3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (enabled by default).
12 (S) A severe warning (enabled by default).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
19 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
21 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
22 category is included with the classification letter in the description
25 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
26 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Severe warnings are always enabled, unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %x
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '%c' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only
60 after certain types. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
76 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
79 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
81 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
82 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
83 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
84 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
86 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
88 (W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
89 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
90 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
92 =item Ambiguous use of %c resolved as operator %c
94 (W ambiguous) C<%>, C<&>, and C<*> are both infix operators (modulus,
95 bitwise and, and multiplication) I<and> initial special characters
96 (denoting hashes, subroutines and typeglobs), and you said something
97 like C<*foo * foo> that might be interpreted as either of them. We
98 assumed you meant the infix operator, but please try to make it more
99 clear -- in the example given, you might write C<*foo * foo()> if you
100 really meant to multiply a glob by the result of calling a function.
102 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s} resolved to %c%s
104 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<@{foo}>, which might be
105 asking for the variable C<@foo>, or it might be calling a function
106 named foo, and dereferencing it as an array reference. If you wanted
107 the variable, you can just write C<@foo>. If you wanted to call the
108 function, write C<@{foo()}> ... or you could just not have a variable
109 and a function with the same name, and save yourself a lot of trouble.
111 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s[...]} resolved to %c%s[...]
113 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s{...}} resolved to %c%s{...}
115 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<${foo[2]}> (where foo
116 represents the name of a Perl keyword), which might be looking for
117 element number 2 of the array named C<@foo>, in which case please write
118 C<$foo[2]>, or you might have meant to pass an anonymous arrayref to
119 the function named foo, and then do a scalar deref on the value it
120 returns. If you meant that, write C<${foo([2])}>.
122 In regular expressions, the C<${foo[2]}> syntax is sometimes necessary
123 to disambiguate between array subscripts and character classes.
124 C</$length[2345]/>, for instance, will be interpreted as C<$length>
125 followed by the character class C<[2345]>. If an array subscript is what
126 you want, you can avoid the warning by changing C</${length[2345]}/>
127 to the unsightly C</${\$length[2345]}/>, by renaming your array to
128 something that does not coincide with a built-in keyword, or by
129 simply turning off warnings with C<no warnings 'ambiguous';>.
131 =item Ambiguous use of -%s resolved as -&%s()
133 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<-foo>, which might be the
134 string C<"-foo">, or a call to the function C<foo>, negated. If you meant
135 the string, just write C<"-foo">. If you meant the function call,
138 =item Ambiguous use of 's//le...' resolved as 's// le...'; Rewrite as 's//el' if you meant 'use locale rules and evaluate rhs as an expression'. In Perl 5.16, it will be resolved the other way
140 (W deprecated, ambiguous) You wrote a pattern match with substitution
141 immediately followed by "le". In Perl 5.14 and earlier, this is
142 resolved as meaning to take the result of the substitution, and see if
143 it is stringwise less-than-or-equal-to what follows in the expression.
144 Having the "le" immediately following a pattern is deprecated behavior,
145 so in Perl 5.16, this expression will be resolved as meaning to do the
146 pattern match using the rules of the current locale, and evaluate the
147 rhs as an expression when doing the substitution. In 5.14, if you want
148 the latter interpretation, you can simply write "el" instead.
150 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
152 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
153 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
154 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
156 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
158 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
159 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
160 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
161 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
162 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
164 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
171 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
173 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
174 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
175 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
176 a scalar value (the length of an array, or the population info of a
177 hash) and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
178 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
181 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
183 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
185 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
187 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element or a
188 subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
194 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
196 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
202 or a hash or array slice, such as:
204 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
205 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
207 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
209 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
210 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
213 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
215 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
216 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
217 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
219 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
221 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you
222 forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take care of transforming
223 data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing
224 the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer.
225 If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be
226 the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
228 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
230 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
231 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
233 =item assertion botched: %s
235 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
237 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
239 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
241 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
243 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
244 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
245 know which context to supply to the right side.
247 =item A thread exited while %d threads were running
249 (W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily the main
250 thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
251 Usually it's a good idea first to collect the return values of the
252 created threads by joining them, and only then to exit from the main
253 thread. See L<threads>.
255 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
257 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
258 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
260 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
262 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
263 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
264 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
270 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
272 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
273 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
276 bless $self, "$proto";
278 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
280 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
281 which is not in its key set.
283 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
285 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
286 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
288 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%x
290 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
291 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
292 outside any of those arenas.
294 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
296 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference-counted internal table of
297 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
298 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
299 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
301 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
303 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
304 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
305 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
306 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
309 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
311 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
313 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
315 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
316 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
317 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
318 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
319 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
320 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
323 =item Attempt to join self
325 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
326 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
327 to move the join() to some other thread.
329 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
331 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
332 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
333 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
334 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
335 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
338 =item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
340 (F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
341 compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
342 unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
345 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
347 (W) You tried to set the length of an array which has been freed. You
348 can do this by storing a reference to the scalar representing the last index
349 of an array and later assigning through that reference. For example
351 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
354 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
356 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
357 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
358 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
360 =item Attribute "locked" is deprecated
362 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the "locked"
363 attribute on a code reference. The :locked attribute is obsolete, has had no
364 effect since 5005 threads were removed, and will be removed in a future
367 =item Attribute "unique" is deprecated
369 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the "unique"
370 attribute on an array, hash or scalar reference. The :unique attribute has
371 had no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and will be removed in a future release
374 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
376 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
377 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
378 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
379 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
381 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
383 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
384 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
385 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
387 =item Bad filehandle: %s
389 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
390 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
391 open(), or did it in another package.
393 =item Bad free() ignored
395 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
396 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
397 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
399 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
400 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
401 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
405 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
407 =item Badly placed ()'s
409 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
410 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
413 =item Bad name after %s::
415 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
416 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
425 $sym = "mypack::$var";
427 =item Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
429 (F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the
432 =item Bad realloc() ignored
434 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
435 never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
436 by setting the environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
438 =item Bad symbol for array
440 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
441 wasn't a symbol table entry.
443 =item Bad symbol for dirhandle
445 (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
446 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
448 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
450 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
451 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
453 =item Bad symbol for hash
455 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
456 wasn't a symbol table entry.
458 =item Bareword found in conditional
460 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
461 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
462 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
466 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
469 use constant TYPO => 1;
470 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
472 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
474 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
476 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
477 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
478 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
480 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
482 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
483 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
484 you need to predeclare a package?
486 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
488 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
489 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
492 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
494 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
495 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
496 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
497 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
498 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
500 =item \1 better written as $1
502 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
503 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
504 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
505 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
506 there are more than 9 backreferences.
508 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
510 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
511 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
512 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
514 =item bind() on closed socket %s
516 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
517 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
519 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
521 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
522 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
524 =item "\b{" is deprecated; use "\b\{" instead
526 =item "\B{" is deprecated; use "\B\{" instead
528 (W deprecated, regexp) Use of an unescaped "{" immediately following a
529 C<\b> or C<\B> is now deprecated so as to reserve its use for Perl
530 itself in a future release.
532 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
534 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
536 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
538 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
541 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
543 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
544 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
545 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
547 =item Callback called exit
549 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
550 exited by calling exit.
552 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
554 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
555 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
556 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
557 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
558 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
559 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
560 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
561 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
563 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
565 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
566 compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
567 attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
568 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
570 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
572 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
573 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
575 =item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
577 (F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference in it,
578 then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax. The access
579 triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is no legal conversion
580 from that type of reference to a typeglob.
582 =item Cannot copy to %s in %s
584 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
585 be directly assigned to.
587 =item Cannot find encoding "%s"
589 (S io) You tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to a filehandle,
590 either with open() or binmode().
592 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
594 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
595 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
596 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
598 =item Can't bless non-reference value
600 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
601 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
603 =item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
605 (F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
606 a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
608 =item Can't "break" outside a given block
610 (F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
612 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
614 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
615 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
616 like this will reproduce the error:
619 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
620 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
622 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
624 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
625 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
626 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
627 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
629 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
631 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
632 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
633 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
634 Something like this will reproduce the error:
637 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
638 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
640 =item Can't chdir to %s
642 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
643 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
645 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
647 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
650 =item Can't coerce %s to %s in %s
652 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
653 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
663 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
665 =item Can't "continue" outside a when block
667 (F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
670 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
672 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
673 quotas or other plumbing problems.
675 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
677 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
678 "state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
680 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
682 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
683 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
685 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
687 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
690 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
692 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
693 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
694 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
696 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
698 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
699 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
700 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
702 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
704 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
705 regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the
706 regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
708 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
710 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
711 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
713 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
715 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
716 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
719 =item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
721 (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
722 or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
723 little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
724 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
726 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
728 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
729 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
730 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
731 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
732 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
733 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
738 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
739 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
740 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
742 =item Can't execute %s
744 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
745 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
747 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
749 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
750 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
752 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
754 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
755 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property?
756 See L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
757 for a complete list of available properties.
759 =item Can't find label %s
761 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
762 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
764 =item Can't find %s on PATH
766 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
769 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
771 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
772 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
773 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
775 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
777 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
778 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
779 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
781 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
783 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
784 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag or there
785 may not be a linebreak after it. A good programmer's editor will have
786 a way to help you find these characters (or lack of characters). See
787 L<perlop> for the full details on here-documents.
789 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
791 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode
792 property (for example C<\p{Lu}> matches all uppercase
793 letters). If you did mean to use a Unicode property, see
794 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
795 for a complete list of available properties. If you didn't
796 mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either by C<\\p>
797 (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, or
802 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
805 =item Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
807 (W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be retried
810 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
812 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
813 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
814 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
815 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
816 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
817 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
818 the access-checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
819 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
820 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
821 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
822 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access-checking routine gave up
823 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access-checking
824 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
825 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
826 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
828 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
830 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
831 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
833 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
835 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
836 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
838 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
840 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
841 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
843 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
845 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
846 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
847 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
848 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
850 =item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
852 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
853 comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
854 as the reduce() function in List::Util).
