3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (enabled by default).
12 (S) A severe warning (enabled by default).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
19 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
21 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
22 category is included with the classification letter in the description
23 below. E.g. C<(W closed)> means a warning in the C<closed> category.
25 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
26 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Severe warnings are always enabled, unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %x
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '%c' allowed only after types %s in %s
59 (F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only
60 after certain types. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
76 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
79 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
81 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
82 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
83 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
84 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
86 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
88 (S ambiguous) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
89 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
90 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
92 =item Ambiguous use of -%s resolved as -&%s()
94 (S ambiguous) You wrote something like C<-foo>, which might be the
95 string C<"-foo">, or a call to the function C<foo>, negated. If you meant
96 the string, just write C<"-foo">. If you meant the function call,
99 =item Ambiguous use of %c resolved as operator %c
101 (S ambiguous) C<%>, C<&>, and C<*> are both infix operators (modulus,
102 bitwise and, and multiplication) I<and> initial special characters
103 (denoting hashes, subroutines and typeglobs), and you said something
104 like C<*foo * foo> that might be interpreted as either of them. We
105 assumed you meant the infix operator, but please try to make it more
106 clear -- in the example given, you might write C<*foo * foo()> if you
107 really meant to multiply a glob by the result of calling a function.
109 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s} resolved to %c%s
111 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<@{foo}>, which might be
112 asking for the variable C<@foo>, or it might be calling a function
113 named foo, and dereferencing it as an array reference. If you wanted
114 the variable, you can just write C<@foo>. If you wanted to call the
115 function, write C<@{foo()}> ... or you could just not have a variable
116 and a function with the same name, and save yourself a lot of trouble.
118 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s[...]} resolved to %c%s[...]
120 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s{...}} resolved to %c%s{...}
122 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<${foo[2]}> (where foo represents
123 the name of a Perl keyword), which might be looking for element number
124 2 of the array named C<@foo>, in which case please write C<$foo[2]>, or you
125 might have meant to pass an anonymous arrayref to the function named
126 foo, and then do a scalar deref on the value it returns. If you meant
127 that, write C<${foo([2])}>.
129 In regular expressions, the C<${foo[2]}> syntax is sometimes necessary
130 to disambiguate between array subscripts and character classes.
131 C</$length[2345]/>, for instance, will be interpreted as C<$length> followed
132 by the character class C<[2345]>. If an array subscript is what you
133 want, you can avoid the warning by changing C</${length[2345]}/> to the
134 unsightly C</${\$length[2345]}/>, by renaming your array to something
135 that does not coincide with a built-in keyword, or by simply turning
136 off warnings with C<no warnings 'ambiguous';>.
138 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
140 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
141 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
142 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
144 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
146 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
147 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
148 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
149 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
150 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
152 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
159 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
161 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
162 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
163 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
164 a scalar value (the length of an array, or the population info of a
165 hash) and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
166 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
169 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
171 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
173 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
175 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
176 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
177 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
179 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
181 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O
182 system you forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers
183 take care of transforming data between external and internal
184 representations.) Perl stopped parsing the layer list at this
185 point and did not attempt to push this layer. If your program
186 didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the
187 result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
189 =item Argument "%s" treated as 0 in increment (++)
191 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to the C<++>
192 operator which expects either a number or a string matching
193 C</^[a-zA-Z]*[0-9]*\z/>. See L<perlop/Auto-increment and
194 Auto-decrement> for details.
196 =item assertion botched: %s
198 (X) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
200 =item Assertion %s failed: file "%s", line %d
202 (X) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
204 =item Assigned value is not a reference
206 (F) You tried to assign something that was not a reference to an lvalue
207 reference (e.g., C<\$x = $y>). If you meant to make $x an alias to $y, use
210 =item Assigned value is not %s reference
212 (F) You tried to assign a reference to an lvalue reference, but the two
213 references were not of the same type. You cannot alias a scalar to an
214 array, or an array to a hash; the two types must match.
219 \$x = $y; # error; did you mean \$y?
221 =item Assigning non-zero to $[ is no longer possible
223 (F) When the "array_base" feature is disabled (e.g., under C<use v5.16;>)
224 the special variable C<$[>, which is deprecated, is now a fixed zero value.
226 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
228 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
229 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
230 know which context to supply to the right side.
232 =item <> at require-statement should be quotes
234 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
237 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
239 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
240 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
242 =item Attempt to bless into a freed package
244 (F) You wrote C<bless $foo> with one argument after somehow causing
245 the current package to be freed. Perl cannot figure out what to
246 do, so it throws up in hands in despair.
248 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
250 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
251 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
252 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
258 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
260 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
261 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
264 bless $self, "$proto";
266 =item Attempt to clear deleted array
268 (S debugging) An array was assigned to when it was being freed.
269 Freed values are not supposed to be visible to Perl code. This
270 can also happen if XS code calls C<av_clear> from a custom magic
271 callback on the array.
273 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
275 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
276 which is not in its key set.
278 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
280 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
281 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
283 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%x
285 (S internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
286 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
287 outside any of those arenas.
289 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string '%s'%s
291 (S internal) Perl maintains a reference-counted internal table of
292 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
293 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
294 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
296 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely: SV 0x%x
298 (S debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
299 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
300 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
301 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
304 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
306 (S internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
308 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar: SV 0x%x
310 (S internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
311 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
312 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
313 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
314 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
315 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
318 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
320 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
321 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
322 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
323 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
324 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
327 =item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
329 (F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
330 compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
331 unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
334 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
336 (W misc) You tried to set the length of an array which has
337 been freed. You can do this by storing a reference to the
338 scalar representing the last index of an array and later
339 assigning through that reference. For example
341 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
344 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
346 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
347 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
348 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
350 =item Attribute "locked" is deprecated
352 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the
353 "locked" attribute on a code reference. The :locked attribute is
354 obsolete, has had no effect since 5005 threads were removed, and
355 will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
357 =item Attribute prototype(%s) discards earlier prototype attribute in same sub
359 (W misc) A sub was declared as sub foo : prototype(A) : prototype(B) {}, for
360 example. Since each sub can only have one prototype, the earlier
361 declaration(s) are discarded while the last one is applied.
363 =item Attribute "unique" is deprecated
365 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify
366 the "unique" attribute on an array, hash or scalar reference.
367 The :unique attribute has had no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and
368 will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
370 =item av_reify called on tied array
372 (S debugging) This indicates that something went wrong and Perl got I<very>
373 confused about C<@_> or C<@DB::args> being tied.
375 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
377 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
378 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
379 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
380 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
382 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
384 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
385 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
386 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
388 =item Bad filehandle: %s
390 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
391 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
392 open(), or did it in another package.
394 =item Bad free() ignored
396 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
397 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
398 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
400 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
401 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
402 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
406 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
408 =item Badly placed ()'s
410 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
411 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
414 =item Bad name after %s
416 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
417 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
426 $sym = "mypack::$var";
428 =item Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
430 (F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the
433 =item Bad realloc() ignored
435 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that
436 had never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can
437 be disabled by setting the environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
439 =item Bad symbol for array
441 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
442 wasn't a symbol table entry.
444 =item Bad symbol for dirhandle
446 (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
447 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
449 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
451 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
452 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
454 =item Bad symbol for hash
456 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
457 wasn't a symbol table entry.
459 =item Bareword found in conditional
461 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
462 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
463 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
467 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
470 use constant TYPO => 1;
471 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
473 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
475 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
477 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
478 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
479 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
481 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
483 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
484 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
485 you need to predeclare a package?
487 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
489 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
490 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
493 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
495 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
496 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
497 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
498 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
499 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
501 =item \%d better written as $%d
503 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
504 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
505 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
506 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
507 there are more than 9 backreferences.
509 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
511 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
512 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
513 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
515 =item bind() on closed socket %s
517 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
518 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
520 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
522 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
523 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
525 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
527 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
529 =item Bizarre copy of %s
531 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
534 =item Bizarre SvTYPE [%d]
536 (P) When starting a new thread or returning values from a thread, Perl
537 encountered an invalid data type.
539 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
541 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
542 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
543 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
545 =item Callback called exit
547 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
548 exited by calling exit.
550 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
552 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
553 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
554 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
555 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
556 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
557 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
558 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
559 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
561 =item Calling POSIX::%s() is deprecated
563 (D deprecated) You called a function whose use is deprecated. See
564 the function's name in L<POSIX> for details.
568 (F) You passed an invalid number (like an infinity or not-a-number) to C<chr>.
570 =item Cannot compress %f in pack
572 (F) You tried compressing an infinity or not-a-number as an unsigned
573 integer with BER, which makes no sense.
575 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
577 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress.
578 The BER compressed integer format can only be used with positive
579 integers, and you attempted to compress a very large number (> 1e308).
580 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
582 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
584 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
585 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
587 =item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
589 (F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference
590 in it, then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax.
591 The access triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is
592 no legal conversion from that type of reference to a typeglob.
594 =item Cannot copy to %s
596 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
597 be directly assigned to.
599 =item Cannot find encoding "%s"
601 (S io) You tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to a filehandle,
602 either with open() or binmode().
604 =item Cannot pack %f with '%c'
606 (F) You tried converting an infinity or not-a-number to an integer,
607 which makes no sense.
609 =item Cannot printf %f with '%c'
611 (F) You tried printing an infinity or not-a-number as a character (%c),
612 which makes no sense. Maybe you meant '%s', or just stringifying it?
614 =item Cannot set tied @DB::args
616 (F) C<caller> tried to set C<@DB::args>, but found it tied. Tying C<@DB::args>
617 is not supported. (Before this error was added, it used to crash.)
619 =item Cannot tie unreifiable array
621 (P) You somehow managed to call C<tie> on an array that does not
622 keep a reference count on its arguments and cannot be made to
623 do so. Such arrays are not even supposed to be accessible to
624 Perl code, but are only used internally.
626 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
628 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
629 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
630 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
632 =item Can't bless non-reference value
634 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
635 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
637 =item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
639 (F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
640 a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
642 =item Can't "break" outside a given block
644 (F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
646 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
648 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
649 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
650 like this will reproduce the error:
653 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
654 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
656 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
658 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
659 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
660 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
661 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
663 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
665 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
666 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
667 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
668 Something like this will reproduce the error:
671 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
672 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
674 =item Can't call mro_isa_changed_in() on anonymous symbol table
676 (P) Perl got confused as to whether a hash was a plain hash or a
677 symbol table hash when trying to update @ISA caches.
679 =item Can't call mro_method_changed_in() on anonymous symbol table
681 (F) An XS module tried to call C<mro_method_changed_in> on a hash that was
682 not attached to the symbol table.
684 =item Can't chdir to %s
686 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but F</foo/bar> is not a directory
687 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
689 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
691 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
694 =item Can't coerce %s to %s in %s
696 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
697 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
707 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
709 =item Can't "continue" outside a when block
711 (F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
714 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
716 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
717 quotas or other plumbing problems.
