541 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
542 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
543 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
544 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
545 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
546 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
547 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
548 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
550 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
552 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
553 compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
554 attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
555 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
557 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
559 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
560 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
562 =item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
564 (F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference in it,
565 then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax. The access
566 triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is no legal conversion
567 from that type of reference to a typeglob.
569 =item Cannot copy to %s in %s
571 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
572 be directly assigned not.
574 =item Cannot find encoding "%s"
576 (S io) You tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to a filehandle,
577 either with open() or binmode().
579 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
581 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
582 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
583 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
585 =item Can't bless non-reference value
587 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
588 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
590 =item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
592 (F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
593 a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
595 =item Can't "break" outside a given block
597 (F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
599 =item Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
601 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
602 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't have ANYTHING defined
603 in it, let alone methods. See L<perlobj>.
605 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
607 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
608 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
609 like this will reproduce the error:
612 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
613 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
615 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
617 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
618 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
619 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
620 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
622 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
624 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
625 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
626 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
627 Something like this will reproduce the error:
630 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
631 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
633 =item Can't chdir to %s
635 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
636 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
638 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
640 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
643 =item Can't coerce array into hash
645 (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no
646 information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can do that
647 only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
649 =item Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
651 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
652 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
662 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
664 =item Can't coerce %s to number in %s
666 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
667 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
669 =item Can't coerce %s to string in %s
671 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
672 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are.
674 =item Can't "continue" outside a when block
676 (F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
679 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
681 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
682 quotas or other plumbing problems.
684 =item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
686 (F) Currently, only scalar variables can be declared with a specific
687 class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state" declaration. The semantics may be
688 extended for other types of variables in future.
690 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
692 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
693 "state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
695 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
697 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
698 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
700 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
702 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
705 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
707 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
708 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
709 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
711 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
713 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
714 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
715 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
717 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
719 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
720 regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the
721 regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
723 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
725 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
726 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
728 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
730 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
731 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
734 =item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
736 (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
737 or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
738 little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
739 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
741 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
743 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
744 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
745 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
746 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
747 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
748 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
753 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
754 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
755 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
757 =item Can't execute %s
759 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
760 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
762 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
764 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
765 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
767 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
769 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
770 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property?
771 See L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
772 for a complete list of available properties.
774 =item Can't find label %s
776 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
777 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
779 =item Can't find %s on PATH
781 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
784 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
786 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
787 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
788 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
790 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
792 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
793 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
794 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
796 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
798 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
799 unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
800 editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
802 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
804 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode property (for
805 example C<\p{Lu}> matches all uppercase letters). If you did mean to use a
806 Unicode property, see
807 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
808 for a complete list of available properties.
809 If you didn't mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either
810 by C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, until
815 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
818 =item Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
820 (W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be retried
823 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
825 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
826 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
827 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
828 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
829 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
830 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
831 the access checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
832 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
833 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
834 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
835 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up
836 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking
837 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
838 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
839 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
841 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
843 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
844 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
846 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
848 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
849 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
851 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
853 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
854 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
856 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
858 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
859 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
860 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
861 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
863 =item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
865 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
866 comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
867 as the reduce() function in List::Util).
869 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
871 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
874 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
876 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
877 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
878 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
879 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
881 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
883 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
884 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
885 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
886 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
887 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
888 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
890 =item Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
892 (F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a fatal error to
893 attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise non-numeric
896 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
898 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
899 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
900 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
901 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
902 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
903 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
906 =item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
908 (F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
909 package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
911 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
913 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension. This
914 may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one that is
915 incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known to happen
916 between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your dynamic
917 extension was built against an older version of the library that is
918 installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old dynamic
921 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
923 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
924 lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you want to
925 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
928 =item Can't localize through a reference
930 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
931 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
932 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
933 that $ref will still be a reference.
935 =item Can't locate %s
937 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
938 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
939 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
940 need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
941 the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
942 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
943 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
945 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
947 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
948 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
949 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
950 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
952 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
954 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
955 for example, C<foo.so> or C<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
956 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
958 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
960 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
961 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
962 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
964 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
966 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
967 doesn't seem to exist.
969 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
971 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
972 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
974 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
976 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
979 =item Can't modify %s in %s
981 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
982 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
984 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
986 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
989 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
991 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
992 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
994 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
996 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
999 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
1001 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
1002 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1003 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
1004 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1005 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
1006 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
1008 =item Can't open %s: %s
1010 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
1011 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
1012 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
1013 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
1016 =item Can't open a reference
1018 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
1019 using the 3-arg open() syntax :
1023 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
1024 open is not supported.
1026 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
1028 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
1029 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
1030 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
1031 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
1033 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
1035 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1036 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
1037 the command line for writing.
1039 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
1041 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1042 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
1043 command line for reading.
1045 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
1047 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1048 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
1049 the command line for writing.
1051 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
1053 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1054 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
1057 =item Can't open perl script%s
1059 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
1061 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
1062 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1063 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1065 =item Can't read CRTL environ
1067 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1068 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1069 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1070 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1073 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1075 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1076 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1077 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1078 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1079 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1080 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1082 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1084 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1085 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1086 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1088 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1090 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1091 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1093 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1095 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1096 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1098 =item Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
1100 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
1101 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
1102 method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1104 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1106 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1107 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1110 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1112 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1113 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1115 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1117 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
1118 but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
1119 to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
1120 the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
1123 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1125 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1126 open already. Bizarre.
1128 =item Can't take log of %g
1130 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1131 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1132 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1135 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1137 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1138 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1139 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1141 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1143 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1144 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1145 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1149 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
1150 as the main Perl stack.
1152 =item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1154 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1155 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1156 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1157 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1159 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1161 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1162 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1163 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1165 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1167 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1168 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1170 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1172 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1173 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1175 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1177 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1178 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1179 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1181 =item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1183 (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1184 byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1185 allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1187 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1189 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1192 =item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1194 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1195 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1196 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1197 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1200 =item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1202 (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1203 that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1204 For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1205 is inside a big-endian group.
1207 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1209 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1210 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1211 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1212 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1215 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1217 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1218 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1219 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1221 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1223 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1224 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1226 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1228 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1229 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1230 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1232 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1234 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1235 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1236 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1237 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1238 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1241 =item Can't use "when" outside a topicalizer
1243 (F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1244 loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1245 from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1246 or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1248 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1250 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1251 references can be weakened.
1253 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1255 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1256 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1257 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1259 =item Character following "\c" must be ASCII
1261 (F|W deprecated, syntax) In C<\cI<X>>, I<X> must be an ASCII character.