856 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
858 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
861 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
863 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
864 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
865 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
866 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
868 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
870 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
871 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
872 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
873 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
874 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
875 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
877 =item Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
879 (F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a fatal error to
880 attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise non-numeric
883 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
885 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
886 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
887 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
888 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
889 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
890 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
893 =item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
895 (F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
896 package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
898 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
900 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension. This
901 may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one that is
902 incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known to happen
903 between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your dynamic
904 extension was built against an older version of the library that is
905 installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old dynamic
908 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
910 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
911 lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you want to
912 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
915 =item Can't localize through a reference
917 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
918 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
919 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
920 that $ref will still be a reference.
922 =item Can't locate %s
924 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
925 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
926 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
927 need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
928 the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
929 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
930 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
932 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
934 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
935 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
936 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
937 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
939 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
941 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
942 for example, C<foo.so> or C<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
943 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
945 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
947 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
948 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
949 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
951 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
953 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
954 doesn't seem to exist.
956 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
958 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
959 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
961 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
963 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
966 =item Can't modify %s in %s
968 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
969 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
971 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
973 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
976 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
978 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
979 such. See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
981 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
983 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
986 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
988 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
989 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
990 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
991 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
992 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
993 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
995 =item Can't open %s: %s
997 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
998 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
999 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
1000 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
1003 =item Can't open a reference
1005 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
1006 using the 3-arg open() syntax:
1010 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
1011 open is not supported.
1013 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
1015 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
1016 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
1017 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
1018 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
1020 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
1022 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1023 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
1024 the command line for writing.
1026 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
1028 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1029 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
1030 command line for reading.
1032 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
1034 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1035 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
1036 the command line for writing.
1038 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
1040 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1041 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
1044 =item Can't open perl script%s
1046 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
1048 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
1049 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1050 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1052 =item Can't read CRTL environ
1054 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1055 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1056 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1057 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1060 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1062 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1063 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1064 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1065 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1066 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1067 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1069 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1071 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1072 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1073 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1075 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1077 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1078 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1080 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1082 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1083 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1085 =item Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
1087 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
1088 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
1089 the method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1091 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1093 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1094 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1097 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1099 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1100 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1102 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1104 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
1105 but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
1106 to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
1107 the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
1110 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1112 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1113 open already. Bizarre.
1115 =item Can't take log of %g
1117 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1118 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1119 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1122 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1124 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1125 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1126 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1128 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1130 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1131 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1132 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1134 =item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1136 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1137 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1138 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1139 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1141 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1143 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1144 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1145 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1147 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1149 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1150 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1152 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1154 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1155 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1157 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1159 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1160 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1161 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1163 =item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1165 (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1166 byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1167 allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1169 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1171 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1174 =item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1176 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1177 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1178 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1179 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1182 =item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1184 (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1185 that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1186 For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1187 is inside a big-endian group.
1189 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1191 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1192 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1193 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1194 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1197 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1199 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1200 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1201 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1203 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1205 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1206 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1208 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1210 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1211 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1212 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1214 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1216 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1217 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1218 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1219 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1220 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1223 =item Can't use "when" outside a topicalizer
1225 (F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1226 loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1227 from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1228 or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1230 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1232 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1233 references can be weakened.
1235 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1237 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1238 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1239 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1241 =item Character following "\c" must be ASCII
1243 (F|W deprecated, syntax) In C<\cI<X>>, I<X> must be an ASCII character.
1244 It is planned to make this fatal in all instances in Perl 5.16. In the
1245 cases where it isn't fatal, the character this evaluates to is
1246 derived by exclusive or'ing the code point of this character with 0x40.
1248 Note that non-alphabetic ASCII characters are discouraged here as well.
1250 =item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1256 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1257 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1258 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1262 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1265 =item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1271 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode expects
1272 all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved as if you
1275 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1277 =item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1283 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1284 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1285 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1287 pack("c", $x & 255);
1289 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1292 =item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1294 (W unpack) You tried something like
1296 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1298 where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1299 below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the value
1300 modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1302 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1304 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1306 (W pack) You tried something like
1308 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1310 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1311 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1312 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1314 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1316 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1318 (W unpack) You tried something like
1320 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1322 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1323 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1324 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1326 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1328 =item "\c{" is deprecated and is more clearly written as ";"
1330 (D deprecated, syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way
1331 to specify non-printable characters. You used it with a "{" which
1332 evaluates to ";", which is printable. It is planned to remove the
1333 ability to specify a semi-colon this way in Perl 5.16. Just use a
1334 semi-colon or a backslash-semi-colon without the "\c".
1336 =item "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"
1338 (W syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way to specify
1339 non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which is better
1340 written as simply itself, perhaps preceded by a backslash for non-word
1343 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1345 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1347 =item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1349 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1350 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1352 =item Closure prototype called
1354 (F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to an attribute
1355 handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure is created.
1356 This subroutine cannot be called.
1358 =item Code missing after '/'
1360 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be another
1361 template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1363 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
1365 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, no properties match it; all inverse properties do
1367 (W utf8, non_unicode) You had a code point above the Unicode maximum of U+10FFFF.
1369 Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code
1370 points, up to the limit of what is storable in an unsigned integer on
1371 your system, but these may not be accepted by other languages/systems.
1372 At one time, it was legal in some standards to have code points up to
1373 0x7FFF_FFFF, but not higher. Code points above 0xFFFF_FFFF require
1374 larger than a 32 bit word.
1376 None of the Unicode or Perl-defined properties will match a non-Unicode
1377 code point. For example,
1379 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\p{Any}/
1381 will not match, because the code point is not in Unicode. But
1383 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\P{Any}/
1387 =item %s: Command not found
1389 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1390 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1392 =item Compilation failed in require
1394 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1395 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1396 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1398 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1400 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1401 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1402 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1403 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1404 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1405 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1406 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1407 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1408 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1410 =item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1412 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1413 cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_broadcast()
1414 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1415 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1416 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread
1417 first to wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1418 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1421 =item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1423 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1424 cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_signal()
1425 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1426 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1427 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread
1428 first to wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1429 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1432 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1434 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1435 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1436 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1438 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1440 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1441 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1442 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1443 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1446 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1448 (F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to find
1449 the character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you
1450 forgot to load the corresponding C<charnames> pragma?
1453 =item Constant is not %s reference
1455 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1456 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1457 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1458 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1459 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1461 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1463 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1464 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1465 commentary and workarounds.
1467 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1469 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1470 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1473 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1475 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1476 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1478 =item &CORE::%s cannot be called directly
1480 (F) You tried to call a subroutine in the C<CORE::> namespace
1481 with C<&foo> syntax or through a reference. Most subroutines
1482 in this package cannot yet be called that way, but must be
1483 called as barewords. Something like this will work:
1485 BEGIN { *shove = \&CORE::push; }
1486 shove @array, 1,2,3; # pushes on to @array
1488 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1490 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1492 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1494 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1495 expression compiler gave it.
1497 =item corrupted regexp program
1499 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1502 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
1504 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1506 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1508 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1509 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1512 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1514 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1515 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1516 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1517 which case it indicates something else.
1519 This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the F<perl> binary,
1520 setting the C pre-processor macro C<PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN> to the desired value.
1522 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1524 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1525 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1526 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1528 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1530 (D deprecated) C<defined()> is not usually right on hashes and has been
1531 discouraged since 5.004.
1533 Although C<defined %hash> is false on a plain not-yet-used hash, it
1534 becomes true in several non-obvious circumstances, including iterators,
1535 weak references, stash names, even remaining true after C<undef %hash>.
1536 These things make C<defined %hash> fairly useless in practice.
1538 If a check for non-empty is what you wanted then just put it in boolean
1539 context (see L<perldata/Scalar values>):
1545 If you had C<defined %Foo::Bar::QUUX> to check whether such a package
1546 variable exists then that's never really been reliable, and isn't
1547 a good way to enquire about the features of a package, or whether
1551 =item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1553 (F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
1554 most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
1555 of the C<....> part.
1557 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1560 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1562 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1563 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1565 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1567 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1568 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1569 that triggers this error.
1571 =item Deprecated character in \N{...}; marked by <-- HERE in \N{%s<-- HERE %s
1573 (D deprecated) Just about anything is legal for the C<...> in C<\N{...}>.
1574 But starting in 5.12, non-reasonable ones that don't look like names
1575 are deprecated. A reasonable name begins with an alphabetic character
1576 and continues with any combination of alphanumerics, dashes, spaces,
1577 parentheses or colons.
1579 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1581 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>.
1582 There has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1583 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1584 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1585 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1586 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1587 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1589 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1593 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1595 Beginning with perl 5.9.4, you can also use C<state> variables to
1596 have lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1598 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1600 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1602 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1603 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather than
1604 to create a dangling reference.
1606 =item Did not produce a valid header
1610 =item %s did not return a true value
1612 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1613 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1614 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1615 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1617 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1619 (W misc) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or
1622 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1624 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1625 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1628 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1630 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1631 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1636 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1637 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
1639 =item Document contains no data
1643 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1645 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1646 define a C<$VERSION.>
1648 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1650 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1651 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1653 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1655 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1657 =item do_study: out of memory
1659 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1661 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1663 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1664 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1665 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1666 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1667 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1668 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1669 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1670 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1672 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1674 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1675 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1677 =item dump is not supported
1679 (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1681 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1683 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1686 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1688 (W) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a type
1689 in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1691 =item elseif should be elsif
1693 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1694 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1695 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1696 unlikely to be what you want.