719 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
721 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
722 "state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
724 =item Can't "default" outside a topicalizer
726 (F) You have used a C<default> block that is neither inside a
727 C<foreach> loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is
728 issued on exit from the C<default> block, so you won't get the
729 error if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
731 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
733 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
734 a file in /dev, a FIFO or an uneditable directory. The file was ignored.
736 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
738 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
741 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
743 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
744 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
745 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
747 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
749 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
750 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
751 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
753 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
755 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
756 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
758 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
760 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
761 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
764 =item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
766 (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
767 or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
768 little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
769 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
771 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
773 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
774 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
775 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
776 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
777 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
778 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
783 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
784 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
785 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
787 =item Can't execute %s
789 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
790 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
792 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
794 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
795 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
797 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
799 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
800 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property?
801 See L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
802 for a complete list of available official properties.
804 =item Can't find label %s
806 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
807 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
809 =item Can't find %s on PATH
811 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
814 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
816 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
817 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
818 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
820 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
822 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
823 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
824 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
826 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
828 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
829 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag or there
830 may not be a linebreak after it. A good programmer's editor will have
831 a way to help you find these characters (or lack of characters). See
832 L<perlop> for the full details on here-documents.
834 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
836 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode
837 property (for example C<\p{Lu}> matches all uppercase
838 letters). If you did mean to use a Unicode property, see
839 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
840 for a complete list of available properties. If you didn't
841 mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either by
842 C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, or
847 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
850 =item Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
852 (W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be retried
855 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
857 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
858 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
859 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
860 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
861 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
862 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
863 the access-checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
864 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
865 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
866 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
867 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access-checking routine gave up
868 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access-checking
869 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
870 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
871 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
873 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
875 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
876 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
878 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
880 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
881 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
883 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
885 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
886 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
888 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
890 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
891 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
892 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
893 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
895 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
897 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
900 =item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
902 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
903 comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
904 as the reduce() function in List::Util).
906 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
908 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
909 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
910 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
911 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
913 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
915 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
916 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
917 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
918 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
919 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
920 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
922 =item Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
924 (F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a fatal error to
925 attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise non-numeric
928 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
930 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
931 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
932 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
933 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
934 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
935 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
938 =item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
940 (F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
941 package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
943 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
945 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension.
946 This may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one
947 that is incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known
948 to happen between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your
949 dynamic extension was built against an older version of the library
950 that is installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old
953 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
955 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
956 lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you
957 want to localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with
960 =item Can't localize through a reference
962 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
963 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
964 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
965 that $ref will still be a reference.
967 =item Can't locate %s
969 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be found.
970 Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC, unless
971 the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
972 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the
973 extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
974 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
975 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
977 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
979 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
980 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
981 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
982 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
984 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
986 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
987 for example, F<foo.so> or F<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
988 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
990 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
992 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
993 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
994 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
996 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s" (perhaps you forgot
999 (F) You called a method on a class that did not exist, and the method
1000 could not be found in UNIVERSAL. This often means that a method
1001 requires a package that has not been loaded.
1003 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
1005 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
1006 doesn't seem to exist.
1008 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
1010 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
1011 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
1013 =item Can't make list assignment to %ENV on this system
1015 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
1018 =item Can't make loaded symbols global on this platform while loading %s
1020 (S) A module passed the flag 0x01 to DynaLoader::dl_load_file() to request
1021 that symbols from the stated file are made available globally within the
1022 process, but that functionality is not available on this platform. Whilst
1023 the module likely will still work, this may prevent the perl interpreter
1024 from loading other XS-based extensions which need to link directly to
1025 functions defined in the C or XS code in the stated file.
1027 =item Can't modify %s in %s
1029 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
1030 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
1032 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
1034 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
1037 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
1039 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
1040 such. See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1042 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
1044 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
1047 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
1049 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
1050 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1051 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
1052 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1053 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
1054 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
1056 =item Can't open %s: %s
1058 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
1059 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
1060 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually
1061 this is because you don't have read permission for a file which
1062 you named on the command line.
1064 (F) You tried to call perl with the B<-e> switch, but F</dev/null> (or
1065 your operating system's equivalent) could not be opened.
1067 =item Can't open a reference
1069 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
1070 using the 3-arg open() syntax:
1074 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
1075 open is not supported.
1077 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
1079 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
1080 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
1081 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
1082 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
1084 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
1086 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1087 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
1088 the command line for writing.
1090 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
1092 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1093 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
1094 command line for reading.
1096 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
1098 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1099 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
1100 the command line for writing.
1102 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
1104 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1105 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
1108 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
1110 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
1112 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
1113 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1114 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1116 =item Can't read CRTL environ
1118 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1119 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1120 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1121 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1124 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1126 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1127 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1128 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1129 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1130 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1131 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1133 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1135 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1136 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1137 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1139 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1141 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1142 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1144 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1146 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1147 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1149 =item Can't reset %ENV on this system
1151 (F) You called C<reset('E')> or similar, which tried to reset
1152 all variables in the current package beginning with "E". In
1153 the main package, that includes %ENV. Resetting %ENV is not
1154 supported on some systems, notably VMS.
1156 =item Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
1158 (F)(P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1159 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1160 package. If the method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1162 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1164 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1165 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1168 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1170 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1171 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1173 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1175 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue
1176 subroutine, but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl
1177 think you meant to return only one value. You probably meant to
1178 write parentheses around the call to the subroutine, which tell
1179 Perl that the call should be in list context.
1181 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1183 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1184 open already. Bizarre.
1186 =item Can't take log of %g
1188 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1189 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1190 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1193 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1195 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1196 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1197 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1199 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1201 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1202 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1203 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1205 =item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1207 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1208 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1209 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1210 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1212 =item Can't use '%c' after -mname
1214 (F) You tried to call perl with the B<-m> switch, but you put something
1215 other than "=" after the module name.
1217 =item Can't use a hash as a reference
1219 (F) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
1220 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl
1221 <= 5.22.0 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't
1222 have. This was deprecated in perl 5.6.1.
1224 =item Can't use an array as a reference
1226 (F) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
1227 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.22.0
1228 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. This
1229 was deprecated in perl 5.6.1.
1231 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1233 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1234 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1235 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1237 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1239 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1240 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1242 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1244 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1245 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1247 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1249 (F) The first time the C<%!> hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1250 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1251 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1253 =item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1255 (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1256 byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1257 allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1259 =item Can't use 'defined(@array)' (Maybe you should just omit the defined()?)
1261 (F) defined() is not useful on arrays because it
1262 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1263 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1265 =item Can't use 'defined(%hash)' (Maybe you should just omit the defined()?)
1267 (F) C<defined()> is not usually right on hashes.
1269 Although C<defined %hash> is false on a plain not-yet-used hash, it
1270 becomes true in several non-obvious circumstances, including iterators,
1271 weak references, stash names, even remaining true after C<undef %hash>.
1272 These things make C<defined %hash> fairly useless in practice, so it now
1273 generates a fatal error.
1275 If a check for non-empty is what you wanted then just put it in boolean
1276 context (see L<perldata/Scalar values>):
1282 If you had C<defined %Foo::Bar::QUUX> to check whether such a package
1283 variable exists then that's never really been reliable, and isn't
1284 a good way to enquire about the features of a package, or whether
1287 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1289 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1292 =item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1294 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1295 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1296 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1297 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1300 =item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1302 (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1303 that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1304 For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1305 is inside a big-endian group.
1307 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1309 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1310 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1311 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1312 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1315 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1317 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1318 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1319 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1321 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1323 =item Can't use string ("%s"...) as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1325 (F) You've told Perl to dereference a string, something which
1326 C<use strict> blocks to prevent it happening accidentally. See
1327 L<perlref/"Symbolic references">. This can be triggered by an C<@> or C<$>
1328 in a double-quoted string immediately before interpolating a variable,
1329 for example in C<"user @$twitter_id">, which says to treat the contents
1330 of C<$twitter_id> as an array reference; use a C<\> to have a literal C<@>
1331 symbol followed by the contents of C<$twitter_id>: C<"user \@$twitter_id">.
1333 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1335 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1336 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1337 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1339 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1341 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1342 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1343 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1344 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1345 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1348 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1350 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1351 references can be weakened.
1353 =item Can't "when" outside a topicalizer
1355 (F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1356 loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1357 from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1358 or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1360 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1362 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1363 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1364 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1366 =item Character following "\c" must be printable ASCII
1368 (F) In C<\cI<X>>, I<X> must be a printable (non-control) ASCII character.
1370 Note that ASCII characters that don't map to control characters are
1371 discouraged, and will generate the warning (when enabled)
1372 L</""\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"">.
1374 =item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1380 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1381 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1382 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1386 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1389 =item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1395 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1396 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1397 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1399 pack("c", $x & 255);
1401 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1404 =item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1406 (W unpack) You tried something like
1408 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1410 where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1411 below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the
1412 value modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1414 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1416 =item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1422 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode
1423 expects all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved
1426 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1428 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1430 (W pack) You tried something like
1432 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1434 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1435 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1436 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1438 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1440 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1442 (W unpack) You tried something like
1444 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1446 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1447 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1448 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1450 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1452 =item charnames alias definitions may not contain a sequence of multiple spaces
1454 (F) You defined a character name which had multiple space characters
1455 in a row. Change them to single spaces. Usually these names are
1456 defined in the C<:alias> import argument to C<use charnames>, but they
1457 could be defined by a translator installed into C<$^H{charnames}>. See
1458 L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
1460 =item charnames alias definitions may not contain trailing white-space
1462 (F) You defined a character name which ended in a space
1463 character. Remove the trailing space(s). Usually these names are
1464 defined in the C<:alias> import argument to C<use charnames>, but they
1465 could be defined by a translator installed into C<$^H{charnames}>.
1466 See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
1468 =item \C is deprecated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1470 (D deprecated, regexp) The \C character class is deprecated, and will
1471 become a compile-time error in a future release of perl (tentatively
1472 v5.24). This construct allows you to match a single byte of what makes
1473 up a multi-byte single UTF8 character, and breaks encapsulation. It is
1474 currently also very buggy. If you really need to process the individual
1475 bytes, you probably want to convert your string to one where each
1476 underlying byte is stored as a character, with utf8::encode().
1478 =item "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"
1480 (W syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way to specify
1481 non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which
1482 is better written as simply itself, perhaps preceded by a backslash
1483 for non-word characters. Doing it the way you did is not portable
1484 between ASCII and EBCDIC platforms.
1486 =item Cloning substitution context is unimplemented
1488 (F) Creating a new thread inside the C<s///> operator is not supported.
1490 =item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1492 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1493 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1495 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1497 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1499 =item Closure prototype called
1501 (F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to an attribute
1502 handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure is created.