1262 It is planned to make this fatal in all instances in Perl 5.16. In the
1263 cases where it isn't fatal, the character this evaluates to is
1264 derived by exclusive or'ing the code point of this character with 0x40.
1266 Note that non-alphabetic ASCII characters are discouraged here as well.
1268 =item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1274 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1275 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1276 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1280 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1283 =item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1289 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode expects
1290 all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved as if you
1293 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1295 =item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1301 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1302 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1303 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1305 pack("c", $x & 255);
1307 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1310 =item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1312 (W unpack) You tried something like
1314 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1316 where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1317 below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the value
1318 modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1320 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1322 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1324 (W pack) You tried something like
1326 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1328 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1329 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1330 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1332 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1334 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1336 (W unpack) You tried something like
1338 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1340 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1341 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1342 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1344 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1346 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1348 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1350 =item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1352 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1353 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1355 =item Closure prototype called
1357 (F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to an attribute
1358 handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure is created.
1359 This subroutine cannot be called.
1361 =item Code missing after '/'
1363 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be another
1364 template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1366 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
1368 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, no properties match it; all inverse properties do
1370 (W utf8) You had a code point above the Unicode maximum of U+10FFFF.
1372 Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code
1373 points, up to the limit of what is storable in an unsigned integer on
1374 your system, but these may not be accepted by other languages/systems.
1375 At one time, it was legal in some standards to have code points up to
1376 0x7FFF_FFFF, but not higher. Code points above 0xFFFF_FFFF require
1377 larger than a 32 bit word.
1379 None of the Unicode or Perl-defined properties will match a non-Unicode
1380 code point. For example,
1382 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\p{Any}/
1384 will not match, because the code point is not in Unicode. But
1386 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\P{Any}/
1390 =item %s: Command not found
1392 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1393 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1395 =item Compilation failed in require
1397 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1398 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1399 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1401 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1403 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1404 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1405 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1406 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1407 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1408 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1409 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1410 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1411 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1413 =item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1415 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1416 cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_broadcast()
1417 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1418 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1419 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1420 first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1421 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1424 =item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1426 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1427 cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_signal()
1428 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1429 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1430 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1431 first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1432 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1435 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1437 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1438 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1439 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1441 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1443 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1444 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1445 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1446 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1449 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1451 (F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to find
1452 the character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you
1453 forgot to load the corresponding C<charnames> pragma?
1457 =item Constant is not %s reference
1459 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1460 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1461 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1462 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1463 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1465 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1467 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1468 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1469 commentary and workarounds.
1471 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1473 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1474 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1477 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1479 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1480 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1482 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1484 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1486 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1488 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1489 expression compiler gave it.
1491 =item corrupted regexp program
1493 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1496 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
1498 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1500 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1502 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1503 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1506 =item "\c{" is deprecated and is more clearly written as ";"
1508 (D deprecated, syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way
1509 to specify non-printable characters. You used it with a "{" which
1510 evaluates to ";", which is printable. It is planned to remove the
1511 ability to specify a semi-colon this way in Perl 5.16. Just use a
1512 semi-colon or a backslash-semi-colon without the "\c".
1514 =item "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"
1516 (W syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way to specify
1517 non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which is better
1518 written as simply itself, perhaps preceded by a backslash for non-word
1521 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1523 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1524 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1525 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1526 which case it indicates something else.
1528 This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the F<perl> binary,
1529 setting the C pre-processor macro C<PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN> to the desired value.
1531 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1533 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1534 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1535 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1537 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1539 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1540 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1541 is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1543 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1545 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1546 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1548 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1550 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1551 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1552 that triggers this error.
1554 =item Deprecated character in \N{...}; marked by <-- HERE in \N{%s<-- HERE %s
1556 (D deprecated) Just about anything is legal for the C<...> in C<\N{...}>.
1557 But starting in 5.12, non-reasonable ones that don't look like names are
1558 deprecated. A reasonable name begins with an alphabetic character and
1559 continues with any combination of alphanumerics, dashes, spaces, parentheses or
1562 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1564 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>.
1565 There has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1566 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1567 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1568 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1569 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1570 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1572 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1576 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1578 Beginning with perl 5.9.4, you can also use C<state> variables to
1579 have lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1581 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1583 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1585 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1586 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather than
1587 to create a dangling reference.
1589 =item Did not produce a valid header
1593 =item %s did not return a true value
1595 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1596 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1597 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1598 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1600 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1602 (W misc) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or
1605 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1607 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1608 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1611 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1613 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1614 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1619 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1620 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1622 =item Document contains no data
1626 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1628 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1629 define a C<$VERSION.>
1631 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1633 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1634 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1636 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1638 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1640 =item do_study: out of memory
1642 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1644 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1646 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1647 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1648 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1649 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1650 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1651 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1652 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1653 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1655 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1657 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1658 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1660 =item dump is not supported
1662 (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1664 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1666 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1669 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1671 (W) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a type
1672 in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1674 =item elseif should be elsif
1676 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1677 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1678 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1679 unlikely to be what you want.
1683 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1684 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1685 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1687 =item entering effective %s failed
1689 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1690 effective uids or gids failed.
1692 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1694 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1695 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1696 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1698 =item Error converting file specification %s
1700 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1701 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1702 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1703 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1704 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1706 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1708 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1709 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1710 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1712 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval'
1714 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1715 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1716 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it
1717 is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly
1718 building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using
1719 that in an eval(). See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1721 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1723 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1724 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1725 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1727 =item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1729 (F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
1730 any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
1732 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1735 =item Excessively long <> operator
1737 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1738 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1739 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1740 variable and glob that.
1742 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1744 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented in MacPerl. See L<perlport>.
1746 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
1748 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1750 =item Exiting eval via %s
1752 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1753 goto, or a loop control statement.
1755 =item Exiting format via %s
1757 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1758 goto, or a loop control statement.
1760 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1762 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1763 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1764 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1766 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1768 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1769 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1771 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1773 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1774 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1776 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1778 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1779 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1780 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1781 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1783 =item %s: Expression syntax
1785 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1786 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1788 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1790 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
1791 CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
1792 queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
1794 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1796 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1797 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1798 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1799 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1800 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1802 =item Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
1804 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1805 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1806 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1807 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1809 =item fcntl is not implemented
1811 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1812 PDP-11 or something?
1814 =item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
1816 (F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
1819 =item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1821 (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string start with a length indicator
1822 which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1823 a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1826 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1828 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1829 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1830 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1831 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1833 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1835 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1836 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1837 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
1838 intended only to read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1839 Another possibility is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0
1840 (also known as STDIN) for output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
1842 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1844 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1845 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
1848 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
1850 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1851 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
1853 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1855 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1856 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1857 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1860 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1862 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1863 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1864 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1867 =item Format not terminated
1869 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1870 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1872 =item Format %s redefined
1874 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1877 no warnings 'redefine';
1878 eval "format NAME =...";
1881 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1891 (or something like that).