1700 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1701 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1702 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1704 =item entering effective %s failed
1706 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1707 effective uids or gids failed.
1709 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1711 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1712 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1713 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1715 =item Error converting file specification %s
1717 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1718 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1719 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1720 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1721 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1723 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1725 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1726 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1727 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1729 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval'
1731 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1732 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1733 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk,
1734 it is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by using the
1735 C<re 'eval'> pragma or by explicitly building the pattern from an
1736 interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval(). See
1737 L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1739 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1741 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1742 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1743 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1745 =item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1747 (F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
1748 any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
1750 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1753 =item Excessively long <> operator
1755 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1756 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1757 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1758 variable and glob that.
1760 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1762 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented on some systems, e.g., Symbian
1763 OS. See L<perlport>.
1765 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
1767 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1769 =item Exiting eval via %s
1771 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1772 goto, or a loop control statement.
1774 =item Exiting format via %s
1776 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1777 goto, or a loop control statement.
1779 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1781 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1782 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1783 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1785 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1787 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1788 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1790 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1792 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1793 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1795 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1797 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1798 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1799 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1800 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1802 =item %s: Expression syntax
1804 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1805 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1807 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1809 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
1810 CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
1811 queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
1813 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1815 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1816 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1817 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1818 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1819 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1821 =item Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
1823 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1824 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1825 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1826 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1828 =item fcntl is not implemented
1830 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1831 PDP-11 or something?
1833 =item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
1835 (F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
1838 =item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1840 (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string start with a length indicator
1841 which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1842 a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1843 C<u63> as the format.
1845 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1847 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1848 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1849 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1850 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1852 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1854 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1855 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1856 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with ">". If you intended only to
1857 read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>. Another possibility
1858 is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0 (also known as STDIN) for
1859 output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
1861 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1863 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1864 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
1867 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
1869 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1870 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
1872 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1874 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1875 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1876 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1879 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1881 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1882 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1883 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1886 =item Format not terminated
1888 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1889 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1891 =item Format %s redefined
1893 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1896 no warnings 'redefine';
1897 eval "format NAME =...";
1900 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1910 (or something like that).
1912 =item %s found where operator expected
1914 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
1915 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1916 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1917 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1919 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1921 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1923 =item gethostent not implemented
1925 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1926 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1929 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1931 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1932 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1934 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1936 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1937 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1939 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1941 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1942 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1943 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1945 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1947 (F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
1948 that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
1949 declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
1950 which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1952 =item glob failed (%s)
1954 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1955 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1956 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1957 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1958 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1959 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1960 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1961 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1962 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1963 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1964 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1966 =item Glob not terminated
1968 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1969 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1970 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1971 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1973 =item gmtime(%f) too large
1975 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was larger than
1976 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
1977 date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
1978 not-a-number value).
1980 =item gmtime(%f) too small
1982 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was smaller than
1983 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
1984 date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
1985 not-a-number value).
1987 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1989 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1990 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1992 =item goto must have label
1994 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1995 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1997 =item ()-group starts with a count
1999 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is supposed to follow
2000 something: a template character or a ()-group. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2002 =item %s had compilation errors.
2004 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
2006 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
2008 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
2009 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
2010 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
2012 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
2014 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
2015 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
2017 =item %s has too many errors
2019 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
2020 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
2022 =item Having no space between pattern and following word is deprecated
2026 You had a word that isn't a regex modifier immediately following a
2027 pattern without an intervening space. If you are trying to use the C</le>
2028 flags on a substitution, use C</el> instead. Otherwise, add white space
2029 between the pattern and following word to eliminate the warning. As an
2030 example of the latter, the two constructs:
2032 $a =~ m/$foo/sand $bar
2033 $a =~ m/$foo/s and $bar
2035 both currently mean the same thing, but it is planned to disallow the first
2036 form in Perl 5.16. And,
2038 $a =~ m/$foo/and $bar
2040 will be disallowed too.
2042 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
2044 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2045 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2046 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2048 =item Identifier too long
2050 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
2051 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
2052 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
2053 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
2055 =item Ignoring zero length \N{} in character class
2057 (W) Named Unicode character escapes (\N{...}) may return a
2058 zero length sequence. When such an escape is used in a character class
2059 its behaviour is not well defined. Check that the correct escape has
2060 been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
2062 =item Illegal binary digit %s
2064 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
2066 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
2068 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
2069 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
2072 =item Illegal character after '_' in prototype for %s : %s
2074 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2075 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2077 =item Illegal character \%o (carriage return)
2079 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
2080 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
2081 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
2082 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
2083 to your Perl administrator.
2085 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
2087 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2088 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2090 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
2092 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
2093 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
2095 =item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
2097 (F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
2099 =item Illegal division by zero
2101 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
2102 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
2105 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
2107 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
2108 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
2109 number stopped before the illegal character.
2111 =item Illegal modulus zero
2113 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
2114 numbers don't take to this kindly.
2116 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
2118 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
2119 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
2121 =item Illegal octal digit %s
2123 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2125 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
2127 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2128 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
2130 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: -%c
2132 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
2133 following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtw]>.
2135 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
2137 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
2138 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
2139 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
2141 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
2143 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
2144 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
2145 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
2148 =item (in cleanup) %s
2150 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
2151 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
2152 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
2153 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
2154 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
2156 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
2157 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
2159 =item Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on parent '%s'
2161 (F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not
2162 C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See the C3
2163 documentation in L<mro> for more information.
2165 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
2167 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
2168 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
2169 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
2171 =item Infinite recursion in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2173 (F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input
2174 text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive patterns
2175 either consume text or fail.
2177 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2180 =item Initialization of state variables in list context currently forbidden
2182 (F) Currently the implementation of "state" only permits the initialization
2183 of scalar variables in scalar context. Re-write C<state ($a) = 42> as
2184 C<state $a = 42> to change from list to scalar context. Constructions such
2185 as C<state (@a) = foo()> will be supported in a future perl release.
2187 =item Insecure dependency in %s
2189 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
2190 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
2191 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
2192 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
2193 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
2194 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
2195 L<perlsec> for more information.
2197 =item Insecure directory in %s
2199 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2200 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
2201 the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
2204 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
2206 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2207 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
2208 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
2209 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
2210 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
2212 =item Insecure user-defined property %s
2214 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
2215 expression that contains a call to a user-defined character property
2216 function, i.e. C<\p{IsFoo}> or C<\p{InFoo}>.
2217 See L<perlunicode/User-Defined Character Properties> and L<perlsec>.
2219 =item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2221 (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2222 or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2223 integers for your architecture.
2225 =item Integer overflow in %s number
2227 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2228 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2229 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2230 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2231 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
2232 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2233 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2234 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2237 =item Integer overflow in version
2239 (F) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for the
2240 size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
2241 because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use a
2242 element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by
2243 trying to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like
2246 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2248 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
2249 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2252 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2254 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2255 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2256 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2257 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2258 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2259 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
2261 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2263 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2264 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2267 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
2269 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
2270 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
2271 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
2272 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
2274 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2276 (F) The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2277 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2279 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2281 (F) The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2282 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2284 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2286 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2287 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
2289 =item Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2291 (W regexp) The numeric escape (for example C<\xHH>) of value < 256
2292 didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion
2293 from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma.
2294 The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD) instead.
2295 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2296 escape was discovered.
2298 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
2300 (F) The character constant represented by C<...> is not a valid hexadecimal
2301 number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use a character other than
2302 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
2304 =item Invalid mro name: '%s'
2306 (F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")> or C<use mro 'foo'>,
2307 where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO). Currently,
2308 the only valid ones supported are C<dfs> and C<c3>, unless you have loaded
2309 a module that is a MRO plugin. See L<mro> and L<perlmroapi>.
2311 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2313 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2314 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2315 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2316 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2317 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2319 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2321 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2322 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2324 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2326 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2327 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2328 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2331 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2333 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other
2334 than a colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2335 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2336 list was terminated too soon.
2338 =item Invalid strict version format (%s)
2340 (F) A version number did not meet the "strict" criteria for versions.
2341 A "strict" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2342 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2343 v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least three components.
2344 The parenthesized text indicates which criteria were not met.
2345 See the L<version> module for more details on allowed version formats.
2347 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2349 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2350 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2351 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2354 =item Invalid version format (%s)
2356 (F) A version number did not meet the "lax" criteria for versions.
2357 A "lax" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2358 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2359 v-string. If the v-string has fewer than three components, it must
2360 have a leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading 'v' is optional.
2361 Both decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a trailing "alpha"
2362 component separated by an underscore character after a fractional or
2363 dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized text indicates which
2364 criteria were not met. See the L<version> module for more details on
2365 allowed version formats.
2367 =item Invalid version object
2369 (F) The internal structure of the version object was invalid. Perhaps
2370 the internals were modified directly in some way or an arbitrary reference
2371 was blessed into the "version" class.
2373 =item ioctl is not implemented
2375 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2376 strange for a machine that supports C.
2378 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
2380 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2381 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
2383 =item IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
2385 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2386 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO, Perl must be configured
2389 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2391 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2392 neither as a system call nor an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2394 =item $* is no longer supported
2396 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older
2397 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. In
2398 previous versions of perl the use of C<$*> enabled or disabled multi-line
2399 matching within a string.