1503 This subroutine cannot be called.
1505 =item Code missing after '/'
1507 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be
1508 another template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1510 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
1512 (S non_unicode) You had a code point above the Unicode maximum
1515 Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code points, up
1516 to the limit of what is storable in an unsigned integer on your system,
1517 but these may not be accepted by other languages/systems. At one time,
1518 it was legal in some standards to have code points up to 0x7FFF_FFFF,
1519 but not higher. Code points above 0xFFFF_FFFF require larger than a
1522 =item %s: Command not found
1524 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> or another shell
1525 instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
1526 Perl yourself. The #! line at the top of your file could look like
1530 =item Compilation failed in require
1532 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1533 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1534 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1536 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1538 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1539 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1540 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1541 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1542 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1543 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1544 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1545 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1546 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1548 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1550 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1551 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1552 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1554 =item Constant(%s): Call to &{$^H{%s}} did not return a defined value
1556 (F) The subroutine registered to handle constant overloading
1557 (see L<overload>) or a custom charnames handler (see
1558 L<charnames/CUSTOM TRANSLATORS>) returned an undefined value.
1560 =item Constant(%s): $^H{%s} is not defined
1562 (F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to define an
1563 overloaded constant. Perhaps you forgot to load the corresponding
1566 =item Constant is not %s reference
1568 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1569 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1570 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1571 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1572 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1574 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1576 (W redefine)(S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously
1577 been eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions">
1578 for commentary and workarounds.
1580 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1582 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1583 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1586 =item Constant(%s) unknown
1588 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting
1589 to define an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the
1590 character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you
1591 forgot to load the corresponding L<overload> pragma?.
1593 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1595 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1596 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1598 =item &CORE::%s cannot be called directly
1600 (F) You tried to call a subroutine in the C<CORE::> namespace
1601 with C<&foo> syntax or through a reference. Some subroutines
1602 in this package cannot yet be called that way, but must be
1603 called as barewords. Something like this will work:
1605 BEGIN { *shove = \&CORE::push; }
1606 shove @array, 1,2,3; # pushes on to @array
1608 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1610 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1612 =item Corrupted regexp opcode %d > %d
1614 (P) This is either an error in Perl, or, if you're using
1615 one, your L<custom regular expression engine|perlreapi>. If not the
1616 latter, report the problem through the L<perlbug> utility.
1618 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1620 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1621 expression compiler gave it.
1623 =item corrupted regexp program
1625 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1628 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
1630 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1632 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1634 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1635 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1639 The following are used in lib/diagnostics.t for testing two =items that
1640 share the same description. Changes here need to be propagated to there
1642 =item Deep recursion on anonymous subroutine
1644 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1646 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1647 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1648 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1649 which case it indicates something else.
1651 This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the F<perl> binary,
1652 setting the C pre-processor macro C<PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN> to the desired value.
1654 =item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by
1655 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
1657 (F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
1658 most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
1659 of the C<....> part.
1661 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
1664 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1666 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1667 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1669 =item delete argument is index/value array slice, use array slice
1671 (F) You used index/value array slice syntax (C<%array[...]>) as
1672 the argument to C<delete>. You probably meant C<@array[...]> with
1673 an @ symbol instead.
1675 =item delete argument is key/value hash slice, use hash slice
1677 (F) You used key/value hash slice syntax (C<%hash{...}>) as the argument to
1678 C<delete>. You probably meant C<@hash{...}> with an @ symbol instead.
1680 =item delete argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
1682 (F) The argument to C<delete> must be either a hash or array element,
1688 or a hash or array slice, such as:
1690 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
1691 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
1693 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1695 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1696 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1697 that triggers this error.
1699 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1701 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>. There
1702 has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1703 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1704 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1705 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1706 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1707 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1709 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1713 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1715 Beginning with perl 5.10.0, you can also use C<state> variables to have
1716 lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1718 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1720 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1722 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1723 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather
1724 than to create a dangling reference.
1726 =item Did not produce a valid header
1730 =item %s did not return a true value
1732 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1733 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1734 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1735 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1737 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1739 (W misc) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or
1742 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1744 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1745 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1748 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1750 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1751 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1756 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1757 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
1759 =item Document contains no data
1763 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1765 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1766 define a C<$VERSION>.
1768 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1770 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1771 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1773 =item Don't know how to get file name
1775 (P) C<PerlIO_getname>, a perl internal I/O function specific to VMS, was
1776 somehow called on another platform. This should not happen.
1778 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type \%o
1780 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1782 =item do_study: out of memory
1784 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1786 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1788 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1789 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1790 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1791 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1792 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1793 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1794 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1795 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1797 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1799 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1800 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1802 =item dump is not supported
1804 (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1806 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1808 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1811 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1813 (W unpack) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a
1814 type in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1816 =item each on reference is experimental
1818 (S experimental::autoderef) C<each> with a scalar argument is experimental
1819 and may change or be removed in a future Perl version. If you want to
1820 take the risk of using this feature, simply disable this warning:
1822 no warnings "experimental::autoderef";
1824 =item elseif should be elsif
1826 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks
1827 it's ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1828 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1829 unlikely to be what you want.
1831 =item Empty \%c{} in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
1833 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1834 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1835 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1837 =item entering effective %s failed
1839 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1840 effective uids or gids failed.
1842 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1844 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1845 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1846 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1848 =item Error converting file specification %s
1850 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1851 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1852 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1853 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1854 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1856 =item Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1858 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1859 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1860 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1862 =item Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
1864 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1865 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1866 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk,
1867 it is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by using the
1868 C<re 'eval'> pragma or by explicitly building the pattern from an
1869 interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval(). See
1870 L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1872 =item Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
1874 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1875 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1876 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1878 =item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by
1879 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
1881 (F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
1882 any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
1884 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
1887 =item Excessively long <> operator
1889 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1890 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1891 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1892 variable and glob that.
1894 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1896 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented on some systems, e.g., Symbian
1897 OS. See L<perlport>.
1899 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
1901 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1903 =item exists argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
1905 (F) The argument to C<exists> must be a hash or array element or a
1906 subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
1912 =item exists argument is not a subroutine name
1914 (F) The argument to C<exists> for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine name,
1915 and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this error.
1917 =item Exiting eval via %s
1919 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1920 goto, or a loop control statement.
1922 =item Exiting format via %s
1924 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1925 goto, or a loop control statement.
1927 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1929 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1930 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1931 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1933 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1935 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1936 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1938 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1940 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1941 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1943 =item Expecting close bracket in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
1945 (F) You wrote something like
1949 to denote a capturing group of the form
1950 L<C<(?I<PARNO>)>|perlre/(?PARNO) (?-PARNO) (?+PARNO) (?R) (?0)>,
1951 but omitted the C<")">.
1953 =item Expecting '(?flags:(?[...' in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
1955 (F) The C<(?[...])> extended character class regular expression construct
1956 only allows character classes (including character class escapes like
1957 C<\d>), operators, and parentheses. The one exception is C<(?flags:...)>
1958 containing at least one flag and exactly one C<(?[...])> construct.
1959 This allows a regular expression containing just C<(?[...])> to be
1960 interpolated. If you see this error message, then you probably
1961 have some other C<(?...)> construct inside your character class. See
1962 L<perlrecharclass/Extended Bracketed Character Classes>.
1964 =item Experimental lvalue references not enabled
1966 (F) To use lvalue references, you must first enable them:
1968 no warnings "experimental::lvalue_refs";
1969 use feature "lvalue_refs";
1972 =item Experimental subroutine signatures not enabled
1974 (F) To use subroutine signatures, you must first enable them:
1976 no warnings "experimental::signatures";
1977 use feature "signatures";
1978 sub foo ($left, $right) { ... }
1980 =item Experimental "%s" subs not enabled
1982 (F) To use lexical subs, you must first enable them:
1984 no warnings 'experimental::lexical_subs';
1985 use feature 'lexical_subs';
1988 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1990 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1991 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1992 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1993 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1995 =item %s: Expression syntax
1997 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1998 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
2000 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
2002 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
2003 CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
2004 queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
2006 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2008 (W regexp)(F) A character class range must start and end at a literal
2009 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
2010 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". In a C<(?[...])>
2011 construct, this is an error, rather than a warning. Consider quoting
2012 the "-", "\-". The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression
2013 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2015 =item Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
2017 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
2018 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
2019 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
2020 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
2022 =item fcntl is not implemented
2024 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
2025 PDP-11 or something?
2027 =item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
2029 (F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
2032 =item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
2034 (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string starts with a length indicator
2035 which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
2036 a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
2037 C<u63> as the format.
2039 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
2041 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
2042 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
2043 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
2044 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
2046 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
2048 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
2049 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
2050 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with ">". If you intended only to
2051 read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>. Another possibility
2052 is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0 (also known as STDIN) for
2053 output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
2055 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
2057 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
2058 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
2061 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
2063 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
2064 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
2066 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
2068 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
2069 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
2070 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
2073 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
2075 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
2076 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
2077 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
2080 =item Format not terminated
2082 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
2083 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
2085 =item Format %s redefined
2087 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
2090 no warnings 'redefine';
2091 eval "format NAME =...";
2094 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
2104 (or something like that).
2106 =item %s found where operator expected
2108 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
2109 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
2110 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
2111 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
2113 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
2115 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
2117 =item gethostent not implemented
2119 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
2120 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
2123 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
2125 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
2126 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
2128 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
2130 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
2131 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
2133 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
2135 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
2136 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2137 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
2139 =item given is experimental
2141 (S experimental::smartmatch) C<given> depends on smartmatch, which
2142 is experimental, so its behavior may change or even be removed
2143 in any future release of perl. See the explanation under
2144 L<perlsyn/Experimental Details on given and when>.
2146 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name (did you forget to
2149 (F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
2150 that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
2151 declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
2152 which package the global variable is in (using "::").
2154 =item glob failed (%s)
2156 (S glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used
2157 for C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
2158 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
2159 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
2160 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell)
2161 is broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables
2162 in config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as
2163 if it were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them
2164 all empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
2165 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
2166 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
2168 =item Glob not terminated
2170 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
2171 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
2172 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
2173 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
2175 =item gmtime(%f) failed
2177 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that it could not handle:
2178 too large, too small, or NaN. The returned value is C<undef>.
2180 =item gmtime(%f) too large
2182 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was larger than
2183 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
2184 date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2185 not-a-number value).
2187 =item gmtime(%f) too small
2189 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was smaller than
2190 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong date.
2192 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
2194 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
2195 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
2197 =item goto must have label
2199 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
2200 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
2202 =item Goto undefined subroutine%s
2204 (F) You tried to call a subroutine with C<goto &sub> syntax, but
2205 the indicated subroutine hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2206 has since been undefined.
2208 =item Group name must start with a non-digit word character in regex; marked by
2209 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2211 (F) Group names must follow the rules for perl identifiers, meaning
2212 they must start with a non-digit word character. A common cause of
2213 this error is using (?&0) instead of (?0). See L<perlre>.