1893 =item %s found where operator expected
1895 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
1896 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1897 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1898 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1900 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1902 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1904 =item gethostent not implemented
1906 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1907 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1910 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1912 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1913 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1915 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1917 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1918 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1920 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1922 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1923 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1924 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1926 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1928 (F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
1929 that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
1930 declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
1931 which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1933 =item glob failed (%s)
1935 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1936 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1937 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1938 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1939 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1940 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1941 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1942 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1943 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1944 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1945 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1947 =item Glob not terminated
1949 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1950 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1951 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1952 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1954 =item gmtime(%f) too large
1956 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with an number that was larger than
1957 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
1958 date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
1959 not-a-number value).
1961 =item gmtime(%f) too small
1963 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with an number that was smaller than
1964 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
1965 date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
1966 not-a-number value).
1968 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1970 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1971 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1973 =item goto must have label
1975 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1976 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1978 =item ()-group starts with a count
1980 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is
1981 supposed to follow something: a template character or a ()-group.
1982 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1984 =item %s had compilation errors.
1986 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1988 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1990 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1991 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1992 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1994 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1996 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1997 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
1999 =item %s has too many errors
2001 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
2002 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
2004 =item Having no space between pattern and following word is deprecated
2008 You had a word that isn't a regex modifier immediately following a pattern
2009 without an intervening space. For example, the two constructs:
2011 $a =~ m/$foo/sand $bar
2012 $a =~ m/$foo/s and $bar
2014 both currently mean the same thing, but it is planned to disallow the first form
2017 $a =~ m/$foo/and $bar
2019 will be disallowed too.
2021 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
2023 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2024 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2025 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2027 =item Identifier too long
2029 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
2030 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
2031 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
2032 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
2034 =item Ignoring zero length \N{} in character class
2036 (W) Named Unicode character escapes (\N{...}) may return a
2037 zero length sequence. When such an escape is used in a character class
2038 its behaviour is not well defined. Check that the correct escape has
2039 been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
2041 =item Illegal binary digit %s
2043 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
2045 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
2047 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
2048 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
2051 =item Illegal character \%o (carriage return)
2053 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
2054 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
2055 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
2056 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
2057 to your Perl administrator.
2059 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
2061 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2062 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, and \.
2064 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
2066 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
2067 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
2069 =item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
2071 (F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
2073 =item Illegal division by zero
2075 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
2076 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
2079 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
2081 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
2082 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
2083 number stopped before the illegal character.
2085 =item Illegal modulus zero
2087 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
2088 numbers don't take to this kindly.
2090 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
2092 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
2093 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
2095 =item Illegal octal digit %s
2097 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2099 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
2101 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2102 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
2104 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: -%c
2106 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
2107 following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtw]>.
2109 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
2111 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
2112 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
2113 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
2115 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
2117 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
2118 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
2119 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
2122 =item (in cleanup) %s
2124 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
2125 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
2126 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
2127 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
2128 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
2130 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
2131 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
2133 =item Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on parent '%s'
2135 (F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not
2136 C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See the C3
2137 documentation in L<mro> for more information.
2139 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
2141 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
2142 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
2143 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
2145 =item Infinite recursion in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2147 (F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input
2148 text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive patterns
2149 either consume text or fail.
2151 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2154 =item Initialization of state variables in list context currently forbidden
2156 (F) Currently the implementation of "state" only permits the initialization
2157 of scalar variables in scalar context. Re-write C<state ($a) = 42> as
2158 C<state $a = 42> to change from list to scalar context. Constructions such
2159 as C<state (@a) = foo()> will be supported in a future perl release.
2161 =item Insecure dependency in %s
2163 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
2164 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
2165 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
2166 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
2167 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
2168 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
2169 L<perlsec> for more information.
2171 =item Insecure directory in %s
2173 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2174 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
2175 the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
2178 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
2180 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2181 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
2182 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
2183 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
2184 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
2186 =item Integer overflow in %s number
2188 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2189 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2190 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2191 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2192 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
2193 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2194 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2195 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2198 =item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2200 (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2201 or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2202 integers for your architecture.
2204 =item Integer overflow in version
2206 (F) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for the
2207 size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
2208 because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use a
2209 element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by
2210 trying to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like
2213 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2215 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
2216 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2219 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2221 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2222 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2223 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2224 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2225 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2226 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
2228 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2230 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2231 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2234 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
2236 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
2237 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
2238 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
2239 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
2241 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2243 (F) The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2244 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2246 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2248 (F) The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2249 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2251 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2253 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2254 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
2256 =item Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2258 (W regexp) The numeric escape (for example C<\xHH>) of value < 256
2259 didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion
2260 from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma.
2261 The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD) instead.
2262 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2263 escape was discovered.
2265 =item Invalid mro name: '%s'
2267 (F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")>
2268 or C<use mro 'foo'>, where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO).
2269 (Currently, the only valid ones are C<dfs> and C<c3>). See L<mro>.
2271 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2273 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2274 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2275 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2276 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2277 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2279 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2281 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2282 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2284 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2286 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2287 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2288 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2291 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2293 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other than a
2294 colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2295 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2296 list was terminated too soon.
2298 =item Invalid strict version format (%s)
2300 (F) A version number did not meet the "strict" criteria for versions.
2301 A "strict" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2302 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2303 v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least three components.
2304 The parenthesized text indicates which criteria were not met.
2305 See the L<version> module for more details on allowed version formats.
2307 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2309 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2310 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2311 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2314 =item Invalid version format (%s)
2316 (F) A version number did not meet the "lax" criteria for versions.
2317 A "lax" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2318 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2319 v-string. If the v-string has less than three components, it must have a
2320 leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading 'v' is optional. Both
2321 decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a trailing "alpha"
2322 component separated by an underscore character after a fractional or
2323 dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized text indicates which
2324 criteria were not met. See the L<version> module for more details on
2325 allowed version formats.
2327 =item Invalid version object
2329 (F) The internal structure of the version object was invalid. Perhaps
2330 the internals were modified directly in some way or an arbitrary reference
2331 was blessed into the "version" class.
2333 =item ioctl is not implemented
2335 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2336 strange for a machine that supports C.
