3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (enabled by default).
12 (S) A severe warning (enabled by default).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
19 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
21 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
22 category is included with the classification letter in the description
25 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
26 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Severe warnings are always enabled, unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %x
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '%c' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only
60 after certain types. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
76 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
79 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
81 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
82 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
83 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
84 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
86 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
88 (S ambiguous) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
89 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
90 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
92 =item Ambiguous use of %c resolved as operator %c
94 (S ambiguous) C<%>, C<&>, and C<*> are both infix operators (modulus,
95 bitwise and, and multiplication) I<and> initial special characters
96 (denoting hashes, subroutines and typeglobs), and you said something
97 like C<*foo * foo> that might be interpreted as either of them. We
98 assumed you meant the infix operator, but please try to make it more
99 clear -- in the example given, you might write C<*foo * foo()> if you
100 really meant to multiply a glob by the result of calling a function.
102 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s} resolved to %c%s
104 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<@{foo}>, which might be
105 asking for the variable C<@foo>, or it might be calling a function
106 named foo, and dereferencing it as an array reference. If you wanted
107 the variable, you can just write C<@foo>. If you wanted to call the
108 function, write C<@{foo()}> ... or you could just not have a variable
109 and a function with the same name, and save yourself a lot of trouble.
111 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s[...]} resolved to %c%s[...]
113 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s{...}} resolved to %c%s{...}
115 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<${foo[2]}> (where foo represents
116 the name of a Perl keyword), which might be looking for element number
117 2 of the array named C<@foo>, in which case please write C<$foo[2]>, or you
118 might have meant to pass an anonymous arrayref to the function named
119 foo, and then do a scalar deref on the value it returns. If you meant
120 that, write C<${foo([2])}>.
122 In regular expressions, the C<${foo[2]}> syntax is sometimes necessary
123 to disambiguate between array subscripts and character classes.
124 C</$length[2345]/>, for instance, will be interpreted as C<$length> followed
125 by the character class C<[2345]>. If an array subscript is what you
126 want, you can avoid the warning by changing C</${length[2345]}/> to the
127 unsightly C</${\$length[2345]}/>, by renaming your array to something
128 that does not coincide with a built-in keyword, or by simply turning
129 off warnings with C<no warnings 'ambiguous';>.
131 =item Ambiguous use of -%s resolved as -&%s()
133 (S ambiguous) You wrote something like C<-foo>, which might be the
134 string C<"-foo">, or a call to the function C<foo>, negated. If you meant
135 the string, just write C<"-foo">. If you meant the function call,
138 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
140 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
141 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
142 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
144 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
146 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
147 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
148 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
149 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
150 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
152 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
159 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
161 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
162 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
163 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
164 a scalar value (the length of an array, or the population info of a
165 hash) and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
166 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
169 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
171 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
173 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
175 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element or a
176 subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
182 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
184 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
190 or a hash or array slice, such as:
192 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
193 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
195 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
197 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
198 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
201 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
203 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
204 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
205 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
207 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
209 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O
210 system you forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers
211 take care of transforming data between external and internal
212 representations.) Perl stopped parsing the layer list at this
213 point and did not attempt to push this layer. If your program
214 didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the
215 result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
217 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
219 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
220 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
222 =item assertion botched: %s
224 (X) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
226 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
228 (X) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
230 =item Assigning non-zero to $[ is no longer possible
232 (F) When the "array_base" feature is disabled (e.g., under C<use v5.16;>)
233 the special variable C<$[>, which is deprecated, is now a fixed zero value.
235 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
237 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
238 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
239 know which context to supply to the right side.
241 =item A thread exited while %d threads were running
243 (W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily
244 the main thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
245 Usually it's a good idea first to collect the return values of the
246 created threads by joining them, and only then to exit from the main
247 thread. See L<threads>.
249 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
251 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
252 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
254 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
256 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
257 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
258 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
264 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
266 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
267 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
270 bless $self, "$proto";
272 =item Attempt to clear deleted array
274 (S debugging) An array was assigned to when it was being freed.
275 Freed values are not supposed to be visible to Perl code. This
276 can also happen if XS code calls C<av_clear> from a custom magic
277 callback on the array.
279 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
281 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
282 which is not in its key set.
284 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
286 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
287 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
289 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%x
291 (S internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
292 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
293 outside any of those arenas.