2215 =item ()-group starts with a count
2217 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is supposed to follow
2218 something: a template character or a ()-group. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2220 =item %s had compilation errors.
2222 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
2224 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
2226 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
2227 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
2228 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
2230 =item %s has too many errors
2232 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
2233 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
2235 =item Having more than one /%c regexp modifier is deprecated
2237 (D deprecated, regexp) You used the indicated regular expression pattern
2238 modifier at least twice in a string of modifiers. It is deprecated to
2239 do this with this particular modifier, to allow future extensions to the
2242 =item Hexadecimal float: exponent overflow
2244 (W overflow) The hexadecimal floating point has a larger exponent
2245 than the floating point supports.
2247 =item Hexadecimal float: exponent underflow
2249 (W overflow) The hexadecimal floating point has a smaller exponent
2250 than the floating point supports.
2252 =item Hexadecimal float: internal error
2254 (F) Something went horribly bad in hexadecimal float handling.
2256 =item Hexadecimal float: mantissa overflow
2258 (W overflow) The hexadecimal floating point literal had more bits in
2259 the mantissa (the part between the 0x and the exponent, also known as
2260 the fraction or the significand) than the floating point supports.
2262 =item Hexadecimal float: precision loss
2264 (W overflow) The hexadecimal floating point had internally more
2265 digits than could be output. This can be caused by unsupported
2266 long double formats, or by 64-bit integers not being available
2267 (needed to retrieve the digits under some configurations).
2269 =item Hexadecimal float: unsupported long double format
2271 (F) You have configured Perl to use long doubles but
2272 the internals of the long double format are unknown;
2273 therefore the hexadecimal float output is impossible.
2275 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
2277 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2278 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2279 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2281 =item Identifier too long
2283 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
2284 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
2285 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
2286 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
2288 =item Ignoring zero length \N{} in character class in regex; marked by
2289 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2291 (W regexp) Named Unicode character escapes (C<\N{...}>) may return a
2292 zero-length sequence. When such an escape is used in a character class
2293 its behaviour is not well defined. Check that the correct escape has
2294 been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
2296 =item Illegal binary digit %s
2298 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
2300 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
2302 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
2303 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
2306 =item Illegal character after '_' in prototype for %s : %s
2308 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype
2309 declaration. The '_' in a prototype must be followed by a ';',
2310 indicating the rest of the parameters are optional, or one of '@'
2311 or '%', since those two will accept 0 or more final parameters.
2313 =item Illegal character \%o (carriage return)
2315 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
2316 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
2317 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
2318 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
2319 to your Perl administrator.
2321 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
2323 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2324 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2325 Perhaps you were trying to write a subroutine signature but didn't enable
2326 that feature first (C<use feature 'signatures'>), so your signature was
2327 instead interpreted as a bad prototype.
2329 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
2331 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
2332 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
2334 =item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
2336 (F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
2338 =item Illegal division by zero
2340 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
2341 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
2344 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
2346 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
2347 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
2348 number stopped before the illegal character.
2350 =item Illegal modulus zero
2352 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
2353 numbers don't take to this kindly.
2355 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
2357 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
2358 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
2360 =item Illegal octal digit %s
2362 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2364 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
2366 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2367 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
2369 =item Illegal pattern in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2371 (F) You wrote something like
2375 The C<"+"> is valid only when followed by digits, indicating a
2376 capturing group. See
2377 L<C<(?I<PARNO>)>|perlre/(?PARNO) (?-PARNO) (?+PARNO) (?R) (?0)>.
2379 =item Illegal suidscript
2381 (F) The script run under suidperl was somehow illegal.
2383 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: -%c
2385 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
2386 following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtw]>.
2388 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
2390 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
2391 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
2392 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
2394 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
2396 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
2397 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
2398 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
2401 =item (in cleanup) %s
2403 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
2404 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
2405 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
2406 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
2407 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
2409 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
2410 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
2412 =item Incomplete expression within '(?[ ])' in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE>
2415 (F) There was a syntax error within the C<(?[ ])>. This can happen if the
2416 expression inside the construct was completely empty, or if there are
2417 too many or few operands for the number of operators. Perl is not smart
2418 enough to give you a more precise indication as to what is wrong.
2420 =item Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on
2423 (F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not
2424 C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See the C3
2425 documentation in L<mro> for more information.
2427 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
2429 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
2430 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
2431 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
2433 =item Infinite recursion in regex
2435 (F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input
2436 text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive patterns
2437 either consume text or fail.
2439 =item Initialization of state variables in list context currently forbidden
2441 (F) Currently the implementation of "state" only permits the
2442 initialization of scalar variables in scalar context. Re-write
2443 C<state ($a) = 42> as C<state $a = 42> to change from list to scalar
2444 context. Constructions such as C<state (@a) = foo()> will be
2445 supported in a future perl release.
2447 =item %%s[%s] in scalar context better written as $%s[%s]
2449 (W syntax) In scalar context, you've used an array index/value slice
2450 (indicated by %) to select a single element of an array. Generally
2451 it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $). The difference
2452 is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a scalar, both in the value it
2453 returns and when evaluating its argument, while C<%foo[&bar]> provides
2454 a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things if you're
2455 expecting only one subscript. When called in list context, it also
2456 returns the index (what C<&bar> returns) in addition to the value.
2458 =item %%s{%s} in scalar context better written as $%s{%s}
2460 (W syntax) In scalar context, you've used a hash key/value slice
2461 (indicated by %) to select a single element of a hash. Generally it's
2462 better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $). The difference
2463 is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both in the value
2464 it returns and when evaluating its argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> and
2465 provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
2466 if you're expecting only one subscript. When called in list context,
2467 it also returns the key in addition to the value.
2469 =item Insecure dependency in %s
2471 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
2472 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
2473 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
2474 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
2475 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
2476 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
2477 L<perlsec> for more information.
2479 =item Insecure directory in %s
2481 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2482 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
2483 the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
2486 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
2488 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2489 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
2490 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
2491 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
2492 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
2494 =item Insecure user-defined property %s
2496 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
2497 expression that contains a call to a user-defined character property
2498 function, i.e. C<\p{IsFoo}> or C<\p{InFoo}>.
2499 See L<perlunicode/User-Defined Character Properties> and L<perlsec>.
2501 =item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2503 (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2504 or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2505 integers for your architecture.
2507 =item Integer overflow in %s number
2509 (S overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2510 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2511 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2512 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2513 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
2514 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2515 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2516 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2519 =item Integer overflow in srand
2521 (S overflow) The number you have passed to srand is too big to fit
2522 in your architecture's integer representation. The number has been
2523 replaced with the largest integer supported (0xFFFFFFFF on 32-bit
2524 architectures). This means you may be getting less randomness than
2525 you expect, because different random seeds above the maximum will
2526 return the same sequence of random numbers.
2528 =item Integer overflow in version
2530 =item Integer overflow in version %d
2532 (W overflow) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for
2533 the size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
2534 because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use an
2535 element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by trying
2536 to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like 100/9.
2538 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2540 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
2541 The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
2544 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2546 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2547 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2548 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2549 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2550 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2551 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
2553 =item internal %<num>p might conflict with future printf extensions
2555 (S internal) Perl's internal routine that handles C<printf> and C<sprintf>
2556 formatting follows a slightly different set of rules when called from
2557 C or XS code. Specifically, formats consisting of digits followed
2558 by "p" (e.g., "%7p") are reserved for future use. If you see this
2559 message, then an XS module tried to call that routine with one such
2562 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2564 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2565 S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
2568 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
2570 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
2571 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
2572 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
2573 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
2575 =item In '(?...)', the '(' and '?' must be adjacent in regex;
2576 marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2578 (F) The two-character sequence C<"(?"> in this context in a regular
2579 expression pattern should be an indivisible token, with nothing
2580 intervening between the C<"("> and the C<"?">, but you separated them
2583 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2585 (F) The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2586 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2588 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2590 (F) The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2591 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2593 =item Invalid character in charnames alias definition; marked by
2596 (F) You tried to create a custom alias for a character name, with
2597 the C<:alias> option to C<use charnames> and the specified character in
2598 the indicated name isn't valid. See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
2600 =item Invalid \0 character in %s for %s: %s\0%s
2602 (W syscalls) Embedded \0 characters in pathnames or other system call
2603 arguments produce a warning as of 5.20. The parts after the \0 were
2604 formerly ignored by system calls.
2606 =item Invalid character in \N{...}; marked by S<<-- HERE> in \N{%s}
2608 (F) Only certain characters are valid for character names. The
2609 indicated one isn't. See L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
2611 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2613 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2614 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
2616 =item Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by
2617 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2619 (W regexp)(F) The numeric escape (for example C<\xHH>) of value < 256
2620 didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion
2621 from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma.
2622 The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD)
2623 instead, except within S<C<(?[ ])>>, where it is a fatal error.
2624 The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
2625 escape was discovered.
2627 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
2629 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...} in regex; marked by
2630 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2632 (F) The character constant represented by C<...> is not a valid hexadecimal
2633 number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use a character other than
2634 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
2636 =item Invalid module name %s with -%c option: contains single ':'
2638 (F) The module argument to perl's B<-m> and B<-M> command-line options
2639 cannot contain single colons in the module name, but only in the
2640 arguments after "=". In other words, B<-MFoo::Bar=:baz> is ok, but
2641 B<-MFoo:Bar=baz> is not.
2643 =item Invalid mro name: '%s'
2645 (F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")> or C<use mro 'foo'>,
2646 where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO). Currently,
2647 the only valid ones supported are C<dfs> and C<c3>, unless you have loaded
2648 a module that is a MRO plugin. See L<mro> and L<perlmroapi>.
2650 =item Invalid negative number (%s) in chr
2652 (W utf8) You passed a negative number to C<chr>. Negative numbers are
2653 not valid character numbers, so it returns the Unicode replacement
2656 =item invalid option -D%c, use -D'' to see choices
2658 (S debugging) Perl was called with invalid debugger flags. Call perl
2659 with the B<-D> option with no flags to see the list of acceptable values.
2660 See also L<perlrun/-Dletters>.
2662 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2664 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2665 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2666 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2667 up to C<ff>. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
2668 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2670 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2672 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2673 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2675 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2677 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2678 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2679 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2682 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2684 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other
2685 than a colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2686 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2687 list was terminated too soon.
2689 =item Invalid strict version format (%s)
2691 (F) A version number did not meet the "strict" criteria for versions.
2692 A "strict" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2693 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2694 v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least three components.
2695 The parenthesized text indicates which criteria were not met.
2696 See the L<version> module for more details on allowed version formats.
2698 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2700 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2701 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2703 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2706 =item Invalid version format (%s)
2708 (F) A version number did not meet the "lax" criteria for versions.