2338 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
2340 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2341 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
2343 =item IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
2345 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2346 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO Perl must be configured
2349 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2351 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2352 neither as a system call or an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2354 =item $* is no longer supported
2356 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older perls, has
2357 been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. In previous versions of perl the use of
2358 C<$*> enabled or disabled multi-line matching within a string.
2360 Instead of using C<$*> you should use the C</m> (and maybe C</s>) regexp
2361 modifiers. (In older versions: when C<$*> was set to a true value then all regular
2362 expressions behaved as if they were written using C</m>.)
2364 =item $# is no longer supported
2366 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older perls, has
2367 been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported. You should use the
2368 printf/sprintf functions instead.
2370 =item `%s' is not a code reference
2372 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant
2373 needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
2376 =item `%s' is not an overloadable type
2378 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2381 =item junk on end of regexp
2383 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2385 =item Label not found for "last %s"
2387 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2388 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2391 =item Label not found for "next %s"
2393 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2394 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2397 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
2399 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2400 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2403 =item leaving effective %s failed
2405 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2406 effective uids or gids failed.
2408 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
2410 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2411 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2412 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2414 =item Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
2416 (F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse
2417 (using L<lex_stuff_pvn_flags|perlapi/lex_stuff_pvn_flags> or similar), but
2418 tried to insert a character that couldn't be part of the current input.
2419 This is an inherent pitfall of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the
2420 reasons to avoid it. Where it is necessary to stuff, stuffing only
2421 plain ASCII is recommended.
2423 =item Lexing code internal error (%s)
2425 (F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a
2428 =item listen() on closed socket %s
2430 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2431 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2434 =item localtime(%f) too large
2436 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with an number that was larger
2437 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2438 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
2439 not-a-number value).
2441 =item localtime(%f) too small
2443 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with an number that was smaller
2444 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2445 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
2446 not-a-number value).
2448 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
2450 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2451 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2453 =item Lost precision when %s %f by 1
2455 (W) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by one is too large
2456 for the underlying floating point representation to store accurately,
2457 hence the target of C<++> or C<--> is unchanged. Perl issues this warning
2458 because it has already switched from integers to floating point when values
2459 are too large for integers, and now even floating point is insufficient.
2460 You may wish to switch to using L<Math::BigInt> explicitly.
2462 =item lstat() on filehandle %s
2464 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2465 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2466 instead on the filehandle.)
2468 =item lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined
2470 (W misc) Making a subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it has been defined
2471 by declaring the subroutine with an lvalue attribute is not
2472 possible. To make the subroutine an lvalue subroutine add the
2473 lvalue attribute to the definition, or put the declaration before
2476 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
2478 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
2479 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
2480 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
2482 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2484 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2485 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2487 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2489 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2490 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2492 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2494 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2501 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2502 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2503 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2504 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2506 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2508 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2509 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2510 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2511 when the function is called.
2513 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2515 (S utf8) (F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2516 encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
2518 One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2519 you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
2520 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2522 If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2523 sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2524 set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2527 See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
2529 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2531 (F) Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2532 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2534 =item Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N
2536 (F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
2538 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2540 (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2541 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2543 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2545 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2546 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2548 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2550 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2551 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2553 =item Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded
2555 (F) Perl aborted due to a too high number of signals pending. This
2556 usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
2557 too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
2558 resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
2559 safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
2561 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2563 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2564 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
2565 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2568 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2570 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2571 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2574 =item % may not be used in pack
2576 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2577 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2578 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2580 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2582 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2583 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2585 =item Method %s not permitted
2589 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2591 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2592 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2593 ended earlier on the current line.
2595 =item Misplaced _ in number
2597 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2598 separate two digits.
2600 =item Missing argument in %s
2602 (W uninitialized) A printf-type format required more arguments than were
2605 =item Missing argument to -%c
2607 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2608 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2610 =item Missing braces on \N{}
2612 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2613 double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space (or
2614 comment) between the C<\N> and the C<{> in a regex with the C</x> modifier.
2615 This modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately follow
2618 =item Missing braces on \o{}
2620 (F) A C<\o> must be followed immediately by a C<{> in double-quotish context.
2622 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2624 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2625 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2627 =item Missing command in piped open
2629 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2630 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2633 =item Missing control char name in \c
2635 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2638 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2640 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2641 they have a name with which they can be found.
2643 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2645 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2646 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2647 can vary from one line to the next.
2649 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2651 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2652 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2654 =item Missing right brace on %s
2656 (F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}>, C<\P{...}>, or C<\N{...}>.
2658 =item Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N
2661 C<\N> has two meanings.
2663 The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed
2664 in braces, meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that name.
2665 Thus C<\N{ASTERISK}> is another way of writing C<*>, valid in both
2666 double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns, it doesn't
2667 have the meaning an unescaped C<*> does.
2669 Starting in Perl 5.12.0, C<\N> also can have an additional meaning (only) in
2670 patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short for
2671 C<[^\n]>, and like C<.> but is not affected by the C</s> regex modifier.)
2673 This can lead to some ambiguities. When C<\N> is not followed immediately by a
2674 left brace, Perl assumes the C<[^\n]> meaning. Also, if
2675 the braces form a valid quantifier such as C<\N{3}> or C<\N{5,}>, Perl assumes
2676 that this means to match the given quantity of non-newlines (in these examples,
2677 3; and 5 or more, respectively). In all other case, where there is a C<\N{>
2678 and a matching C<}>, Perl assumes that a character name is desired.
2680 However, if there is no matching C<}>, Perl doesn't know if it was mistakenly
2681 omitted, or if C<[^\n]{> was desired, and
2682 raises this error. If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant
2683 the latter, escape the brace with a backslash, like so: C<\N\{>
2685 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2687 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2688 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2691 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2693 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2694 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2695 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2697 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2699 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2700 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2701 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2703 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2706 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2708 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2709 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2712 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2713 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
2716 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2718 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2719 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2722 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2724 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2725 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2727 =item Module name must be constant
2729 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2731 =item Module name required with -%c option
2733 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2734 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2735 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2737 =item More than one argument to '%s' open
2739 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2740 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2741 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2742 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2744 =item msg%s not implemented
2746 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2748 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2750 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2751 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2753 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
2755 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
2756 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
2757 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2759 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2761 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2764 =item "%s" variable %s can't be in a package
2766 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2767 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2768 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2770 =item \N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...}
2772 (F) The new (5.12) meaning of C<\N> as C<[^\n]> is not valid in a bracketed
2773 character class, for the same reason that C<.> in a character class loses its
2774 specialness: it matches almost everything, which is probably not what you want.
2776 =item \N{NAME} must be resolved by the lexer
2778 (F) When compiling a regex pattern, an unresolved named character or sequence
2779 was encountered. This can happen in any of several ways that bypass the lexer,
2780 such as using single-quotish context, or an extra backslash in double quotish:
2782 $re = '\N{SPACE}'; # Wrong!