2401 Instead of using C<$*> you should use the C</m> (and maybe C</s>) regexp
2402 modifiers. You can enable C</m> for a lexical scope (even a whole file)
2403 with C<use re '/m'>. (In older versions: when C<$*> was set to a true value
2404 then all regular expressions behaved as if they were written using C</m>.)
2406 =item $# is no longer supported
2408 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older
2409 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported. You
2410 should use the printf/sprintf functions instead.
2412 =item `%s' is not a code reference
2414 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant
2415 needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
2418 =item `%s' is not an overloadable type
2420 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2423 =item junk on end of regexp
2425 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2427 =item Label not found for "last %s"
2429 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2430 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2433 =item Label not found for "next %s"
2435 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2436 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2439 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
2441 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2442 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2445 =item leaving effective %s failed
2447 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2448 effective uids or gids failed.
2450 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
2452 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2453 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2454 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2456 =item Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
2458 (F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse
2459 (using L<lex_stuff_pvn|perlapi/lex_stuff_pvn> or similar), but tried to insert a character
2460 that couldn't be part of the current input. This is an inherent pitfall
2461 of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the reasons to avoid it. Where it
2462 is necessary to stuff, stuffing only plain ASCII is recommended.
2464 =item Lexing code internal error (%s)
2466 (F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a
2469 =item listen() on closed socket %s
2471 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2472 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2475 =item localtime(%f) too large
2477 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was larger
2478 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2479 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2480 not-a-number value).
2482 =item localtime(%f) too small
2484 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was smaller
2485 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2486 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2487 not-a-number value).
2489 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
2491 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2492 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2494 =item Lost precision when %s %f by 1
2496 (W) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by one is too large
2497 for the underlying floating point representation to store accurately,
2498 hence the target of C<++> or C<--> is unchanged. Perl issues this warning
2499 because it has already switched from integers to floating point when values
2500 are too large for integers, and now even floating point is insufficient.
2501 You may wish to switch to using L<Math::BigInt> explicitly.
2503 =item lstat() on filehandle %s
2505 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2506 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2507 instead on the filehandle.)
2509 =item lvalue attribute cannot be removed after the subroutine has been defined
2511 (W misc) The lvalue attribute on a Perl subroutine cannot be turned off
2512 once the subroutine is defined.
2514 =item lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined
2516 (W misc) Making a Perl subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it has been
2517 defined, whether by declaring the subroutine with an lvalue attribute
2518 or by using L<attributes.pm|attributes>, is not possible. To make the subroutine an
2519 lvalue subroutine, add the lvalue attribute to the definition, or put
2520 the declaration before the definition.
2522 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2524 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2525 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2527 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2529 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2530 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2532 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2534 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2541 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2542 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2543 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2544 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2546 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2548 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2549 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2550 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2551 when the function is called.
2553 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2555 (S utf8) (F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2556 encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
2558 One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2559 you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
2560 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2562 If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2563 sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2564 set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2567 See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
2569 =item Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N
2571 (F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
2573 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2575 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2576 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2578 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2580 (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2581 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2583 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2585 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2586 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2588 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2590 (F) Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2591 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2593 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2595 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2596 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
2597 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2600 =item Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded
2602 (F) Perl aborted due to too high a number of signals pending. This
2603 usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
2604 too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
2605 resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
2606 safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
2608 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2610 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2611 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2614 =item % may not be used in pack
2616 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2617 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2618 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2620 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2622 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2623 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2625 =item Method %s not permitted
2629 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2631 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2632 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2633 ended earlier on the current line.
2635 =item Misplaced _ in number
2637 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2638 separate two digits.
2640 =item Missing argument in %s
2642 (W uninitialized) A printf-type format required more arguments than were
2645 =item Missing argument to -%c
2647 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2648 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2650 =item Missing braces on \N{}
2652 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2653 double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space
2654 (or comment) between the C<\N> and the C<{> in a regex with the C</x> modifier.
2655 This modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately
2658 =item Missing braces on \o{}
2660 (F) A C<\o> must be followed immediately by a C<{> in double-quotish context.
2662 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2664 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2665 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2667 =item Missing command in piped open
2669 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2670 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2673 =item Missing control char name in \c
2675 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2678 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2680 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2681 they have a name with which they can be found.
2683 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2685 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2686 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2687 can vary from one line to the next.
2689 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2691 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2692 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2694 =item Missing right brace on %s
2696 (F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}>, C<\P{...}>, or C<\N{...}>.
2698 =item Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N
2700 (F) C<\N> has two meanings.
2702 The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed in braces,
2703 meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that
2704 name. Thus C<\N{ASTERISK}> is another way of writing C<*>, valid in both
2705 double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns,
2706 it doesn't have the meaning an unescaped C<*> does.
2708 Starting in Perl 5.12.0, C<\N> also can have an additional meaning (only)
2709 in patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short
2710 for C<[^\n]>, and like C<.> but is not affected by the C</s> regex modifier.)
2712 This can lead to some ambiguities. When C<\N> is not followed immediately
2713 by a left brace, Perl assumes the C<[^\n]> meaning. Also, if the braces
2714 form a valid quantifier such as C<\N{3}> or C<\N{5,}>, Perl assumes that this
2715 means to match the given quantity of non-newlines (in these examples,
2716 3; and 5 or more, respectively). In all other case, where there is a
2717 C<\N{> and a matching C<}>, Perl assumes that a character name is desired.
2719 However, if there is no matching C<}>, Perl doesn't know if it was
2720 mistakenly omitted, or if C<[^\n]{> was desired, and raises this error.
2721 If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant the latter,
2722 escape the brace with a backslash, like so: C<\N\{>
2724 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2726 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2727 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2730 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2732 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2733 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2734 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2736 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2738 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2739 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2740 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2742 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2745 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2747 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2748 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2751 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2752 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
2755 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2757 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2758 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2761 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2763 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2764 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2766 =item Module name must be constant
2768 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2770 =item Module name required with -%c option
2772 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2773 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2774 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2776 =item More than one argument to '%s' open
2778 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2779 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2780 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2781 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2783 =item msg%s not implemented
2785 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2787 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2789 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2790 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2792 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
2794 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
2795 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
2796 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2798 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2800 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2803 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
2805 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2806 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2807 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2809 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2811 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2812 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2813 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2814 provided for this purpose.
2816 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
2817 %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
2818 the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
2819 will not trigger this warning.
2821 =item \N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...}
2823 (F) The new (5.12) meaning of C<\N> as C<[^\n]> is not valid in a bracketed
2824 character class, for the same reason that C<.> in a character class loses
2825 its specialness: it matches almost everything, which is probably not
2828 =item \N{NAME} must be resolved by the lexer
2830 (F) When compiling a regex pattern, an unresolved named character or
2831 sequence was encountered. This can happen in any of several ways that
2832 bypass the lexer, such as using single-quotish context, or an extra
2833 backslash in double-quotish:
2835 $re = '\N{SPACE}'; # Wrong!
2836 $re = "\\N{SPACE}"; # Wrong!
2839 Instead, use double-quotes with a single backslash:
2841 $re = "\N{SPACE}"; # ok
2844 The lexer can be bypassed as well by creating the pattern from smaller
2848 /${re}{SPACE}/; # Wrong!
2850 It's not a good idea to split a construct in the middle like this, and it
2851 doesn't work here. Instead use the solution above.
2853 Finally, the message also can happen under the C</x> regex modifier when the
2854 C<\N> is separated by spaces from the C<{>, in which case, remove the spaces.
2856 /\N {SPACE}/x; # Wrong!
2859 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
2861 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
2862 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2864 =item Negative length
2866 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2867 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2869 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
2871 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
2872 greater than or equal to zero.
2874 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2876 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
2877 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
2878 expression about where the problem was discovered.
2880 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2881 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
2883 =item %s never introduced
2885 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2886 scope before it could possibly have been used.
2888 =item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
2890 (F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
2891 real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
2894 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
2896 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2897 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2898 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2899 securable. See L<perlsec>.
2901 =item No comma allowed after %s
2903 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2904 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2905 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2907 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2908 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2909 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2910 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2911 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see; please see
2912 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2913 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2914 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2915 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2916 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2917 this error was triggered?
2919 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
2921 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2922 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2923 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
2925 =item No DB::DB routine defined
2927 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2928 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2929 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
2932 =item No dbm on this machine
2934 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
2935 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
2937 =item No DB::sub routine defined
2939 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2940 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2941 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
2942 of each ordinary subroutine call.
2944 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2946 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2947 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2948 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2950 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
2952 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
2953 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2955 =item No input file after < on command line
2957 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2958 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2959 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2961 =item No next::method '%s' found for %s
2963 (F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
2964 in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
2965 it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
2966 or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
2968 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2970 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2971 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2973 =item No output file after > on command line
2975 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2976 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2977 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2979 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2981 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2982 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2983 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2985 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2987 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2988 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2989 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2991 =item No Perl script found in input
2993 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2994 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2996 =item No setregid available
2998 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
3001 =item No setreuid available
3003 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
3006 =item No %s specified for -%c
3008 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
3009 you haven't specified one.
3011 =item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
3013 (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed variable
3014 but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type. The indicated
3015 package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the L<fields> pragma.
3017 =item No such class %s
3019 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state"
3020 declaration, but this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
3022 =item No such hook: %s
3024 (F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl.
3025 Currently, Perl accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks.
3027 =item No such pipe open
3029 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
3030 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
3031 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
3033 =item No such signal: SIG%s
3035 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
3036 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
3037 names on your system.