2709 A "lax" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2710 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2711 v-string. If the v-string has fewer than three components, it
2712 must have a leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading 'v' is
2713 optional. Both decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a
2714 trailing "alpha" component separated by an underscore character
2715 after a fractional or dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized
2716 text indicates which criteria were not met. See the L<version> module
2717 for more details on allowed version formats.
2719 =item Invalid version object
2721 (F) The internal structure of the version object was invalid.
2722 Perhaps the internals were modified directly in some way or
2723 an arbitrary reference was blessed into the "version" class.
2725 =item In '(*VERB...)', the '(' and '*' must be adjacent in regex;
2726 marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
2728 (F) The two-character sequence C<"(*"> in
2729 this context in a regular expression pattern should be an
2730 indivisible token, with nothing intervening between the C<"(">
2731 and the C<"*">, but you separated them.
2733 =item ioctl is not implemented
2735 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2736 strange for a machine that supports C.
2738 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
2740 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2741 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
2743 =item IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
2745 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2746 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO, Perl must be configured
2749 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2751 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2752 neither as a system call nor an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2754 =item $* is no longer supported
2756 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older
2757 perls, has been removed as of 5.10.0 and is no longer supported. In
2758 previous versions of perl the use of C<$*> enabled or disabled multi-line
2759 matching within a string.
2761 Instead of using C<$*> you should use the C</m> (and maybe C</s>) regexp
2762 modifiers. You can enable C</m> for a lexical scope (even a whole file)
2763 with C<use re '/m'>. (In older versions: when C<$*> was set to a true value
2764 then all regular expressions behaved as if they were written using C</m>.)
2766 =item $# is no longer supported
2768 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older
2769 perls, has been removed as of 5.10.0 and is no longer supported. You
2770 should use the printf/sprintf functions instead.
2772 =item '%s' is not a code reference
2774 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of
2775 overload::constant needs to be a code reference. Either
2776 an anonymous subroutine, or a reference to a subroutine.
2778 =item '%s' is not an overloadable type
2780 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2783 =item -i used with no filenames on the command line, reading from STDIN
2785 (S inplace) The C<-i> option was passed on the command line, indicating
2786 that the script is intended to edit files in place, but no files were
2787 given. This is usually a mistake, since editing STDIN in place doesn't
2788 make sense, and can be confusing because it can make perl look like
2789 it is hanging when it is really just trying to read from STDIN. You
2790 should either pass a filename to edit, or remove C<-i> from the command
2791 line. See L<perlrun> for more details.
2793 =item Junk on end of regexp in regex m/%s/
2795 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2797 =item keys on reference is experimental
2799 (S experimental::autoderef) C<keys> with a scalar argument is experimental
2800 and may change or be removed in a future Perl version. If you want to
2801 take the risk of using this feature, simply disable this warning:
2803 no warnings "experimental::autoderef";
2805 =item Label not found for "last %s"
2807 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2808 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2811 =item Label not found for "next %s"
2813 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2814 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2817 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
2819 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2820 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2823 =item leaving effective %s failed
2825 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2826 effective uids or gids failed.
2828 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
2830 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2831 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2832 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2834 =item length() used on %s (did you mean "scalar(%s)"?)
2836 (W syntax) You used length() on either an array or a hash when you
2837 probably wanted a count of the items.
2839 Array size can be obtained by doing:
2843 The number of items in a hash can be obtained by doing:
2847 =item Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
2849 (F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse
2850 (using L<lex_stuff_pvn|perlapi/lex_stuff_pvn> or similar), but tried to insert a character that
2851 couldn't be part of the current input. This is an inherent pitfall
2852 of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the reasons to avoid it. Where
2853 it is necessary to stuff, stuffing only plain ASCII is recommended.
2855 =item Lexing code internal error (%s)
2857 (F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a
2860 =item listen() on closed socket %s
2862 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2863 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2866 =item List form of piped open not implemented
2868 (F) On some platforms, notably Windows, the three-or-more-arguments
2869 form of C<open> does not support pipes, such as C<open($pipe, '|-', @args)>.
2870 Use the two-argument C<open($pipe, '|prog arg1 arg2...')> form instead.
2872 =item localtime(%f) failed
2874 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that it could not handle:
2875 too large, too small, or NaN. The returned value is C<undef>.
2877 =item localtime(%f) too large
2879 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was larger
2880 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2881 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2882 not-a-number value).
2884 =item localtime(%f) too small
2886 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was smaller
2887 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2890 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
2892 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2893 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2895 =item Lost precision when %s %f by 1
2897 (W imprecision) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by one
2898 is too large for the underlying floating point representation to store
2899 accurately, hence the target of C<++> or C<--> is unchanged. Perl issues this
2900 warning because it has already switched from integers to floating point
2901 when values are too large for integers, and now even floating point is
2902 insufficient. You may wish to switch to using L<Math::BigInt> explicitly.
2904 =item lstat() on filehandle%s
2906 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2907 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2908 instead on the filehandle.)
2910 =item lvalue attribute %s already-defined subroutine
2912 (W misc) Although L<attributes.pm|attributes> allows this, turning the lvalue
2913 attribute on or off on a Perl subroutine that is already defined
2914 does not always work properly. It may or may not do what you
2915 want, depending on what code is inside the subroutine, with exact
2916 details subject to change between Perl versions. Only do this
2917 if you really know what you are doing.
2919 =item lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined
2921 (W misc) Using the C<:lvalue> declarative syntax to make a Perl
2922 subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it has been defined is
2923 not permitted. To make the subroutine an lvalue subroutine,
2924 add the lvalue attribute to the definition, or put the C<sub
2925 foo :lvalue;> declaration before the definition.
2927 See also L<attributes.pm|attributes>.
2929 =item Lvalue references are experimental
2931 (S experimental::lvalue_refs) This warning is emitted if you use
2932 a reference constructor on the left-hand side of an assignment to
2933 alias one variable to another. Simply suppress the warning if you
2934 want to use the feature, but know that in doing so you are taking
2935 the risk of using an experimental feature which may change or be
2936 removed in a future Perl version:
2938 no warnings "experimental::lvalue_refs";
2939 use feature "lvalue_refs";
2942 =item Magical list constants are not supported
2944 (F) You assigned a magical array to a stash element, and then tried
2945 to use the subroutine from the same slot. You are asking Perl to do
2946 something it cannot do, details subject to change between Perl versions.
2948 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2950 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2951 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2953 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2955 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2956 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2958 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2960 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2967 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2968 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2969 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2970 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2972 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2974 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2975 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2976 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2977 when the function is called.
2978 Perhaps the function's author was trying to write a subroutine signature
2979 but didn't enable that feature first (C<use feature 'signatures'>),
2980 so the signature was instead interpreted as a bad prototype.
2982 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2984 (S utf8)(F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2985 encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
2987 One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2988 you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
2989 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2991 If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2992 sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2993 set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2996 See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
2998 =item Malformed UTF-8 character immediately after '%s'
3000 (F) You said C<use utf8>, but the program file doesn't comply with UTF-8
3001 encoding rules. The message prints out the properly encoded characters
3002 just before the first bad one. If C<utf8> warnings are enabled, a
3003 warning is generated that gives more details about the type of
3006 =item Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N{%s} immediately after '%s'
3008 (F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
3010 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
3012 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
3013 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
3015 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
3017 (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
3018 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
3020 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
3022 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
3023 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
3025 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
3027 (F) Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
3028 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
3030 =item Mandatory parameter follows optional parameter
3032 (F) In a subroutine signature, you wrote something like "$a = undef,
3033 $b", making an earlier parameter optional and a later one mandatory.
3034 Parameters are filled from left to right, so it's impossible for the
3035 caller to omit an earlier one and pass a later one. If you want to act
3036 as if the parameters are filled from right to left, declare the rightmost
3037 optional and then shuffle the parameters around in the subroutine's body.
3039 =item Matched non-Unicode code point 0x%X against Unicode property; may
3042 (S non_unicode) Perl allows strings to contain a superset of
3043 Unicode code points; each code point may be as large as what is storable
3044 in an unsigned integer on your system, but these may not be accepted by
3045 other languages/systems. This message occurs when you matched a string
3046 containing such a code point against a regular expression pattern, and
3047 the code point was matched against a Unicode property, C<\p{...}> or
3048 C<\P{...}>. Unicode properties are only defined on Unicode code points,
3049 so the result of this match is undefined by Unicode, but Perl (starting
3050 in v5.20) treats non-Unicode code points as if they were typical
3051 unassigned Unicode ones, and matched this one accordingly. Whether a
3052 given property matches these code points or not is specified in
3053 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>.
3055 This message is suppressed (unless it has been made fatal) if it is
3056 immaterial to the results of the match if the code point is Unicode or
3057 not. For example, the property C<\p{ASCII_Hex_Digit}> only can match
3058 the 22 characters C<[0-9A-Fa-f]>, so obviously all other code points,
3059 Unicode or not, won't match it. (And C<\P{ASCII_Hex_Digit}> will match
3060 every code point except these 22.)
3062 Getting this message indicates that the outcome of the match arguably
3063 should have been the opposite of what actually happened. If you think
3064 that is the case, you may wish to make the C<non_unicode> warnings
3065 category fatal; if you agree with Perl's decision, you may wish to turn
3068 See L<perlunicode/Beyond Unicode code points> for more information.
3070 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
3073 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
3074 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The S<<-- HERE>
3075 shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
3078 =item Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded
3080 (F) Perl aborted due to too high a number of signals pending. This
3081 usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
3082 too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
3083 resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
3084 safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
3086 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
3088 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
3089 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
3092 =item '%' may not be used in pack
3094 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
3095 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
3096 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
3098 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
3100 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
3101 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
3103 =item Method %s not permitted
3107 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
3109 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
3110 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
3111 ended earlier on the current line.
3113 =item Misplaced _ in number
3115 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
3116 separate two digits.
3118 =item Missing argument in %s
3120 (W missing) You called a function with fewer arguments than other
3121 arguments you supplied indicated would be needed.
3123 Currently only emitted when a printf-type format required more
3124 arguments than were supplied, but might be used in the future for
3125 other cases where we can statically determine that arguments to
3126 functions are missing, e.g. for the L<perlfunc/pack> function.
3128 =item Missing argument to -%c
3130 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
3131 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
3133 =item Missing braces on \N{}
3135 =item Missing braces on \N{} in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3137 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
3138 double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space
3139 (or comment) between the C<\N> and the C<{> in a regex with the C</x> modifier.
3140 This modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately
3143 =item Missing braces on \o{}
3145 (F) A C<\o> must be followed immediately by a C<{> in double-quotish context.
3147 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
3149 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
3150 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
3152 =item Missing command in piped open
3154 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
3155 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
3158 =item Missing control char name in \c
3160 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
3163 =item Missing ']' in prototype for %s : %s
3165 (W illegalproto) A grouping was started with C<[> but never closed with C<]>.