2783 $re = "\\N{SPACE}"; # Wrong!
2786 Instead, use double-quotes with a single backslash:
2788 $re = "\N{SPACE}"; # ok
2791 The lexer can be bypassed as well by creating the pattern from smaller
2795 /${re}{SPACE}/; # Wrong!
2797 It's not a good idea to split a construct in the middle like this, and it
2798 doesn't work here. Instead use the solution above.
2800 Finally, the message also can happen under the C</x> regex modifier when the
2801 C<\N> is separated by spaces from the C<{>, in which case, remove the spaces.
2803 /\N {SPACE}/x; # Wrong!
2806 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2808 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2809 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2810 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2811 provided for this purpose.
2813 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
2814 %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
2815 the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
2816 will not trigger this warning.
2818 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
2820 (F) The character constant represented by C<...> is not a valid hexadecimal
2821 number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use a character other than 0 - 9
2822 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
2824 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
2826 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
2827 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2829 =item Negative length
2831 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2832 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2834 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
2836 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
2837 greater than or equal to zero.
2839 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2841 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
2842 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
2843 expression about where the problem was discovered.
2845 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2846 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
2848 =item %s never introduced
2850 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2851 scope before it could possibly have been used.
2853 =item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
2855 (F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
2856 real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
2859 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
2861 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2862 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2863 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2864 securable. See L<perlsec>.
2866 =item No comma allowed after %s
2868 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2869 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2870 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2872 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2873 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2874 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2875 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2876 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
2877 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2878 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2879 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2880 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2881 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2882 this error was triggered?
2884 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
2886 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2887 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2888 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
2890 =item No DB::DB routine defined
2892 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2893 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2894 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
2897 =item No dbm on this machine
2899 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
2900 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
2902 =item No DB::sub routine defined
2904 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2905 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2906 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
2907 of each ordinary subroutine call.
2909 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
2911 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
2913 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2915 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2916 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2917 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2919 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
2921 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
2922 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2924 =item No input file after < on command line
2926 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2927 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2928 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2932 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2933 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2935 =item No next::method '%s' found for %s
2937 (F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
2938 in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
2939 it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
2940 or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
2942 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2944 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2945 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2947 =item No output file after > on command line
2949 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2950 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2951 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2953 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2955 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2956 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2957 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2959 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2961 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2962 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2963 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2965 =item No Perl script found in input
2967 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2968 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2970 =item No setregid available
2972 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2975 =item No setreuid available
2977 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2980 =item No %s specified for -%c
2982 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2983 you haven't specified one.
2984 =item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2986 (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed variable
2987 but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type. The indicated
2988 package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the L<fields> pragma.
2990 =item No such class %s
2992 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state" declaration, but
2993 this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
2995 =item No such hook: %s
2997 (F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl. Currently, Perl
2998 accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks
3000 =item No such pipe open
3002 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
3003 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
3004 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
3006 =item No such signal: SIG%s
3008 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
3009 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
3010 names on your system.
3012 =item Not a CODE reference
3014 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3015 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3016 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3019 =item Not a format reference
3021 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
3022 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
3024 =item Not a GLOB reference
3026 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
3027 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
3028 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
3029 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3031 =item Not a HASH reference
3033 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
3034 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
3035 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3037 =item Not an ARRAY reference
3039 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
3040 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3041 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3043 =item Not a perl script
3045 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
3046 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
3049 =item Not a SCALAR reference
3051 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
3052 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3053 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3055 =item Not a subroutine reference
3057 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3058 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3059 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3062 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
3064 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
3065 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
3067 =item Not enough arguments for %s
3069 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
3071 =item Not enough format arguments
3073 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
3074 supplied. See L<perlform>.
3078 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3079 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3082 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
3084 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
3085 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
3086 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
3087 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
3088 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
3090 =item Non-octal character '%c'. Resolved as "%s"
3092 (W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character was unexpectedly
3093 encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value is as indicated.
3095 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
3097 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
3098 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
3099 select. See L<perlfunc/select>
3101 =item Null filename used
3103 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
3104 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
3106 =item NULL OP IN RUN
3108 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
3111 =item Null picture in formline
3113 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
3114 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
3115 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
3119 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
3121 =item NULL regexp argument
3123 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
3125 =item NULL regexp parameter
3127 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
3129 =item Number too long
3131 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
3132 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
3133 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
3134 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
3137 =item Number with no digits
3139 (F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like a number.
3140 This happens, for example with C<\o{}>, with no number between the braces.
3142 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
3144 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
3145 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
3148 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
3150 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
3151 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
3152 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
3154 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
3156 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
3158 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
3159 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
3161 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
3163 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3164 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3166 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
3168 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3169 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3171 =item Offset outside string
3173 (F|W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
3174 with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
3175 imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
3176 take place when going past the end of the string when either
3177 C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
3178 for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
3181 =item %s() on unopened %s
3183 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
3184 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
3185 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
3187 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
3189 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
3190 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3194 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3198 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3200 =item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
3202 (W io, deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
3203 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
3204 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3207 =item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
3209 (W io, deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
3210 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
3211 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3214 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
3216 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
3217 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
3218 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
3219 C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
3221 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
3223 (W) You performed an operation requiring Unicode semantics on a Unicode
3224 surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use of surrogates for anything but
3225 storing strings in UTF-16, but semantics are (reluctantly) defined for
3226 the surrogates, and they are to do nothing for this operation. Because
3227 the use of surrogates can be dangerous, Perl warns.
3229 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3230 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3232 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3233 C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
3235 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for non-Unicode code point 0x%X
3237 (W) You performed an operation requiring Unicode semantics on a code
3238 point that is not in Unicode, so what it should do is not defined. Perl
3239 has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn you.
3241 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3242 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3244 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3245 C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
3247 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
3249 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
3250 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
3251 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
3252 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
3255 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
3257 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
3258 in the current lexical scope.
3260 =item Out of memory!
3262 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3263 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
3264 no option but to exit immediately.
3266 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
3267 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
3268 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
3269 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
3270 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
3272 =item Out of memory during %s extend
3274 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
3275 the largest possible memory allocation.
3277 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
3279 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3280 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
3281 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
3282 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
3284 =item Out of memory during request for %s
3286 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
3287 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
3290 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
3291 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
3292 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
3293 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
3294 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
3295 where the failed request happened.
3297 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
3299 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
3300 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
3301 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
3303 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
3305 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
3306 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
3309 =item '.' outside of string in pack
3311 (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
3312 position to before the start of the packed string being built.