3039 =item Not a CODE reference
3041 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3042 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3043 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3046 =item Not a format reference
3048 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
3049 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
3051 =item Not a GLOB reference
3053 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
3054 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
3055 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
3056 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3058 =item Not a HASH reference
3060 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
3061 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
3062 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3064 =item Not an ARRAY reference
3066 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
3067 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3068 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3070 =item Not an unblessed ARRAY reference
3072 (F) You passed a reference to a blessed array to C<push>, C<shift> or
3073 another array function. These only accept unblessed array references
3074 or arrays beginning explicitly with C<@>.
3076 =item Not a SCALAR reference
3078 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
3079 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3080 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3082 =item Not a subroutine reference
3084 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3085 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3086 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3089 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
3091 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
3092 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
3094 =item Not enough arguments for %s
3096 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
3098 =item Not enough format arguments
3100 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
3101 supplied. See L<perlform>.
3105 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3106 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3109 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
3111 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
3112 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
3113 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
3114 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
3115 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
3117 =item Non-octal character '%c'. Resolved as "%s"
3119 (W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character was
3120 unexpectedly encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value is as
3123 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
3125 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
3126 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
3127 select. See L<perlfunc/select>.
3129 =item Null filename used
3131 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
3132 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
3134 =item NULL OP IN RUN
3136 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
3139 =item Null picture in formline
3141 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
3142 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
3143 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
3147 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
3149 =item NULL regexp argument
3151 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
3153 =item NULL regexp parameter
3155 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
3157 =item Number too long
3159 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
3160 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
3161 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
3162 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
3165 =item Number with no digits
3167 (F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like
3168 a number. This happens, for example with C<\o{}>, with no number between
3171 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
3173 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
3174 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
3177 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
3179 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
3180 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
3181 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
3183 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
3185 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
3186 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
3188 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
3190 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3191 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3193 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
3195 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3196 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3198 =item Offset outside string
3200 (F|W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
3201 with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
3202 imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
3203 take place when going past the end of the string when either
3204 C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
3205 for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
3208 =item %s() on unopened %s
3210 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
3211 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
3212 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
3214 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
3216 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
3217 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3221 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3225 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3227 =item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
3229 (W io, deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
3230 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
3231 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3234 =item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
3236 (W io, deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
3237 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
3238 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3241 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
3243 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
3244 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
3245 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
3246 the C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
3248 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for non-Unicode code point 0x%X
3250 (W utf8, non_unicode) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3252 point that is not in Unicode, so what it should do is not defined. Perl
3253 has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn you.
3255 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3256 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3258 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3259 C<no warnings 'non_unicode';>.
3261 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
3263 (W utf8, surrogate) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3264 semantics on a Unicode
3265 surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use of surrogates for anything but
3266 storing strings in UTF-16, but semantics are (reluctantly) defined for
3267 the surrogates, and they are to do nothing for this operation. Because
3268 the use of surrogates can be dangerous, Perl warns.
3270 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3271 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3273 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3274 C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
3276 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
3278 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
3279 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
3280 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
3281 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
3284 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
3286 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
3287 in the current lexical scope.
3289 =item Out of memory!
3291 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3292 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
3293 no option but to exit immediately.
3295 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
3296 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
3297 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
3298 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
3299 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
3301 =item Out of memory during %s extend
3303 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
3304 the largest possible memory allocation.
3306 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
3308 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3309 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
3310 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
3311 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
3313 =item Out of memory during request for %s
3315 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
3316 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
3319 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
3320 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
3321 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
3322 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
3323 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
3324 where the failed request happened.
3326 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
3328 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
3329 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
3330 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
3332 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
3334 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
3335 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
3338 =item '.' outside of string in pack
3340 (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
3341 position to before the start of the packed string being built.
3343 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
3345 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3346 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3348 =item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
3350 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3351 the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
3352 UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3354 =item Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
3356 (F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was dereferenced,
3357 but the overloaded operation did not return a reference. See
3360 =item Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
3362 (F) An object with a C<qr> overload was used as part of a match, but the
3363 overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See L<overload>.
3365 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
3367 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
3368 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
3369 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
3370 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
3372 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
3374 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3375 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3379 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
3380 page. See L<perlform>.
3384 (P) An internal error.
3386 =item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
3388 (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
3389 an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
3390 platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
3391 enter this branch on this platform.
3393 =item panic: ck_grep
3395 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
3397 =item panic: ck_split
3399 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
3401 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
3403 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
3404 there are in the savestack.
3406 =item panic: del_backref
3408 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
3411 =item panic: Devel::DProf inconsistent subroutine return
3413 (P) Devel::DProf called a subroutine that exited using goto(LABEL),
3414 last(LABEL) or next(LABEL). Leaving that way a subroutine called from
3415 an XSUB will lead very probably to a crash of the interpreter. This is
3416 a bug that will hopefully one day get fixed.
3420 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
3421 it wasn't an eval context.
3423 =item panic: do_subst
3425 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
3428 =item panic: do_trans_%s
3430 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
3433 =item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
3435 (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
3440 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
3444 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
3445 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
3447 =item panic: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
3449 (P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries tried
3450 repeatedly, but each time something re-created entries in the glob. Most
3451 likely the glob contains an object with a reference back to the glob and a
3452 destructor that adds a new object to the glob.
3454 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
3456 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
3458 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
3460 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
3462 =item panic: kid popen errno read
3464 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
3468 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
3469 it wasn't a block context.
3471 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
3473 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
3476 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
3478 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
3479 invalid enum on the top of it.
3481 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
3483 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
3484 references to an object.
3488 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
3490 =item panic: memory wrap
3492 (P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
3494 =item panic: pad_alloc
3496 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3497 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3499 =item panic: pad_free curpad
3501 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3502 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3504 =item panic: pad_free po
3506 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3508 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
3510 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3511 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3513 =item panic: pad_sv po
3515 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3517 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
3519 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3520 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3522 =item panic: pad_swipe po
3524 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3526 =item panic: pp_iter
3528 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
3530 =item panic: pp_match%s
3532 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
3535 =item panic: pp_split
3537 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
3539 =item panic: realloc
3541 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
3543 =item panic: restartop
3545 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
3546 didn't supply the destination.
3550 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
3551 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
3553 =item panic: scan_num
3555 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
3557 =item panic: sv_chop %s
3559 (P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the
3560 scalar's string buffer.
3562 =item panic: sv_insert
3564 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
3567 =item panic: top_env
3569 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
3571 =item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
3573 (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't
3574 permitted at run time.
3576 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
3578 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
3579 to even) byte length.
3581 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
3583 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an odd (as opposed
3584 to even) byte length.
3588 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
3590 =item Parsing code internal error (%s)
3592 (F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API in
3595 =item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3597 (F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
3598 consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before the
3599 nesting limit is exceeded.
3601 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3604 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
3606 (W parenthesis) You said something like
3612 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
3614 Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
3616 =item C<-p> destination: %s
3618 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
3619 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
3620 redirected it with select().)
3622 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
3624 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3625 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
3626 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
3628 =item Perl folding rules are not up-to-date for 0x%x; please use the perlbug utility to report
3630 (W regex, deprecated) You used a regular expression with
3631 case-insensitive matching, and there is a bug in Perl in which the
3632 built-in regular expression folding rules are not accurate. This may
3633 lead to incorrect results. Please report this as a bug using the
3634 "perlbug" utility. (This message is marked deprecated, so that it by
3635 default will be turned-on.)
3637 =item Perl_my_%s() not available
3639 (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
3640 so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
3641 conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
3642 '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3644 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
3646 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
3647 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
3648 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
3650 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3652 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3653 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
3655 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
3657 See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
3659 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3661 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3663 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3664 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3667 are supported and installed on your system.
3668 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3670 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3671 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3672 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
3673 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
3674 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
3675 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
3676 Perl can and will use, and the script will be run. Before you really
3677 fix the problem, however, you will get the same error message each
3678 time you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
3679 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3681 =item pid %x not a child
3683 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
3684 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
3685 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
3687 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
3689 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
3691 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3693 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
3694 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
3695 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
3696 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
3697 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
3699 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
3701 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
3702 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
3704 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3706 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
3707 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
3708 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
3709 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
3710 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3711 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3713 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3715 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
3716 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
3717 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
3718 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
3719 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3720 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3722 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3724 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
3725 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
3726 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
3727 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
3728 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3729 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3731 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
3733 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
3734 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
3735 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
3736 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
3738 You probably wrote something like this:
3745 when you should have written this:
3752 If you really want comments, build your list the
3753 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
3757 'b', # another comment
3760 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
3762 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
3763 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
3764 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
3767 You probably wrote something like this:
3771 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
3772 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
3776 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
3778 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
3779 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
3780 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
3781 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
3783 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
3785 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
3786 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
3788 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
3790 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
3791 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
3792 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
3793 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
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 Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
3811 (W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
3812 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
3813 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
3814 to the array you apparently lost track of.
3816 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
3818 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
3822 is now misinterpreted as
3826 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
3827 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
3828 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
3831 =item Premature end of script headers
3835 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
3837 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3838 before now. Check your control flow.
3840 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
3842 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
3843 before now. Check your control flow.
3845 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3847 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3848 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3849 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3850 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
3853 =item Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
3855 (W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is useless,
3856 since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments.
3858 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
3860 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
3861 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
3863 =item Prototype not terminated
3865 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
3868 =item \p{} uses Unicode rules, not locale rules
3870 (W) You compiled a regular expression that contained a Unicode property
3871 match (C<\p> or C<\P>), but the regular expression is also being told to
3872 use the run-time locale, not Unicode. Instead, use a POSIX character
3873 class, which should know about the locale's rules.
3874 (See L<perlrecharclass/POSIX Character Classes>.)