3167 =item Missing name in "%s sub"
3169 (F) The syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
3170 they have a name with which they can be found.
3172 =item Missing $ on loop variable
3174 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
3175 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
3176 can vary from one line to the next.
3178 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
3180 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3181 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
3183 =item Missing or undefined argument to require
3185 (F) You tried to call require with no argument or with an undefined
3186 value as an argument. Require expects either a package name or a
3187 file-specification as an argument. See L<perlfunc/require>.
3189 =item Missing right brace on \%c{} in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3191 (F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}>, C<\P{...}>, or C<\N{...}>.
3193 =item Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N
3195 (F) C<\N> has two meanings.
3197 The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed in braces,
3198 meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that
3199 name. Thus C<\N{ASTERISK}> is another way of writing C<*>, valid in both
3200 double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns,
3201 it doesn't have the meaning an unescaped C<*> does.
3203 Starting in Perl 5.12.0, C<\N> also can have an additional meaning (only)
3204 in patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short
3205 for C<[^\n]>, and like C<.> but is not affected by the C</s> regex modifier.)
3207 This can lead to some ambiguities. When C<\N> is not followed immediately
3208 by a left brace, Perl assumes the C<[^\n]> meaning. Also, if the braces
3209 form a valid quantifier such as C<\N{3}> or C<\N{5,}>, Perl assumes that this
3210 means to match the given quantity of non-newlines (in these examples,
3211 3; and 5 or more, respectively). In all other case, where there is a
3212 C<\N{> and a matching C<}>, Perl assumes that a character name is desired.
3214 However, if there is no matching C<}>, Perl doesn't know if it was
3215 mistakenly omitted, or if C<[^\n]{> was desired, and raises this error.
3216 If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant the latter,
3217 escape the brace with a backslash, like so: C<\N\{>
3219 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
3221 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
3222 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
3225 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
3227 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3228 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
3229 the previous line just because you saw this message.
3231 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
3233 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
3234 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
3235 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
3237 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
3240 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
3242 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
3243 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
3246 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
3247 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to
3250 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
3252 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
3253 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
3256 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
3258 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
3259 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
3261 =item Module name must be constant
3263 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
3265 =item Module name required with -%c option
3267 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
3268 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
3269 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
3271 =item More than one argument to '%s' open
3273 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
3274 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
3275 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
3276 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
3278 =item mprotect for COW string %p %u failed with %d
3280 (S) You compiled perl with B<-D>PERL_DEBUG_READONLY_COW (see
3281 L<perlguts/"Copy on Write">), but a shared string buffer
3282 could not be made read-only.
3284 =item mprotect for %p %u failed with %d
3286 (S) You compiled perl with B<-D>PERL_DEBUG_READONLY_OPS (see L<perlhacktips>),
3287 but an op tree could not be made read-only.
3289 =item mprotect RW for COW string %p %u failed with %d
3291 (S) You compiled perl with B<-D>PERL_DEBUG_READONLY_COW (see
3292 L<perlguts/"Copy on Write">), but a read-only shared string
3293 buffer could not be made mutable.
3295 =item mprotect RW for %p %u failed with %d
3297 (S) You compiled perl with B<-D>PERL_DEBUG_READONLY_OPS (see
3298 L<perlhacktips>), but a read-only op tree could not be made
3299 mutable before freeing the ops.
3301 =item msg%s not implemented
3303 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
3305 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
3307 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
3308 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
3310 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
3312 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
3313 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
3314 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3316 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
3318 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
3321 =item "my" subroutine %s can't be in a package
3323 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
3324 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front.
3326 =item "my %s" used in sort comparison
3328 (W syntax) The package variables $a and $b are used for sort comparisons.
3329 You used $a or $b in as an operand to the C<< <=> >> or C<cmp> operator inside a
3330 sort comparison block, and the variable had earlier been declared as a
3331 lexical variable. Either qualify the sort variable with the package
3332 name, or rename the lexical variable.
3334 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
3336 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
3337 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
3338 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
3340 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
3342 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable
3343 names. If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then
3344 just mention it again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our>
3345 declaration is also provided for this purpose.
3347 NOTE: This warning detects package symbols that have been used
3348 only once. This means lexical variables will never trigger this
3349 warning. It also means that all of the package variables $c, @c,
3350 %c, as well as *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or
3351 format) are considered the same; if a program uses $c only once
3352 but also uses any of the others it will not trigger this warning.
3353 Symbols beginning with an underscore and symbols using special
3354 identifiers (q.v. L<perldata>) are exempt from this warning.
3356 =item Need exactly 3 octal digits in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3358 (F) Within S<C<(?[ ])>>, all constants interpreted as octal need to be
3359 exactly 3 digits long. This helps catch some ambiguities. If your
3360 constant is too short, add leading zeros, like
3362 (?[ [ \078 ] ]) # Syntax error!
3363 (?[ [ \0078 ] ]) # Works
3364 (?[ [ \007 8 ] ]) # Clearer
3366 The maximum number this construct can express is C<\777>. If you
3367 need a larger one, you need to use L<\o{}|perlrebackslash/Octal escapes> instead. If you meant
3368 two separate things, you need to separate them:
3370 (?[ [ \7776 ] ]) # Syntax error!
3371 (?[ [ \o{7776} ] ]) # One meaning
3372 (?[ [ \777 6 ] ]) # Another meaning
3373 (?[ [ \777 \006 ] ]) # Still another
3375 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
3377 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
3378 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3380 =item Negative length
3382 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
3383 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
3385 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
3387 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
3388 greater than or equal to zero.
3390 =item Negative repeat count does nothing
3392 (W numeric) You tried to execute the
3393 L<C<x>|perlop/Multiplicative Operators> repetition operator fewer than 0
3394 times, which doesn't make sense.
3396 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3398 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses.
3399 So things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The S<<-- HERE> shows
3400 whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
3402 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
3403 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
3405 =item %s never introduced
3407 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
3408 scope before it could possibly have been used.
3410 =item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
3412 (F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
3413 real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
3416 =item \N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...} in regex;
3417 marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3419 (F) The new (as of Perl 5.12) meaning of C<\N> as C<[^\n]> is not valid in a
3420 bracketed character class, for the same reason that C<.> in a character
3421 class loses its specialness: it matches almost everything, which is
3422 probably not what you want.
3424 =item \N{} in inverted character class or as a range end-point is restricted to one character in regex; marked
3425 by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3427 (F) Named Unicode character escapes (C<\N{...}>) may return a
3428 multi-character sequence. Even though a character class is
3429 supposed to match just one character of input, perl will match the
3430 whole thing correctly, except when the class is inverted (C<[^...]>),
3431 or the escape is the beginning or final end point of a range. The
3432 mathematically logical behavior for what matches when inverting
3433 is very different from what people expect, so we have decided to
3434 forbid it. Similarly unclear is what should be generated when the
3435 C<\N{...}> is used as one of the end points of the range, such as in
3437 [\x{41}-\N{ARABIC SEQUENCE YEH WITH HAMZA ABOVE WITH AE}]
3439 What is meant here is unclear, as the C<\N{...}> escape is a sequence
3440 of code points, so this is made an error.
3442 =item \N{NAME} must be resolved by the lexer in regex; marked by
3443 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3445 (F) When compiling a regex pattern, an unresolved named character or
3446 sequence was encountered. This can happen in any of several ways that
3447 bypass the lexer, such as using single-quotish context, or an extra
3448 backslash in double-quotish:
3450 $re = '\N{SPACE}'; # Wrong!
3451 $re = "\\N{SPACE}"; # Wrong!
3454 Instead, use double-quotes with a single backslash:
3456 $re = "\N{SPACE}"; # ok
3459 The lexer can be bypassed as well by creating the pattern from smaller
3463 /${re}{SPACE}/; # Wrong!
3465 It's not a good idea to split a construct in the middle like this, and
3466 it doesn't work here. Instead use the solution above.
3468 Finally, the message also can happen under the C</x> regex modifier when the
3469 C<\N> is separated by spaces from the C<{>, in which case, remove the spaces.
3471 /\N {SPACE}/x; # Wrong!
3474 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
3476 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
3477 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
3478 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
3479 securable. See L<perlsec>.
3481 =item NO-BREAK SPACE in a charnames alias definition is deprecated
3483 (D deprecated) You defined a character name which contained a no-break
3484 space character. Change it to a regular space. Usually these names are
3485 defined in the C<:alias> import argument to C<use charnames>, but they
3486 could be defined by a translator installed into C<$^H{charnames}>. See
3487 L<charnames/CUSTOM ALIASES>.
3489 =item No code specified for -%c
3491 (F) Perl's B<-e> and B<-E> command-line options require an argument. If
3492 you want to run an empty program, pass the empty string as a separate
3493 argument or run a program consisting of a single 0 or 1:
3499 =item No comma allowed after %s
3501 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is
3502 not allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
3503 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
3505 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported
3506 a constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
3507 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating
3508 system does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did
3509 use an explicit import list for the constants you expect to see;
3510 please see L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an
3511 explicit import list would probably have caught this error earlier
3512 it naturally does not remedy the fact that your operating system
3513 still does not support that constant. Maybe you have a typo in
3514 the constants of the symbol import list of B<use> or B<import> or in the
3515 constant name at the line where this error was triggered?
3517 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
3519 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3520 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
3521 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
3523 =item No DB::DB routine defined
3525 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3526 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3527 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
3530 =item No dbm on this machine
3532 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
3533 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
3535 =item No DB::sub routine defined
3537 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3538 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3539 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
3540 of each ordinary subroutine call.
3542 =item No directory specified for -I
3544 (F) The B<-I> command-line switch requires a directory name as part of the
3545 I<same> argument. Use B<-Ilib>, for instance. B<-I lib> won't work.
3547 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
3549 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3550 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
3551 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
3553 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
3555 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
3556 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3558 =item No input file after < on command line
3560 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3561 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
3562 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
3564 =item No next::method '%s' found for %s
3566 (F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
3567 in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
3568 it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
3569 or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
3571 =item Non-hex character in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3573 (F) In a regular expression, there was a non-hexadecimal character where
3574 a hex one was expected, like
3579 =item Non-octal character in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3581 (F) In a regular expression, there was a non-octal character where
3582 an octal one was expected, like
3586 =item Non-octal character '%c'. Resolved as "%s"
3588 (W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character was
3589 unexpectedly encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value
3592 =item "no" not allowed in expression
3594 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
3595 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
3597 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
3599 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
3600 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
3601 select. See L<perlfunc/select>.
3603 =item No output file after > on command line
3605 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3606 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
3607 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
3609 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
3611 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3612 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
3613 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
3615 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
3617 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
3618 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
3619 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
3621 =item No Perl script found in input
3623 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
3624 with #! and containing the word "perl".