295 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string '%s'%s
297 (S internal) Perl maintains a reference-counted internal table of
298 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
299 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
300 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
302 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely: SV 0x%x
304 (S debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
305 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
306 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
307 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
310 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
312 (S internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
314 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar: SV 0x%x
316 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
317 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
318 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
319 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
320 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
321 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
324 =item Attempt to join self
326 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
327 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
328 to move the join() to some other thread.
330 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
332 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
333 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
334 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
335 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
336 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
339 =item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
341 (F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
342 compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
343 unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
346 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
348 (W misc) You tried to set the length of an array which has
349 been freed. You can do this by storing a reference to the
350 scalar representing the last index of an array and later
351 assigning through that reference. For example
353 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
356 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
358 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
359 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
360 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
362 =item Attribute "locked" is deprecated
364 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the
365 "locked" attribute on a code reference. The :locked attribute is
366 obsolete, has had no effect since 5005 threads were removed, and
367 will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
369 =item Attribute "unique" is deprecated
371 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify
372 the "unique" attribute on an array, hash or scalar reference.
373 The :unique attribute has had no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and
374 will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
376 =item av_reify called on tied array
378 (S debugging) This indicates that something went wrong and Perl got I<very>
379 confused about C<@_> or C<@DB::args> being tied.
381 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
383 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
384 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
385 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
386 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
388 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
390 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
391 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
392 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
394 =item Bad filehandle: %s
396 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
397 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
398 open(), or did it in another package.
400 =item Bad free() ignored
402 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
403 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
404 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
406 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
407 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
408 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
412 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
414 =item Badly placed ()'s
416 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
417 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
420 =item Bad name after %s
422 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
423 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
432 $sym = "mypack::$var";
434 =item Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
436 (F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the
439 =item Bad realloc() ignored
441 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that
442 had never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can
443 be disabled by setting the environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
445 =item Bad symbol for array
447 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
448 wasn't a symbol table entry.
450 =item Bad symbol for dirhandle
452 (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
453 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
455 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
457 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
458 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
460 =item Bad symbol for hash
462 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
463 wasn't a symbol table entry.
465 =item Bareword found in conditional
467 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
468 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
469 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
473 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
476 use constant TYPO => 1;
477 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
479 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
481 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
483 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
484 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
485 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
487 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
489 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
490 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
491 you need to predeclare a package?
493 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
495 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
496 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
499 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
501 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
502 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
503 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
504 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
505 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
507 =item \1 better written as $1
509 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
510 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
511 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
512 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
513 there are more than 9 backreferences.
515 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
517 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
518 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
519 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
521 =item bind() on closed socket %s
523 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
524 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
526 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
528 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
529 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
531 =item "\b{" is deprecated; use "\b\{" instead
533 =item "\B{" is deprecated; use "\B\{" instead
535 (W deprecated, regexp) Use of an unescaped "{" immediately following a
536 C<\b> or C<\B> is now deprecated so as to reserve its use for Perl
537 itself in a future release.
539 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
541 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
543 =item Bizarre copy of %s
545 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
548 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
550 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
551 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
552 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
554 =item Bizarre SvTYPE [%d]
556 (P) When starting a new thread or return values from a thread, Perl
557 encountered an invalid data type.
559 =item Callback called exit
561 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
562 exited by calling exit.
564 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
566 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
567 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
568 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
569 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
570 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
571 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
572 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
573 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
575 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
577 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
578 compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
579 attempted to compress Infinity or 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 set tied @DB::args
606 (F) C<caller> tried to set C<@DB::args>, but found it tied. Tying C<@DB::args>
607 is not supported. (Before this error was added, it used to crash.)
609 =item Cannot tie unreifiable array
611 (P) You somehow managed to call C<tie> on an array that does not
612 keep a reference count on its arguments and cannot be made to
613 do so. Such arrays are not even supposed to be accessible to
614 Perl code, but are only used internally.
616 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
618 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
619 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
620 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
622 =item Can't bless non-reference value
624 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
625 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
627 =item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
629 (F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
630 a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
632 =item Can't "break" outside a given block
634 (F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
636 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
638 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
639 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
640 like this will reproduce the error:
643 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
644 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
646 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
648 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
649 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
650 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
651 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
653 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
655 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
656 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
657 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
658 Something like this will reproduce the error:
661 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
662 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
664 =item Can't chdir to %s
666 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
667 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
669 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
671 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
674 =item Can't coerce %s to %s in %s
676 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
677 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
687 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
689 =item Can't "continue" outside a when block
691 (F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
694 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
696 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
697 quotas or other plumbing problems.