3876 Even if the run-time locale is ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), which is a subset of
3877 Unicode, some properties will give results that are not valid for that
3880 Here are a couple of examples to help you see what's going on. If the
3881 locale is ISO 8859-7, the character at code point 0xD7 is the "GREEK
3882 CAPITAL LETTER CHI". But in Unicode that code point means the
3883 "MULTIPLICATION SIGN" instead, and C<\p> always uses the Unicode
3884 meaning. That means that C<\p{Alpha}> won't match, but C<[[:alpha:]]>
3885 should. Only in the Latin1 locale are all the characters in the same
3886 positions as they are in Unicode. But, even here, some properties give
3887 incorrect results. An example is C<\p{Changes_When_Uppercased}> which
3888 is true for "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS", but since the upper
3889 case of that character is not in Latin1, in that locale it doesn't
3890 change when upper cased.
3892 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3894 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
3895 meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3896 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3898 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3900 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
3901 {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
3902 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3904 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3906 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
3907 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
3908 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
3909 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
3910 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
3912 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3915 =item Range iterator outside integer range
3917 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
3918 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
3919 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
3920 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
3922 =item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
3924 (W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
3925 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
3927 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
3929 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
3930 before now. Check your control flow.
3932 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
3934 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
3936 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
3938 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
3940 =item Reallocation too large: %x
3942 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
3944 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
3946 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
3949 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
3951 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
3952 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
3953 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
3955 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
3957 (F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, Perl
3958 believes it found an infinite loop in the C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a
3959 crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth.
3961 =item refcnt_dec: fd %d%s
3963 =item refcnt: fd %d%s
3965 =item refcnt_inc: fd %d%s
3967 (P) Perl's I/O implementation failed an internal consistency check. If
3968 you see this message, something is very wrong.
3970 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
3972 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
3973 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
3974 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
3975 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
3977 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
3978 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
3979 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
3980 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
3982 =item Reference is already weak
3984 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
3985 Doing so has no effect.
3987 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
3989 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
3990 a reference count other than 1.
3992 =item Reference to invalid group 0
3994 (F) You used C<\g0> or similar in a regular expression. You may refer to
3995 capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers (normal
3996 backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
3997 backreferences). Using 0 does not make sense.
3999 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4001 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
4002 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If
4003 you wanted to have the character with ordinal 7 inserted into the regular
4004 expression, prepend zeroes to make it three digits long: C<\007>
4006 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4009 =item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4011 (F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k<NAME> >> in your regular
4012 expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses
4013 such as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<< (?<NAME>...) >>. Check if the name has been
4014 spelled correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
4016 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4019 =item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4021 (F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there
4022 are not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the
4023 expression before where the C<\g{-7}> was located.
4025 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4028 =item regexp memory corruption
4030 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
4031 expression compiler gave it.
4033 =item Regexp modifier "/%c" may appear a maximum of twice
4035 =item Regexp modifier "/%c" may not appear twice
4037 (F syntax, regexp) The regular expression pattern had too many occurrences
4038 of the specified modifier. Remove the extraneous ones.
4040 =item Regexp modifier "%c" may not appear after the "-"
4042 (F regexp) Turning off the given modifier has the side effect of turning
4043 on another one. Perl currently doesn't allow this. Reword the regular
4044 expression to use the modifier you want to turn on (and place it before
4045 the minus), instead of the one you want to turn off.
4047 =item Regexp modifiers "/%c" and "/%c" are mutually exclusive
4049 (F syntax, regexp) The regular expression pattern had more than one of these
4050 mutually exclusive modifiers. Retain only the modifier that is
4051 supposed to be there.
4053 =item Regexp out of space
4055 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
4058 =item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompatible)
4060 (F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
4061 numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
4062 terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
4064 =item Replacement list is longer than search list
4066 (W misc) You have used a replacement list that is longer than the
4067 search list. So the additional elements in the replacement list
4070 =item Reversed %s= operator
4072 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
4073 always come last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
4075 =item rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4077 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either closed or not
4078 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4080 =item Scalars leaked: %d
4082 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
4083 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
4084 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
4085 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
4087 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
4089 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
4090 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
4091 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
4092 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4093 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4094 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4095 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4097 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
4098 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
4099 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4102 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
4104 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
4105 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
4106 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
4107 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4108 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4109 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4110 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4112 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
4113 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
4114 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4117 =item Search pattern not terminated
4119 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
4120 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4121 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
4123 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
4124 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
4125 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
4126 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
4128 =item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
4130 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
4133 The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
4134 C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
4135 parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
4136 the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
4138 =item seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4140 (W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed or not
4141 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4143 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
4145 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
4146 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
4148 =item select not implemented
4150 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
4152 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
4154 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
4155 the current implementation.
4157 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
4159 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
4160 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
4162 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
4164 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
4165 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
4167 =item sem%s not implemented
4169 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
4171 =item send() on closed socket %s
4173 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
4174 before now. Check your control flow.
4176 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4178 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <-- HERE
4179 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4182 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4184 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
4185 has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4186 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4188 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4190 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
4191 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4192 discovered. This happens when using the C<(?^...)> construct to tell
4193 Perl to use the default regular expression modifiers, and you
4194 redundantly specify a default modifier. For other
4195 causes, see L<perlre>.
4197 =item Sequence \%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4199 (F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument following the escape
4200 sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly written.
4202 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4204 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
4205 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
4206 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4209 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4211 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contain braces, they must balance
4212 for Perl to detect the end of the clause properly. The <-- HERE shows in
4213 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4216 =item Z<>500 Server error
4222 (A) This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
4223 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
4224 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
4225 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
4226 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
4227 produce a valid header".
4229 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
4231 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
4232 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
4233 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
4234 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
4235 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
4236 Please see the following for more information:
4238 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
4239 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
4240 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
4242 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
4244 =item setegid() not implemented
4246 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
4247 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4250 =item seteuid() not implemented
4252 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
4253 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4256 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
4258 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
4259 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
4262 =item setrgid() not implemented
4264 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
4265 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4268 =item setruid() not implemented
4270 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
4271 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4274 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
4276 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
4277 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
4278 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
4280 =item shm%s not implemented
4282 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
4284 =item !=~ should be !~
4286 (W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
4287 interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
4288 operators: probably not what you intended.
4290 =item <> should be quotes
4292 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
4295 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
4297 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
4298 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
4299 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
4300 probably not what you had in mind.
4302 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
4304 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
4307 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
4309 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
4310 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
4312 =item Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks encapsulation
4314 (F) You should not use the C<~~> operator on an object that does not
4315 overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's underlying structure for
4318 =item sort is now a reserved word
4320 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
4321 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
4323 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
4325 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
4326 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4328 =item splice() offset past end of array
4330 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
4331 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the end
4332 of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want, try
4333 explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset. See
4338 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
4339 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
4340 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
4342 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
4344 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
4345 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
4346 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
4347 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
4350 =item "state" variable %s can't be in a package
4352 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
4353 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
4354 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
4356 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
4358 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
4359 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4361 =item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
4363 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
4364 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
4365 C<can> may break this.
4367 =item Subroutine %s redefined
4369 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
4372 no warnings 'redefine';
4373 eval "sub name { ... }";
4376 =item Substitution loop
4378 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
4379 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
4380 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
4381 L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
4383 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
4385 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4386 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4387 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4389 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
4391 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4392 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4393 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4395 =item substr outside of string
4397 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
4398 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
4399 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
4400 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
4401 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
4403 =item sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
4405 (P) Perl tried to force the upgrade of an SV to a type which was actually
4406 inferior to its current type.
4408 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4410 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
4411 branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
4412 contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
4413 clustering parentheses:
4415 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
4417 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4418 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4420 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4422 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is
4423 a number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
4424 expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4426 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
4428 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
4429 and effective uids or gids.
4433 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
4437 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
4439 A keyword is misspelled.
4440 A semicolon is missing.
4442 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
4443 An opening or closing brace is missing.
4444 A closing quote is missing.
4446 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
4447 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
4448 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
4449 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
4450 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
4451 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
4452 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
4453 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
4454 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
4456 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
4458 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
4459 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
4462 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
4464 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
4465 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
4466 or "my $var" or "our $var".
4468 =item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
4470 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4472 =item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
4474 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4476 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
4478 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
4479 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
4480 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
4481 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
4483 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
4485 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4486 before now. Check your control flow.
4488 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
4490 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
4491 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
4493 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
4495 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
4496 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
4498 =item telldir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4500 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to telldir() is either closed or not really
4501 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4503 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
4505 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
4506 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4508 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
4510 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
4511 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
4520 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
4521 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
4523 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
4525 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
4526 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
4527 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
4528 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
4531 =item The %s function is unimplemented
4533 (F) The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
4534 to the probings of Configure.
4536 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
4538 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
4539 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
4540 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
4543 =item The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
4545 (F) This attribute was never supported on C<my> or C<sub> declarations.
4547 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
4549 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
4551 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
4552 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
4553 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
4554 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
4555 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
4556 target of the change to
4557 %ENV which produced the warning.
4559 =item thread failed to start: %s
4561 (W threads)(S) The entry point function of threads->create() failed for some reason.
4563 =item times not implemented
4565 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
4566 suspect you're not running on Unix.
4568 =item "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
4570 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4571 B<-T> option (or the B<-t> option), but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
4572 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
4573 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
4576 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
4577 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
4578 editing the #! line so that the B<-%c> option is a part of Perl's first
4579 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -%c> to C<perl -%c -n>.
4581 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
4582 B<-%c> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -%c scriptname>.
4584 =item To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
4586 (F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
4587 uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
4588 specified an illegal mapping.