3626 =item No setregid available
3628 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
3631 =item No setreuid available
3633 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
3636 =item No such class %s
3638 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state"
3639 declaration, but this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
3641 =item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
3643 (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed
3644 variable but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type.
3645 The indicated package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the
3648 =item No such hook: %s
3650 (F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl.
3651 Currently, Perl accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks.
3653 =item No such pipe open
3655 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
3656 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
3657 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
3659 =item No such signal: SIG%s
3661 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
3662 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
3663 names on your system.
3665 =item Not a CODE reference
3667 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3668 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3669 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3672 =item Not a GLOB reference
3674 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
3675 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
3676 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
3677 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3679 =item Not a HASH reference
3681 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
3682 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
3683 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3685 =item Not an ARRAY reference
3687 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
3688 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3689 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3691 =item Not an unblessed ARRAY reference
3693 (F) You passed a reference to a blessed array to C<push>, C<shift> or
3694 another array function. These only accept unblessed array references
3695 or arrays beginning explicitly with C<@>.
3697 =item Not a SCALAR reference
3699 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
3700 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3701 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3703 =item Not a subroutine reference
3705 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3706 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3707 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3710 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
3712 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
3713 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
3715 =item Not enough arguments for %s
3717 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
3719 =item Not enough format arguments
3721 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
3722 supplied. See L<perlform>.
3726 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3727 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3730 =item (?[...]) not valid in locale in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
3732 (F) C<(?[...])> cannot be used within the scope of a C<S<use locale>> or with
3733 an C</l> regular expression modifier, as that would require deferring
3734 to run-time the calculation of what it should evaluate to, and it is
3735 regex compile-time only.
3737 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
3739 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
3740 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
3741 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
3742 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
3743 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
3745 =item NULL OP IN RUN
3747 (S debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
3750 =item Null picture in formline
3752 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
3753 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
3754 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
3758 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
3760 =item NULL regexp argument
3762 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
3764 =item NULL regexp parameter
3766 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
3768 =item Number too long
3770 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
3771 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
3772 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
3773 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
3776 =item Number with no digits
3778 (F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like
3779 a number. This happens, for example with C<\o{}>, with no number between
3782 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
3784 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
3785 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
3786 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
3788 =item Odd name/value argument for subroutine
3790 (F) A subroutine using a slurpy hash parameter in its signature
3791 received an odd number of arguments to populate the hash. It requires
3792 the arguments to be paired, with the same number of keys as values.
3793 The caller of the subroutine is presumably at fault. Inconveniently,
3794 this error will be reported at the location of the subroutine, not that
3797 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
3799 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
3800 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
3802 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
3804 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3805 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3807 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
3809 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3810 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3812 =item Offset outside string
3814 (F)(W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
3815 with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
3816 imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
3817 take place when going past the end of the string when either
3818 C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
3819 for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
3822 =item %s() on unopened %s
3824 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
3825 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
3826 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
3828 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
3830 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
3831 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3835 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3839 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3841 =item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
3843 (D io, deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
3844 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
3845 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3848 =item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
3850 (D io, deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
3851 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
3852 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3855 =item Operand with no preceding operator in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
3858 (F) You wrote something like
3860 (?[ \p{Digit} \p{Thai} ])
3862 There are two operands, but no operator giving how you want to combine
3865 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
3867 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
3868 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
3869 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
3870 the C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
3872 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for non-Unicode code point 0x%X
3874 (S non_unicode) You performed an operation requiring Unicode semantics
3875 on a code point that is not in Unicode, so what it should do is not
3876 defined. Perl has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn you.
3878 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3879 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3881 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3882 C<no warnings 'non_unicode';>.
3884 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
3886 (S surrogate) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3887 semantics on a Unicode surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use
3888 of surrogates for anything but storing strings in UTF-16, but
3889 semantics are (reluctantly) defined for the surrogates, and
3890 they are to do nothing for this operation. Because the use of
3891 surrogates can be dangerous, Perl warns.
3893 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3894 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3896 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3897 C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
3899 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
3901 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
3902 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
3903 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
3904 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
3907 =item Optional parameter lacks default expression
3909 (F) In a subroutine signature, you wrote something like "$a =", making a
3910 named optional parameter without a default value. A nameless optional
3911 parameter is permitted to have no default value, but a named one must
3912 have a specific default. You probably want "$a = undef".
3914 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
3916 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
3917 in the current lexical scope.
3919 =item Out of memory!
3921 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3922 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
3923 no option but to exit immediately.
3925 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
3926 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
3927 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
3928 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
3929 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
3931 =item Out of memory during %s extend
3933 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
3934 the largest possible memory allocation.
3936 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
3938 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3939 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
3940 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
3941 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
3943 =item Out of memory during request for %s
3945 (X)(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
3946 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
3949 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
3950 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
3951 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
3952 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
3953 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
3954 where the failed request happened.
3956 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
3958 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
3959 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
3960 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
3962 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
3964 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
3965 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
3968 =item '.' outside of string in pack
3970 (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
3971 position to before the start of the packed string being built.
3973 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
3975 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3976 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3978 =item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
3980 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3981 the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
3982 UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3984 =item overload arg '%s' is invalid
3986 (W overload) The L<overload> pragma was passed an argument it did not
3987 recognize. Did you mistype an operator?
3989 =item Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
3991 (F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was dereferenced,
3992 but the overloaded operation did not return a reference. See
3995 =item Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
3997 (F) An object with a C<qr> overload was used as part of a match, but the
3998 overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See L<overload>.
4000 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
4002 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
4003 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
4004 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
4005 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
4007 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
4009 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
4010 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4014 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
4015 page. See L<perlform>.
4019 (P) An internal error.
4021 =item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
4023 (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
4024 an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
4025 platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
4026 enter this branch on this platform.
4028 =item panic: child pseudo-process was never scheduled
4030 (P) A child pseudo-process in the ithreads implementation on Windows
4031 was not scheduled within the time period allowed and therefore was not
4032 able to initialize properly.
4034 =item panic: ck_grep, type=%u
4036 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
4038 =item panic: ck_split, type=%u
4040 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
4042 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index %ld
4044 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
4045 there are in the savestack.
4047 =item panic: del_backref
4049 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
4054 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
4055 it wasn't an eval context.
4057 =item panic: do_subst
4059 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
4062 =item panic: do_trans_%s
4064 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
4067 =item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
4069 (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
4072 =item panic: frexp: %f
4074 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
4076 =item panic: goto, type=%u, ix=%ld
4078 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
4079 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
4081 =item panic: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
4083 (P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries tried
4084 repeatedly, but each time something re-created entries in the glob.
4085 Most likely the glob contains an object with a reference back to
4086 the glob and a destructor that adds a new object to the glob.
4088 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD, %s
4090 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
4092 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT, %s
4094 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
4096 =item panic: kid popen errno read
4098 (F) A forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
4100 =item panic: last, type=%u
4102 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
4103 it wasn't a block context.
4105 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
4107 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
4110 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency %u
4112 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
4113 invalid enum on the top of it.
4115 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
4117 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
4118 references to an object.
4120 =item panic: malloc, %s
4122 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
4124 =item panic: memory wrap
4126 (P) Something tried to allocate either more memory than possible or a
4129 =item panic: pad_alloc, %p!=%p
4131 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
4132 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
4134 =item panic: pad_free curpad, %p!=%p
4136 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
4137 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
4139 =item panic: pad_free po
4141 (P) A zero scratch pad offset was detected internally. An attempt was
4142 made to free a target that had not been allocated to begin with.
4144 =item panic: pad_reset curpad, %p!=%p
4146 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
4147 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
4149 =item panic: pad_sv po
4151 (P) A zero scratch pad offset was detected internally. Most likely
4152 an operator needed a target but that target had not been allocated
4153 for whatever reason.
4155 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad, %p!=%p
4157 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
4158 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
4160 =item panic: pad_swipe po
4162 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
4164 =item panic: pp_iter, type=%u
4166 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
4168 =item panic: pp_match%s
4170 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
4173 =item panic: pp_split, pm=%p, s=%p
4175 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
4177 =item panic: realloc, %s
4179 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
4181 =item panic: reference miscount on nsv in sv_replace() (%d != 1)
4183 (P) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
4184 reference count other than 1.
4186 =item panic: restartop in %s
4188 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
4189 didn't supply the destination.
4191 =item panic: return, type=%u
4193 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
4194 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
4196 =item panic: scan_num, %s
4198 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
4200 =item panic: Sequence (?{...}): no code block found in regex m/%s/
4202 (P) While compiling a pattern that has embedded (?{}) or (??{}) code
4203 blocks, perl couldn't locate the code block that should have already been
4204 seen and compiled by perl before control passed to the regex compiler.
4206 =item panic: strxfrm() gets absurd - a => %u, ab => %u
4208 (P) The interpreter's sanity check of the C function strxfrm() failed.
4209 In your current locale the returned transformation of the string "ab"
4210 is shorter than that of the string "a", which makes no sense.
4212 =item panic: sv_chop %s
4214 (P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the
4215 scalar's string buffer.
4217 =item panic: sv_insert, midend=%p, bigend=%p
4219 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
4222 =item panic: top_env
4224 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
4226 =item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
4228 (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't
4229 permitted at run time.
4231 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
4233 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
4234 to even) byte length.
4236 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
4238 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an odd (as opposed
4239 to even) byte length.
4241 =item panic: yylex, %s
4243 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
4245 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
4247 (W parenthesis) You said something like
4253 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
4255 Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
4257 =item Parsing code internal error (%s)
4259 (F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API in
4262 =item Passing malformed UTF-8 to "%s" is deprecated
4264 (D deprecated, utf8) This message indicates a bug either in the Perl
4265 core or in XS code. Such code was trying to find out if a character,
4266 allegedly stored internally encoded as UTF-8, was of a given type, such
4267 as being punctuation or a digit. But the character was not encoded in
4268 legal UTF-8. The C<%s> is replaced by a string that can be used by
4269 knowledgeable people to determine what the type being checked against
4270 was. If C<utf8> warnings are enabled, a further message is raised,
4271 giving details of the malformation.
4273 =item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex
4275 (F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
4276 consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before
4277 the nesting limit is exceeded.
4279 =item C<-p> destination: %s
4281 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
4282 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
4283 redirected it with select().)
4285 =item Perl folding rules are not up-to-date for 0x%X; please use the perlbug
4286 utility to report; in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4288 (S regexp) You used a regular expression with case-insensitive matching,
4289 and there is a bug in Perl in which the built-in regular expression
4290 folding rules are not accurate. This may lead to incorrect results.