3314 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
3316 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3317 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3319 =item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
3321 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3322 the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
3323 UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3325 =item Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
3327 (F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was dereferenced,
3328 but the overloaded operation did not return a reference. See
3331 =item Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
3333 (F) An object with a C<qr> overload was used as part of a match, but the
3334 overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See L<overload>.
3336 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
3338 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
3339 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
3340 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
3341 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
3343 =item \p{} uses Unicode rules, not locale rules
3345 (W) You compiled a regular expression that contained a Unicode property
3346 match (C<\p> or C<\P>), but the regular expression is also being told to
3347 use the run-time locale, not Unicode. Instead, use a POSIX character
3348 class, which should know about the locale's rules.
3349 (See L<perlrecharclass/POSIX Character Classes>.)
3351 Even if the run-time locale is ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), which is a subset of
3352 Unicode, some properties will give results that are not valid for that
3355 Here are a couple of examples to help you see what's going on. If the
3356 locale is ISO 8859-7, the character at code point 0xD7 is the "GREEK
3357 CAPITAL LETTER CHI". But in Unicode that code point means the
3358 "MULTIPLICATION SIGN" instead, and C<\p> always uses the Unicode
3359 meaning. That means that C<\p{Alpha}> won't match, but C<[[:alpha:]]>
3360 should. Only in the Latin1 locale are all the characters in the same
3361 positions as they are in Unicode. But, even here, some properties give
3362 incorrect results. An example is C<\p{Changes_When_Uppercased}> which
3363 is true for "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS", but since the upper
3364 case of that character is not in Latin1, in that locale it doesn't
3365 change when upper cased.
3367 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
3369 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3370 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3374 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
3375 page. See L<perlform>.
3379 (P) An internal error.
3381 =item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
3383 (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
3384 an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
3385 platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
3386 enter this branch on this platform.
3388 =item panic: ck_grep
3390 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
3392 =item panic: ck_split
3394 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
3396 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
3398 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
3399 there are in the savestack.
3401 =item panic: del_backref
3403 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
3406 =item panic: Devel::DProf inconsistent subroutine return
3408 (P) Devel::DProf called a subroutine that exited using goto(LABEL),
3409 last(LABEL) or next(LABEL). Leaving that way a subroutine called from
3410 an XSUB will lead very probably to a crash of the interpreter. This is
3411 a bug that will hopefully one day get fixed.
3415 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
3416 it wasn't an eval context.
3418 =item panic: do_subst
3420 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
3423 =item panic: do_trans_%s
3425 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
3428 =item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
3430 (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
3435 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
3439 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
3440 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
3442 =item panic: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
3444 (P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries tried
3445 repeatedly, but each time something re-created entries in the glob. Most
3446 likely the glob contains an object with a reference back to the glob and a
3447 destructor that adds a new object to the glob.
3449 =item panic: hfreeentries failed to free hash
3451 (P) The internal routine used to clear a hash's entries tried repeatedly,
3452 but each time something added more entries to the hash. Most likely the hash
3453 contains an object with a reference back to the hash and a destructor that
3454 adds a new object to the hash.
3456 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
3458 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
3460 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
3462 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
3464 =item panic: kid popen errno read
3466 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
3470 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
3471 it wasn't a block context.
3473 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
3475 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
3478 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
3480 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
3481 invalid enum on the top of it.
3483 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
3485 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
3486 references to an object.
3490 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
3492 =item panic: memory wrap
3494 (P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
3496 =item panic: pad_alloc
3498 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3499 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3501 =item panic: pad_free curpad
3503 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3504 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3506 =item panic: pad_free po
3508 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3510 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
3512 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3513 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3515 =item panic: pad_sv po
3517 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3519 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
3521 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3522 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3524 =item panic: pad_swipe po
3526 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3528 =item panic: pp_iter
3530 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
3532 =item panic: pp_match%s
3534 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
3537 =item panic: pp_split
3539 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
3541 =item panic: realloc
3543 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
3545 =item panic: restartop
3547 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
3548 didn't supply the destination.
3552 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
3553 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
3555 =item panic: scan_num
3557 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
3559 =item panic: sv_chop %s
3561 (P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the
3562 scalar's string buffer.
3564 =item panic: sv_insert
3566 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
3569 =item panic: top_env
3571 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
3573 =item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
3575 (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't permitted
3578 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
3580 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
3581 to even) byte length.
3583 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
3585 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an odd (as opposed
3586 to even) byte length.
3590 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
3592 =item Parsing code internal error (%s)
3594 (F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API in
3597 =item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3599 (F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
3600 consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before the
3601 nesting limit is exceeded.
3603 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3606 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
3608 (W parenthesis) You said something like
3614 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
3616 Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
3618 =item C<-p> destination: %s
3620 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
3621 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
3622 redirected it with select().)
3624 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
3626 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3627 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
3628 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
3630 =item Perl_my_%s() not available
3632 (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
3633 so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
3634 conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
3635 '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3637 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
3639 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
3640 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
3641 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
3643 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3645 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3646 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
3648 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
3650 See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
3652 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3654 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3656 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3657 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3660 are supported and installed on your system.
3661 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3663 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3664 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3665 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
3666 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
3667 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
3668 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
3669 Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before you really fix
3670 the problem, however, you will get the same error message each time
3671 you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
3672 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3674 =item pid %x not a child
3676 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
3677 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
3678 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
3680 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
3682 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
3684 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3686 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
3687 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
3688 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
3689 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
3690 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
3692 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
3694 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
3695 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
3697 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3699 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
3700 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
3701 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
3702 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
3703 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3704 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3706 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3708 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
3709 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
3710 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
3711 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
3712 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3713 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3715 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3717 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
3718 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
3719 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
3720 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
3721 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3722 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3724 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
3726 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
3727 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
3728 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
3729 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
3731 You probably wrote something like this:
3738 when you should have written this:
3745 If you really want comments, build your list the
3746 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
3750 'b', # another comment
3753 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
3755 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
3756 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
3757 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
3760 You probably wrote something like this:
3764 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
3765 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
3769 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
3771 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
3772 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
3773 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
3774 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
3776 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
3778 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
3779 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
3781 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
3783 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
3784 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
3785 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
3786 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
3788 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
3790 (W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
3791 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
3792 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
3793 to the array you apparently lost track of.
3795 =item Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
3797 (W ambiguous) You said something like C<m/$\/> in a regex.
3798 The regex C<m/foo$\s+bar/m> translates to: match the word 'foo', the output
3799 record separator (see L<perlvar/$\>) and the letter 's' (one time or more)
3800 followed by the word 'bar'.