4589 See L<perlunicode/"User-Defined Character Properties">.
4591 =item Too deeply nested ()-groups
4593 (F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level.
4595 =item Too few args to syscall
4597 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
4598 system call to call, silly dilly.
4600 =item Too late for "-%s" option
4602 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4603 B<-M>, B<-m> or B<-C> option.
4605 In the case of B<-M> and B<-m>, this is an error because those options are
4606 not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
4608 The B<-C> option only works if it is specified on the command line as well
4609 (with the same sequence of letters or numbers following). Either specify
4610 this option on the command line, or, if your system supports it, make your
4611 script executable and run it directly instead of passing it to perl.
4613 =item Too late to run %s block
4615 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
4616 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
4617 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
4618 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
4621 =item Too many args to syscall
4623 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
4625 =item Too many arguments for %s
4627 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
4631 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4632 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4636 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4637 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4639 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
4641 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
4642 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
4644 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
4646 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
4647 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
4648 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
4650 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
4652 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][],
4653 y/// or y[][] construct.
4655 =item '%s' trapped by operation mask
4657 (F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's
4658 disallowed. See L<Safe>.
4660 =item truncate not implemented
4662 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
4663 Configure knows about.
4665 =item Type of arg %d to &CORE::%s must be %s
4667 (F) The subroutine in question in the CORE package requires its argument
4668 to be a hard reference to data of the specified type. Overloading is
4669 ignored, so a reference to an object that is not the specified type, but
4670 nonetheless has overloading to handle it, will still not be accepted.
4672 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
4674 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
4675 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
4676 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
4677 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
4679 =item Type of argument to %s must be unblessed hashref or arrayref
4681 (F) You called C<keys>, C<values> or C<each> with a scalar argument that
4682 was not a reference to an unblessed hash or array.
4684 =item umask not implemented
4686 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
4687 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
4689 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
4691 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
4693 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
4695 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4696 many execution contexts were entered and left.
4698 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
4700 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4701 many values were temporarily localized.
4703 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
4705 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4706 many blocks were entered and left.
4708 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
4710 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4711 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
4713 =item Undefined format "%s" called
4715 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4716 another package? See L<perlform>.
4718 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
4720 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
4721 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4723 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
4725 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
4726 since been undefined.
4728 =item Undefined subroutine called
4730 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
4731 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
4733 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
4735 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
4736 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4738 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
4740 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4741 another package? See L<perlform>.
4743 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
4745 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
4746 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
4749 =item %s: Undefined variable
4751 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4752 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4754 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
4756 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
4757 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
4759 =item Unicode non-character U+%X is illegal for open interchange
4761 (W utf8, nonchar) Certain codepoints, such as U+FFFE and U+FFFF, are
4763 Unicode standard to be non-characters. Those are legal codepoints, but are
4764 reserved for internal use; so, applications shouldn't attempt to exchange
4765 them. If you know what you are doing you can turn
4766 off this warning by C<no warnings 'nonchar';>.
4768 =item Unicode surrogate U+%X is illegal in UTF-8
4770 (W utf8, surrogate) You had a UTF-16 surrogate in a context where they are
4771 not considered acceptable. These code points, between U+D800 and
4772 U+DFFF (inclusive), are used by Unicode only for UTF-16. However, Perl
4773 internally allows all unsigned integer code points (up to the size limit
4774 available on your platform), including surrogates. But these can cause
4775 problems when being input or output, which is likely where this message
4776 came from. If you really really know what you are doing you can turn
4777 off this warning by C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
4779 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
4781 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
4784 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
4786 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
4787 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
4788 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->, C<< <& >>, C<< >& >>.
4790 =item Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
4792 (W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
4793 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
4794 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
4795 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
4796 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
4797 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
4799 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
4801 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
4802 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
4803 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
4804 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
4806 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
4808 (W) You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
4810 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4812 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
4813 is not known. The condition must be one of the following:
4815 (1) (2) ... true if 1st, 2nd, etc., capture matched
4816 (<NAME>) ('NAME') true if named capture matched
4817 (?=...) (?<=...) true if subpattern matches
4818 (?!...) (?<!...) true if subpattern fails to match
4819 (?{ CODE }) true if code returns a true value
4820 (R) true if evaluating inside recursion
4821 (R1) (R2) ... true if directly inside capture group 1, 2, etc.
4822 (R&NAME) true if directly inside named capture
4823 (DEFINE) always false; for defining named subpatterns
4825 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4826 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4828 =item Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
4830 (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4831 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4833 =item Unknown Unicode option value %x
4835 (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4836 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4838 =item Unknown verb pattern '%s' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4840 (F) You either made a typo or have incorrectly put a C<*> quantifier
4841 after an open brace in your pattern. Check the pattern and review
4842 L<perlre> for details on legal verb patterns.
4844 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
4846 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
4847 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
4849 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a
4850 module (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have loaded this
4853 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4855 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
4856 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
4857 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
4858 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4860 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4862 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
4863 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
4864 matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4865 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4867 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
4869 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
4870 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
4871 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
4872 you were last editing.
4874 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
4876 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
4877 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
4878 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
4881 =item Unrecognized character %s; marked by <-- HERE after %s near column %d
4883 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
4884 in your Perl script (or eval) near the specified column. Perhaps you tried
4885 to run a compressed script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
4887 =item Unrecognized escape \%c in character class passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4889 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4890 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
4891 understood literally, but this may change in a future version of Perl.
4892 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4893 escape was discovered.
4895 =item Unrecognized escape \%c passed through
4897 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4898 recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally, but this may
4899 change in a future version of Perl.
4901 =item Unrecognized escape \%s passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4903 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4904 recognized by Perl. The character(s) were understood literally, but this may
4905 change in a future version of Perl.
4906 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4907 escape was discovered.
4909 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
4911 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
4912 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
4915 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
4917 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
4918 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
4919 bad switch on your behalf.)
4921 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
4923 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
4924 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
4925 PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
4927 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
4929 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
4931 =item Unsupported function %s
4933 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
4934 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
4936 =item Unsupported function fork
4938 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
4940 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
4941 of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
4942 changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
4944 =item Unsupported script encoding %s
4946 (F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
4947 declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot read.
4949 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
4951 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
4952 least that's what Configure thought.
4954 =item Unterminated attribute list
4956 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
4957 start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
4958 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
4959 attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
4961 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
4963 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
4964 an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
4965 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
4966 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
4968 =item Unterminated compressed integer
4970 (F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
4971 compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
4972 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4974 =item Unterminated \g{...} pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4976 (F) You missed a close brace on a \g{..} pattern (group reference) in
4977 a regular expression. Fix the pattern and retry.
4979 =item Unterminated <> operator
4981 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
4982 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
4983 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
4984 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
4986 =item Unterminated verb pattern argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4988 (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB:ARG)> but did not terminate
4989 the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
4991 =item Unterminated verb pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4993 (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB)> but did not terminate
4994 the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
4996 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
4998 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
4999 still valid when C<untie> was called.
5001 =item Usage: POSIX::%s(%s)
5003 (F) You called a POSIX function with incorrect arguments.
5004 See L<POSIX/FUNCTIONS> for more information.
5006 =item Usage: Win32::%s(%s)
5008 (F) You called a Win32 function with incorrect arguments.
5009 See L<Win32> for more information.
5011 =item Useless assignment to a temporary
5013 (W misc) You assigned to an lvalue subroutine, but what
5014 the subroutine returned was a temporary scalar about to
5015 be discarded, so the assignment had no effect.
5017 =item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5019 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
5020 meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
5022 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
5026 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
5028 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
5029 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
5031 =item Useless localization of %s
5033 (W syntax) The localization of lvalues such as C<local($x=10)> is
5034 legal, but in fact the local() currently has no effect. This may change at
5035 some point in the future, but in the meantime such code is discouraged.
5037 =item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5039 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
5040 meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
5042 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
5046 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
5048 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
5049 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
5051 =item Useless use of /d modifier in transliteration operator
5053 (W misc) You have used the /d modifier where the searchlist has the
5054 same length as the replacelist. See L<perlop> for more information
5055 about the /d modifier.
5057 =item Useless use of %s in void context
5059 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
5060 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
5061 value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
5062 often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
5063 to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
5064 get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
5069 when you meant to say
5071 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
5073 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
5074 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
5079 when you should have said
5083 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
5084 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
5085 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
5086 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
5087 L<perlref> for more on this.
5089 This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
5090 since they are often used in statements like
5092 1 while sub_with_side_effects();
5094 String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
5097 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
5099 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
5101 =item Useless use of sort in scalar context
5103 (W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
5107 This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
5109 =item Useless use of %s with no values
5111 (W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
5112 apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
5113 usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
5114 possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
5115 if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
5116 you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
5118 =item "use" not allowed in expression
5120 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
5121 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
5123 =item Use of assignment to $[ is deprecated
5125 (D deprecated) The C<$[> variable (index of the first element in an array)
5126 is deprecated. See L<perlvar/"$[">.
5128 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
5130 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted
5131 form if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
5133 =item Use of comma-less variable list is deprecated
5135 (D deprecated) The values you give to a format should be
5136 separated by commas, not just aligned on a line.
5138 =item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
5140 (D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
5141 $ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
5142 behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
5145 Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
5146 blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
5148 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
5150 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution. The /c
5151 modifier is not presently meaningful in substitutions.
5153 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
5155 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't
5156 use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is
5157 used. (This may change in the future.)