4291 Please report this as a bug using the L<perlbug> utility.
4293 =item PerlIO layer ':win32' is experimental
4295 (S experimental::win32_perlio) The C<:win32> PerlIO layer is
4296 experimental. If you want to take the risk of using this layer,
4297 simply disable this warning:
4299 no warnings "experimental::win32_perlio";
4301 =item Perl_my_%s() not available
4303 (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
4304 so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
4305 conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
4306 '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4308 =item Perl %s required (did you mean %s?)--this is only %s, stopped
4310 (F) The code you are trying to run has asked for a newer version of
4311 Perl than you are running. Perhaps C<use 5.10> was written instead
4312 of C<use 5.010> or C<use v5.10>. Without the leading C<v>, the number is
4313 interpreted as a decimal, with every three digits after the
4314 decimal point representing a part of the version number. So 5.10
4315 is equivalent to v5.100.
4317 =item Perl %s required--this is only %s, stopped
4319 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
4320 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
4321 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
4323 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
4325 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
4326 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
4328 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
4330 (X) See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
4332 =item Perls since %s too modern--this is %s, stopped
4334 (F) The code you are trying to run claims it will not run
4335 on the version of Perl you are using because it is too new.
4336 Maybe the code needs to be updated, or maybe it is simply
4337 wrong and the version check should just be removed.
4339 =item perl: warning: Non hex character in '$ENV{PERL_HASH_SEED}', seed only partially set
4341 (S) PERL_HASH_SEED should match /^\s*(?:0x)?[0-9a-fA-F]+\s*\z/ but it
4342 contained a non hex character. This could mean you are not using the
4343 hash seed you think you are.
4345 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
4347 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
4349 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
4350 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
4353 are supported and installed on your system.
4354 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
4356 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
4357 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
4358 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
4359 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
4360 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
4361 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
4362 Perl can and will use, and the script will be run. Before you really
4363 fix the problem, however, you will get the same error message each
4364 time you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
4365 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
4367 =item perl: warning: strange setting in '$ENV{PERL_PERTURB_KEYS}': '%s'
4369 (S) Perl was run with the environment variable PERL_PERTURB_KEYS defined
4370 but containing an unexpected value. The legal values of this setting
4373 Numeric | String | Result
4374 --------+---------------+-----------------------------------------
4375 0 | NO | Disables key traversal randomization
4376 1 | RANDOM | Enables full key traversal randomization
4377 2 | DETERMINISTIC | Enables repeatable key traversal
4380 Both numeric and string values are accepted, but note that string values are
4381 case sensitive. The default for this setting is "RANDOM" or 1.
4383 =item pid %x not a child
4385 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
4386 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
4387 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
4389 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
4391 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
4393 =item pop on reference is experimental
4395 (S experimental::autoderef) C<pop> with a scalar argument is experimental
4396 and may change or be removed in a future Perl version. If you want to
4397 take the risk of using this feature, simply disable this warning:
4399 no warnings "experimental::autoderef";
4401 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by S<< <-- HERE in m/%s/ >>
4403 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The S<<-- HERE>
4404 shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
4405 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
4406 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
4407 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
4409 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
4411 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
4412 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
4414 =item POSIX syntax [%c %c] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by
4415 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4417 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
4418 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
4419 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
4420 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and
4421 will cause fatal errors. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular
4422 expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4424 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by
4425 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4427 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
4428 with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
4429 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
4430 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[."
4431 and ".\]". The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
4432 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4434 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by
4435 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4437 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
4438 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
4439 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
4440 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
4441 and "=\]". The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
4442 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4444 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
4446 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
4447 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
4448 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
4449 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
4451 You probably wrote something like this:
4458 when you should have written this:
4465 If you really want comments, build your list the
4466 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
4470 'b', # another comment
4473 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
4475 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
4476 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
4477 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
4480 You probably wrote something like this:
4484 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
4485 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
4489 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
4491 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
4492 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
4493 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
4494 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
4496 =item Possible precedence issue with control flow operator
4498 (W syntax) There is a possible problem with the mixing of a control
4499 flow operator (e.g. C<return>) and a low-precedence operator like
4502 sub { return $a or $b; }
4506 sub { (return $a) or $b; }
4508 Which is effectively just:
4512 Either use parentheses or the high-precedence variant of the operator.
4514 Note this may be also triggered for constructs like:
4518 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
4520 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
4521 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
4523 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
4525 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
4526 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
4527 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
4528 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
4530 =item Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
4532 (W ambiguous) You said something like C<m/$\/> in a regex.
4533 The regex C<m/foo$\s+bar/m> translates to: match the word 'foo', the output
4534 record separator (see L<perlvar/$\>) and the letter 's' (one time or more)
4535 followed by the word 'bar'.
4537 If this is what you intended then you can silence the warning by using
4538 C<m/${\}/> (for example: C<m/foo${\}s+bar/>).
4540 If instead you intended to match the word 'foo' at the end of the line
4541 followed by whitespace and the word 'bar' on the next line then you can use
4542 C<m/$(?)\/> (for example: C<m/foo$(?)\s+bar/>).
4544 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
4546 (W ambiguous) You said something like '@foo' in a double-quoted string
4547 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
4548 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
4549 to the array you apparently lost track of.
4551 =item Postfix dereference is experimental
4553 (S experimental::postderef) This warning is emitted if you use
4554 the experimental postfix dereference syntax. Simply suppress the
4555 warning if you want to use the feature, but know that in doing
4556 so you are taking the risk of using an experimental feature which
4557 may change or be removed in a future Perl version:
4559 no warnings "experimental::postderef";
4560 use feature "postderef", "postderef_qq";
4566 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
4568 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
4572 is now misinterpreted as
4576 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
4577 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
4578 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
4581 =item Premature end of script headers
4585 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
4587 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4588 before now. Check your control flow.
4590 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
4592 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
4593 before now. Check your control flow.
4595 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
4597 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
4598 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
4599 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
4600 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
4603 =item Property '%s' is unknown in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4605 (F) The named property which you specified via C<\p> or C<\P> is not one
4606 known to Perl. Perhaps you misspelled the name? See
4607 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
4608 for a complete list of available official
4609 properties. If it is a L<user-defined property|perlunicode/User-Defined Character Properties>
4610 it must have been defined by the time the regular expression is
4613 =item Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
4615 (W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is
4616 useless, since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments.
4618 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
4620 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
4621 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
4623 =item Prototype not terminated
4625 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
4628 =item Prototype '%s' overridden by attribute 'prototype(%s)' in %s
4630 (W prototype) A prototype was declared in both the parentheses after
4631 the sub name and via the prototype attribute. The prototype in
4632 parentheses is useless, since it will be replaced by the prototype
4633 from the attribute before it's ever used.
4635 =item \p{} uses Unicode rules, not locale rules
4637 (W) You compiled a regular expression that contained a Unicode property
4638 match (C<\p> or C<\P>), but the regular expression is also being told to
4639 use the run-time locale, not Unicode. Instead, use a POSIX character
4640 class, which should know about the locale's rules.
4641 (See L<perlrecharclass/POSIX Character Classes>.)
4643 Even if the run-time locale is ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), which is a subset of
4644 Unicode, some properties will give results that are not valid for that
4647 Here are a couple of examples to help you see what's going on. If the
4648 locale is ISO 8859-7, the character at code point 0xD7 is the "GREEK
4649 CAPITAL LETTER CHI". But in Unicode that code point means the
4650 "MULTIPLICATION SIGN" instead, and C<\p> always uses the Unicode
4651 meaning. That means that C<\p{Alpha}> won't match, but C<[[:alpha:]]>
4652 should. Only in the Latin1 locale are all the characters in the same
4653 positions as they are in Unicode. But, even here, some properties give
4654 incorrect results. An example is C<\p{Changes_When_Uppercased}> which
4655 is true for "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS", but since the upper
4656 case of that character is not in Latin1, in that locale it doesn't
4657 change when upper cased.
4659 =item push on reference is experimental
4661 (S experimental::autoderef) C<push> with a scalar argument is experimental
4662 and may change or be removed in a future Perl version. If you want to
4663 take the risk of using this feature, simply disable this warning:
4665 no warnings "experimental::autoderef";
4667 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by S<< <-- HERE in m/%s/ >>
4669 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if
4670 you meant it literally. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular
4671 expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4673 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
4676 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of
4677 the {min,max} construct. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular
4678 expression the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4680 =item Quantifier {n,m} with n > m can't match in regex
4682 =item Quantifier {n,m} with n > m can't match in regex; marked by
4683 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4685 (W regexp) Minima should be less than or equal to maxima. If you really
4686 want your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}.
4688 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression in regex; marked by <--
4691 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
4692 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
4693 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
4694 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
4695 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
4697 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4700 =item Range iterator outside integer range
4702 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
4703 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
4704 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
4705 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
4707 =item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4709 (W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
4710 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4712 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
4714 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
4715 before now. Check your control flow.
4717 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
4719 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4721 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
4723 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4725 =item Reallocation too large: %x
4727 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
4729 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
4731 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
4734 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
4736 (S debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
4737 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
4738 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
4740 =item Recursive call to Perl_load_module in PerlIO_find_layer
4742 (P) It is currently not permitted to load modules when creating
4743 a filehandle inside an %INC hook. This can happen with C<open my
4744 $fh, '<', \$scalar>, which implicitly loads PerlIO::scalar. Try
4745 loading PerlIO::scalar explicitly first.
4747 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
4749 (F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, Perl
4750 believes it found an infinite loop in the C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a
4751 crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth.
4753 =item Redundant argument in %s
4755 (W redundant) You called a function with more arguments than other
4756 arguments you supplied indicated would be needed. Currently only
4757 emitted when a printf-type format required fewer arguments than were
4758 supplied, but might be used in the future for e.g. L<perlfunc/pack>.
4760 =item refcnt_dec: fd %d%s
4762 =item refcnt: fd %d%s
4764 =item refcnt_inc: fd %d%s
4766 (P) Perl's I/O implementation failed an internal consistency check. If
4767 you see this message, something is very wrong.
4769 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
4771 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
4772 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
4773 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
4774 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
4776 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
4777 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
4778 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
4779 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
4781 =item Reference is already weak
4783 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
4784 Doing so has no effect.
4786 =item Reference to invalid group 0 in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4788 (F) You used C<\g0> or similar in a regular expression. You may refer
4789 to capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers
4790 (normal backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
4791 backreferences). Using 0 does not make sense.
4793 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in
4796 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
4797 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If
4798 you wanted to have the character with ordinal 7 inserted into the regular
4799 expression, prepend zeroes to make it three digits long: C<\007>
4801 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4804 =item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE>
4807 (F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k<NAME> >> in your regular
4808 expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses
4809 such as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<< (?<NAME>...) >>. Check if the name has been
4810 spelled correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
4812 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4815 =item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by
4816 S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/
4818 (F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there
4819 are not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the
4820 expression before where the C<\g{-7}> was located.
4822 The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
4825 =item regexp memory corruption
4827 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
4828 expression compiler gave it.
4830 =item Regexp modifier "/%c" may appear a maximum of twice
4832 =item Regexp modifier "%c" may appear a maximum of twice in regex; marked
4833 by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/