3802 If this is what you intended then you can silence the warning by using
3803 C<m/${\}/> (for example: C<m/foo${\}s+bar/>).
3805 If instead you intended to match the word 'foo' at the end of the line
3806 followed by whitespace and the word 'bar' on the next line then you can use
3807 C<m/$(?)\/> (for example: C<m/foo$(?)\s+bar/>).
3809 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
3811 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
3815 is now misinterpreted as
3819 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
3820 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
3821 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
3824 =item Premature end of script headers
3828 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
3830 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3831 before now. Check your control flow.
3833 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
3835 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
3836 before now. Check your control flow.
3838 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3840 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3841 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3842 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3843 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
3846 =item Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
3848 (W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is useless,
3849 since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments.
3851 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
3853 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
3854 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
3856 =item Prototype not terminated
3858 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
3861 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3863 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
3864 meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3865 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3867 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3869 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
3870 {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
3871 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3873 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3875 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
3876 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
3877 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
3878 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
3879 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
3881 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3884 =item Range iterator outside integer range
3886 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
3887 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
3888 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
3889 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
3891 =item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
3893 (W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
3894 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
3896 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
3898 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
3899 before now. Check your control flow.
3901 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
3903 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
3905 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
3907 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
3909 =item Reallocation too large: %x
3911 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
3913 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
3915 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
3918 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
3920 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
3921 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
3922 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
3924 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
3926 (F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, Perl
3927 believes it found an infinite loop in the C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a
3928 crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth.
3930 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
3932 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking
3933 a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance
3936 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
3938 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
3939 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
3940 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
3941 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
3943 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
3944 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
3945 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
3946 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
3948 =item Reference is already weak
3950 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
3951 Doing so has no effect.
3953 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
3955 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
3956 a reference count of other than 1.
3958 =item Reference to invalid group 0
3960 (F) You used C<\g0> or similar in a regular expression. You may refer to
3961 capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers (normal
3962 backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
3963 backreferences), but using 0 does not make sense.
3965 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3967 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
3968 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If you
3969 wanted to have the character with ordinal 7 inserted into the regular expression,
3970 prepend zeroes to make it three digits long: C<\007>
3972 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3975 =item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3977 (F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there are
3978 not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the expression before
3979 where the C<\g{-7}> was located.
3981 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3984 =item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3986 (F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k<NAME> >> in your regular
3987 expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses such
3988 as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<(?<NAME>...). Check if the name has been spelled
3989 correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
3991 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3994 =item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3996 (F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
3997 most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
3998 of the C<....> part.
4000 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4003 =item regexp memory corruption
4005 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
4006 expression compiler gave it.
4008 =item Regexp out of space
4010 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
4013 =item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompatible)
4015 (F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
4016 numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
4017 terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
4019 =item Replacement list is longer than search list
4021 (W misc) You have used a replacement list that is longer than the
4022 search list. So the additional elements in the replacement list
4025 =item Reversed %s= operator
4027 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
4028 always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
4030 =item rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4032 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either closed or not
4033 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4035 =item Scalars leaked: %d
4037 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
4038 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
4039 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
4040 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
4042 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
4044 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
4045 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
4046 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
4047 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4048 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4049 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4050 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4052 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
4053 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
4054 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4057 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
4059 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
4060 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
4061 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
4062 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4063 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4064 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4065 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4067 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
4068 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
4069 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4072 =item Search pattern not terminated
4074 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
4075 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4076 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
4078 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
4079 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
4080 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
4081 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
4083 =item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
4085 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
4088 The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
4089 C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
4090 parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
4091 the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
4093 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
4095 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
4096 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
4098 =item seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4100 (W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed or not
4101 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4103 =item select not implemented
4105 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
4107 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
4109 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
4110 the current implementation.
4112 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
4114 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
4115 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
4117 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
4119 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
4120 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
4122 =item sem%s not implemented
4124 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
4126 =item send() on closed socket %s
4128 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
4129 before now. Check your control flow.
4131 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4133 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <-- HERE
4134 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4137 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4139 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
4140 has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4141 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4143 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4145 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
4146 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4147 discovered. This happens when using the C<(?^...)> construct to tell
4148 Perl to use the default regular expression modifiers, and you
4149 redundantly specify a default modifier; or having a modifier that can't
4150 be turned off (such as C<"p"> or C<"l">) after a minus; or specifying
4151 more than one of the C<"d">, C<"l">, or C<"u"> modifiers. For other
4152 causes, see L<perlre>.
4154 =item Sequence \%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4156 (F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument following the escape
4157 sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly written.
4159 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4161 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
4162 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
4163 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4166 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4168 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains braces, they must balance
4169 for Perl to properly detect the end of the clause. The <-- HERE shows in
4170 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4173 =item "500 Server error"
4179 (A) This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
4180 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
4181 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
4182 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
4183 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
4184 produce a valid header".
4186 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
4188 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
4189 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
4190 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
4191 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
4192 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
4193 Please see the following for more information:
4195 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
4196 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
4197 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
4199 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
4201 =item setegid() not implemented
4203 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
4204 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4207 =item seteuid() not implemented
4209 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
4210 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4213 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
4215 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
4216 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
4219 =item setrgid() not implemented
4221 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
4222 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4225 =item setruid() not implemented
4227 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
4228 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4231 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
4233 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
4234 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
4235 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
4237 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
4239 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the
4240 world, because the world might have written on it already.
4242 =item Setuid script not plain file
4244 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that isn't read from a file,
4245 but from a socket, a pipe or another device.
4247 =item shm%s not implemented
4249 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
4251 =item !=~ should be !~
4253 (W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
4254 interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
4255 operators: probably not what you intended.
4257 =item <> should be quotes
4259 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
4262 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
4264 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
4265 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
4266 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
4267 probably not what you had in mind.
4269 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
4271 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
4274 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
4276 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
4277 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
4279 =item Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks encapsulation
4281 (F) You should not use the C<~~> operator on an object that does not
4282 overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's underlying structure for
4285 =item sort is now a reserved word
4287 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
4288 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
4290 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
4292 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
4293 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4295 =item splice() offset past end of array
4297 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
4298 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the end
4299 of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want, try
4300 explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset. See
4305 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
4306 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
4307 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
4309 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
4311 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
4312 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
4313 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
4314 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
4317 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
4319 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
4320 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4322 =item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
4324 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
4325 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
4326 C<can> may break this.
4328 =item Subroutine %s redefined
4330 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
4333 no warnings 'redefine';
4334 eval "sub name { ... }";
4337 =item Substitution loop
4339 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
4340 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
4341 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
4342 L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
4344 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
4346 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4347 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4348 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4350 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
4352 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4353 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4354 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4356 =item substr outside of string
4358 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
4359 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
4360 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
4361 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
4362 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
4364 =item sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
4366 (P) Perl tried to force the upgrade an SV to a type which was actually
4367 inferior to its current type.