5159 =item Use of := for an empty attribute list is not allowed
5161 (F) The construction C<my $x := 42> used to parse as equivalent to
5162 C<my $x : = 42> (applying an empty attribute list to C<$x>).
5163 This construct was deprecated in 5.12.0, and has now been made a syntax
5164 error, so C<:=> can be reclaimed as a new operator in the future.
5166 If you need an empty attribute list, for example in a code generator, add
5167 a space before the C<=>.
5169 =item Use of freed value in iteration
5171 (F) Perhaps you modified the iterated array within the loop?
5172 This error is typically caused by code like the following:
5175 @a = () for (1,2,@a);
5177 You are not supposed to modify arrays while they are being iterated over.
5178 For speed and efficiency reasons, Perl internally does not do full
5179 reference-counting of iterated items, hence deleting such an item in the
5180 middle of an iteration causes Perl to see a freed value.
5182 =item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
5184 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
5185 to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
5187 =item Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
5189 (W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a C<split>
5190 operator. Since C<split> always tries to match the pattern
5191 repeatedly, the C</g> has no effect.
5193 =item Use of "goto" to jump into a construct is deprecated
5195 (D deprecated) Using C<goto> to jump from an outer scope into an inner
5196 scope is deprecated and should be avoided.
5198 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
5200 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD>
5201 subroutines are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy)
5202 even when the subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain
5203 functions (e.g. C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or
5204 C<< $obj->bar() >>).
5206 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
5207 methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
5208 code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
5209 currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
5212 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
5213 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
5214 to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
5215 named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
5218 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
5219 you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
5220 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
5222 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
5224 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
5225 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
5227 =item Use of %s is deprecated
5229 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
5230 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
5231 old way has bad side effects.
5233 =item Use of -l on filehandle %s
5235 (W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
5236 it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
5237 The operation returned C<undef>. Use a filename instead.
5239 =item Use of %s on a handle without * is deprecated
5241 (D deprecated) You used C<tie>, C<tied> or C<untie> on a scalar but that
5242 scalar happens to hold a typeglob, which means its filehandle will
5243 be tied. If you mean to tie a handle, use an explicit * as in
5246 This is a long-standing bug that will be removed in Perl 5.16, as
5247 there is currently no way to tie the scalar itself when it holds
5248 a typeglob, and no way to untie a scalar that has had a typeglob
5251 =item Use of ?PATTERN? without explicit operator is deprecated
5253 (D deprecated) You have written something like C<?\w?>, for a regular
5254 expression that matches only once. Starting this term directly with
5255 the question mark delimiter is now deprecated, so that the question mark
5256 will be available for use in new operators in the future. Write C<m?\w?>
5257 instead, explicitly using the C<m> operator: the question mark delimiter
5258 still invokes match-once behaviour.
5260 =item Use of qw(...) as parentheses is deprecated
5262 (D deprecated) You have something like C<foreach $x qw(a b c) {...}>,
5263 using a C<qw(...)> list literal where a parenthesised expression is
5264 expected. Historically the parser fooled itself into thinking that
5265 C<qw(...)> literals were always enclosed in parentheses, and as a result
5266 you could sometimes omit parentheses around them. (You could never do
5267 the C<foreach qw(a b c) {...}> that you might have expected, though.)
5268 The parser no longer lies to itself in this way. Wrap the list literal
5269 in parentheses, like C<foreach $x (qw(a b c)) {...}>.
5271 =item Use of reference "%s" as array index
5273 (W misc) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
5274 isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
5275 to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
5277 If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
5278 C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
5279 however, because you can overload the numification and stringification
5280 operators and then you presumably know what you are doing.
5282 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
5284 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
5285 versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
5286 explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
5287 use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
5288 suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
5289 a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
5291 =item Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
5293 (W taint, deprecated) You have supplied C<system()> or C<exec()> with multiple
5294 arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used to be allowed
5295 but will become a fatal error in a future version of perl. Untaint your
5296 arguments. See L<perlsec>.
5298 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
5300 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
5301 defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
5302 To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
5304 To help you figure out what was undefined, perl will try to tell you the
5305 name of the variable (if any) that was undefined. In some cases it cannot
5306 do this, so it also tells you what operation you used the undefined value
5307 in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your program and the operation
5308 displayed in the warning may not necessarily appear literally in your
5309 program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is usually optimized into C<"that "
5310 . $foo>, and the warning will refer to the C<concatenation (.)> operator,
5311 even though there is no C<.> in your program.
5313 =item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
5315 (D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
5316 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
5317 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will
5318 be removed in a future version.
5320 =item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
5322 (D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
5323 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
5324 allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will be
5325 removed in a future version.
5327 =item Using just the first character returned by \N{} in character class
5329 (W) A charnames handler may return a sequence of more than one character.
5330 Currently all but the first one are discarded when used in a regular
5331 expression pattern bracketed character class.
5333 =item Using !~ with %s doesn't make sense
5335 (F) Using the C<!~> operator with C<s///r>, C<tr///r> or C<y///r> is
5336 currently reserved for future use, as the exact behaviour has not
5337 been decided. (Simply returning the boolean opposite of the
5338 modified string is usually not particularly useful.)
5340 =item UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
5342 (W utf8, surrogate) You had a UTF-16 surrogate in a context where they are
5343 not considered acceptable. These code points, between U+D800 and
5344 U+DFFF (inclusive), are used by Unicode only for UTF-16. However, Perl
5345 internally allows all unsigned integer code points (up to the size limit
5346 available on your platform), including surrogates. But these can cause
5347 problems when being input or output, which is likely where this message
5348 came from. If you really really know what you are doing you can turn
5349 off this warning by C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
5351 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
5353 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
5354 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
5355 can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
5356 false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
5357 constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
5358 C<defined> operator.
5360 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
5362 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
5363 %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
5364 longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
5367 =item Variable "%s" is not available
5369 (W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is
5370 attempting to capture an outer lexical that is not currently available.
5371 This can happen for one of two reasons. First, the outer lexical may be
5372 declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that has not yet been created.
5373 (Remember that named subs are created at compile time, while anonymous
5374 subs are created at run-time.) For example,
5376 sub { my $a; sub f { $a } }
5378 At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current value of $a,
5379 since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely,
5380 the following won't give a warning since the anonymous subroutine has by
5381 now been created and is live:
5383 sub { my $a; eval 'sub f { $a }' }->();
5385 The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a variable that has
5386 gone out of scope, for example,
5394 Here, when the '$a' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not currently being
5395 executed, so its $a is not available for capture.
5397 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
5399 (W misc) With "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
5400 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
5401 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
5402 that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
5403 front of your variable.
5405 =item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in m/%s/
5407 (F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
5408 known at compile time. See L<perlre>.
5410 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
5412 (W misc) A "my", "our" or "state" variable has been redeclared in the
5413 current scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the
5414 previous instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note
5415 that the earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope
5416 or until all closure referents to it are destroyed.
5418 =item Variable syntax
5420 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
5421 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
5424 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
5426 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
5427 lexical variable defined in an outer named subroutine.
5429 When the inner subroutine is called, it will see the value of
5430 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
5431 call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
5432 outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
5433 longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
5434 variable will no longer be shared.
5436 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
5437 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
5438 reference variables in outer subroutines are created, they
5439 are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
5441 =item Verb pattern '%s' has a mandatory argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5443 (F) You used a verb pattern that requires an argument. Supply an argument
5444 or check that you are using the right verb.
5446 =item Verb pattern '%s' may not have an argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5448 (F) You used a verb pattern that is not allowed an argument. Remove the
5449 argument or check that you are using the right verb.
5451 =item Version number must be a constant number
5453 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
5454 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
5457 =item Version string '%s' contains invalid data; ignoring: '%s'
5459 (W misc) The version string contains invalid characters at the end, which
5462 =item Warning: something's wrong
5464 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
5465 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
5467 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
5469 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
5470 the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
5473 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
5475 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
5476 looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
5477 term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
5478 function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
5482 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
5486 but in actual fact, you got
5490 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
5492 =item Wide character in %s
5494 (S utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting
5495 one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print). The easiest
5496 way to quiet this warning is simply to add the C<:utf8> layer to the
5497 output, e.g. C<binmode STDOUT, ':utf8'>. Another way to turn off the
5498 warning is to add C<no warnings 'utf8';> but that is often closer to
5499 cheating. In general, you are supposed to explicitly mark the
5500 filehandle with an encoding, see L<open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>.
5502 =item Within []-length '%c' not allowed
5504 (F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by C<[TEMPLATE]> only if
5505 C<TEMPLATE> always matches the same amount of packed bytes that can be
5506 determined from the template alone. This is not possible if it contains any
5507 of the codes @, /, U, u, w or a *-length. Redesign the template.
5509 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
5511 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
5512 before now. Check your control flow.
5514 =item %s "\x%X" does not map to Unicode
5516 (F) When reading in different encodings Perl tries to map everything
5517 into Unicode characters. The bytes you read in are not legal in
5518 this encoding, for example
5520 utf8 "\xE4" does not map to Unicode
5522 if you try to read in the a-diaereses Latin-1 as UTF-8.
5524 =item 'X' outside of string
5526 (F) You had a (un)pack template that specified a relative position before
5527 the beginning of the string being (un)packed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5529 =item 'x' outside of string in unpack
5531 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
5532 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5534 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
5536 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
5537 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
5538 about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
5541 =item You need to quote "%s"
5543 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
5544 Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
5545 which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
5546 assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
5547 what you want, put an & in front.)
5549 =item Your random numbers are not that random
5551 (F) When trying to initialise the random seed for hashes, Perl could
5552 not get any randomness out of your system. This usually indicates
5553 Something Very Wrong.
5559 L<warnings>, L<perllexwarn>, L<diagnostics>.