4369 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4371 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
4372 branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
4373 contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
4374 clustering parentheses:
4376 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
4378 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4379 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4381 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4383 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is a
4384 number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
4385 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4387 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
4389 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
4390 and effective uids or gids.
4394 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
4398 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
4400 A keyword is misspelled.
4401 A semicolon is missing.
4403 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
4404 An opening or closing brace is missing.
4405 A closing quote is missing.
4407 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
4408 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
4409 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
4410 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
4411 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
4412 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
4413 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
4414 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
4415 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
4418 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
4420 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
4421 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
4424 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
4426 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
4427 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
4428 or "my $var" or "our $var".
4430 =item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
4432 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4434 =item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
4436 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4438 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
4440 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
4441 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
4442 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
4443 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
4445 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
4447 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4448 before now. Check your control flow.
4450 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
4452 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
4453 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
4455 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
4457 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
4458 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
4460 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
4462 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
4463 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4465 =item telldir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4467 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to telldir() is either closed or not really
4468 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4470 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
4472 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
4473 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
4482 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
4483 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
4485 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
4487 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
4488 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
4489 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
4490 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
4493 =item The %s function is unimplemented
4495 (F) The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
4496 to the probings of Configure.
4498 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
4500 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
4501 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
4502 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
4505 =item The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
4507 (F) This attribute was never supported on C<my> or C<sub> declarations.
4509 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
4511 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
4513 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
4514 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
4515 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
4516 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
4517 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
4518 target of the change to
4519 %ENV which produced the warning.
4521 =item thread failed to start: %s
4523 (W threads)(S) The entry point function of threads->create() failed for some reason.
4525 =item times not implemented
4527 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
4528 suspect you're not running on Unix.
4530 =item "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
4532 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4533 B<-T> option (or the B<-t> option), but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
4534 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
4535 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
4538 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
4539 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
4540 editing the #! line so that the B<-%c> option is a part of Perl's first
4541 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -%c> to C<perl -%c -n>.
4543 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
4544 B<-%c> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -%c scriptname>.
4546 =item To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
4548 (F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
4549 uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
4550 specified an illegal mapping.
4551 See L<perlunicode/"User-Defined Character Properties">.
4553 =item Too deeply nested ()-groups
4555 (F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level.
4557 =item Too few args to syscall
4559 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
4560 system call to call, silly dilly.
4562 =item Too late for "-%s" option
4564 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4565 B<-M>, B<-m> or B<-C> option.
4567 In the case of B<-M> and B<-m>, this is an error because those options are
4568 not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
4570 The B<-C> option only works if it is specified on the command line as well
4571 (with the same sequence of letters or numbers following). Either specify
4572 this option on the command line, or, if your system supports it, make your
4573 script executable and run it directly instead of passing it to perl.
4575 =item Too late to run %s block
4577 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
4578 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
4579 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
4580 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
4583 =item Too many args to syscall
4585 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
4587 =item Too many arguments for %s
4589 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
4593 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4594 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4598 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4599 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4601 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
4603 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
4604 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
4606 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
4608 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
4609 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
4610 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
4612 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
4614 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][],
4615 y/// or y[][] construct.
4617 =item '%s' trapped by operation mask
4619 (F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's
4620 disallowed. See L<Safe>.
4622 =item truncate not implemented
4624 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
4625 Configure knows about.
4627 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
4629 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
4630 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
4631 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
4632 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
4634 =item Type of argument to %s must be hashref or arrayref
4636 (F) You called C<keys>, C<values> or C<each> with an argument that was
4637 expected to be a reference to a hash or a reference to an array.
4639 =item umask not implemented
4641 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
4642 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
4644 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
4646 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
4648 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
4650 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4651 many execution contexts were entered and left.
4653 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
4655 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4656 many values were temporarily localized.
4658 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
4660 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4661 many blocks were entered and left.
4663 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
4665 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4666 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
4668 =item Undefined format "%s" called
4670 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4671 another package? See L<perlform>.
4673 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
4675 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
4676 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4678 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
4680 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
4681 since been undefined.
4683 =item Undefined subroutine called
4685 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
4686 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
4688 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
4690 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
4691 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4693 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
4695 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4696 another package? See L<perlform>.
4698 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
4700 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
4701 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
4704 =item %s: Undefined variable
4706 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4707 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4709 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
4711 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
4712 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
4714 =item Unicode non-character U+%X is illegal for open interchange
4716 (W utf8) Certain codepoints, such as U+FFFE and U+FFFF, are defined by the
4717 Unicode standard to be non-characters. Those are legal codepoints, but are
4718 reserved for internal use; so, applications shouldn't attempt to exchange
4719 them. If you know what you are doing you can turn
4720 off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4722 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
4724 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
4727 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
4729 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
4730 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
4731 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->, C<< <& >>, C<< >& >>.
4733 =item Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
4735 (W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
4736 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
4737 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
4738 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
4739 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
4740 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
4742 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
4744 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
4745 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
4746 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
4747 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
4749 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
4751 (W) You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
4753 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4755 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
4756 is not known. The condition may be lookahead or lookbehind (the condition
4757 is true if the lookahead or lookbehind is true), a (?{...}) construct (the
4758 condition is true if the code evaluates to a true value), or a number (the
4759 condition is true if the set of capturing parentheses named by the number
4762 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4763 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4765 =item Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
4767 (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4768 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4770 =item Unknown Unicode option value %x
4772 (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4773 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4775 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
4777 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
4778 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
4780 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a module
4781 (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have imported this module
4783 =item Unknown verb pattern '%s' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4785 (F) You either made a typo or have incorrectly put a C<*> quantifier
4786 after an open brace in your pattern. Check the pattern and review
4787 L<perlre> for details on legal verb patterns.
4791 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4793 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
4794 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
4795 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
4796 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4798 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4800 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
4801 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
4802 matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4803 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4805 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
4807 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
4808 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
4809 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
4810 you were last editing.
4812 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
4814 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
4815 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
4816 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
4819 =item Unrecognized character %s; marked by <-- HERE after %s near column %d
4821 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
4822 in your Perl script (or eval) near the specified column. Perhaps you tried
4823 to run a compressed script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
4825 =item Unrecognized escape \%c in character class passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4827 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4828 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
4829 understood literally, but this may change in a future version of Perl.
4830 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4831 escape was discovered.
4833 =item Unrecognized escape \%c passed through
4835 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4836 recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally, but this may
4837 change in a future version of Perl.
4839 =item Unrecognized escape \%c passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4841 (W regexp) You used a backslash-