699 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
701 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
702 "state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
704 =item Can't "default" outside a topicalizer
706 (F) You have used a C<default> block that is neither inside a
707 C<foreach> loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is
708 issued on exit from the C<default> block, so you won't get the
709 error if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
711 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
713 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
714 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
716 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
718 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
721 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
723 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
724 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
725 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
727 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
729 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
730 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
731 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
733 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
735 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really
736 want your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The
737 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
738 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
740 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
742 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
743 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
745 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
747 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
748 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
751 =item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
753 (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
754 or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
755 little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
756 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
758 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
760 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
761 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
762 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
763 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
764 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
765 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
770 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
771 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
772 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
774 =item Can't execute %s
776 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
777 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
779 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
781 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
782 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
784 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
786 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
787 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property?
788 See L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
789 for a complete list of available properties.
791 =item Can't find label %s
793 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
794 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
796 =item Can't find %s on PATH
798 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
801 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
803 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
804 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
805 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
807 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
809 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
810 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
811 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
813 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
815 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
816 included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag or there
817 may not be a linebreak after it. A good programmer's editor will have
818 a way to help you find these characters (or lack of characters). See
819 L<perlop> for the full details on here-documents.
821 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
823 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode
824 property (for example C<\p{Lu}> matches all uppercase
825 letters). If you did mean to use a Unicode property, see
826 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
827 for a complete list of available properties. If you didn't
828 mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either by
829 C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, or
834 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
837 =item Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
839 (W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be retried
842 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
844 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
845 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
846 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
847 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
848 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
849 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
850 the access-checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
851 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
852 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
853 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
854 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access-checking routine gave up
855 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access-checking
856 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
857 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
858 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
860 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
862 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
863 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
865 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
867 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
868 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
870 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
872 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
873 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
875 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
877 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
878 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
879 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
880 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
882 =item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
884 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
885 comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
886 as the reduce() function in List::Util).
888 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
890 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
893 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
895 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
896 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
897 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
898 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
900 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
902 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
903 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
904 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
905 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
906 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
907 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
909 =item Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
911 (F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a fatal error to
912 attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise non-numeric
915 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
917 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
918 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
919 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
920 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
921 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
922 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
925 =item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
927 (F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
928 package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
930 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
932 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension.
933 This may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one
934 that is incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known
935 to happen between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your
936 dynamic extension was built against an older version of the library
937 that is installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old
940 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
942 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
943 lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you
944 want to localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with
947 =item Can't localize through a reference
949 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
950 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
951 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
952 that $ref will still be a reference.
954 =item Can't locate %s
956 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be found.
957 Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC, unless
958 the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need
959 to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where the
960 extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
961 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
962 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
964 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
966 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
967 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
968 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
969 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
971 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
973 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
974 for example, F<foo.so> or F<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
975 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
977 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
979 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
980 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
981 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
983 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
985 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
986 doesn't seem to exist.
988 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
990 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
991 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
993 =item Can't make list assignment to %ENV on this system
995 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
998 =item Can't modify %s in %s
1000 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
1001 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
1003 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
1005 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
1008 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
1010 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
1011 such. See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
1013 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
1015 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
1018 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
1020 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
1021 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1022 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
1023 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1024 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
1025 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
1029 (F) You tried to run a perl built with MAD support with
1030 the PERL_XMLDUMP environment variable set, but the file
1031 named by that variable could not be opened.
1033 =item Can't open %s: %s
1035 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
1036 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
1037 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually
1038 this is because you don't have read permission for a file which
1039 you named on the command line.
1041 (F) You tried to call perl with the B<-e> switch, but F</dev/null> (or
1042 your operating system's equivalent) could not be opened.
1044 =item Can't open a reference
1046 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
1047 using the 3-arg open() syntax:
1051 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
1052 open is not supported.
1054 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
1056 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
1057 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
1058 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
1059 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
1061 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
1063 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1064 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
1065 the command line for writing.
1067 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
1069 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1070 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
1071 command line for reading.
1073 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
1075 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1076 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
1077 the command line for writing.
1079 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
1081 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1082 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
1085 =item Can't open perl script "%s": %s
1087 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
1089 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
1090 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1091 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1093 =item Can't read CRTL environ
1095 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1096 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1097 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1098 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1101 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1103 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1104 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1105 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1106 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1107 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1108 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1110 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1112 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1113 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1114 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1116 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1118 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1119 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1121 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1123 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1124 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1126 =item Can't reset %ENV on this system
1128 (F) You called C<reset('E')> or similar, which tried to reset
1129 all variables in the current package beginning with "E". In
1130 the main package, that includes %ENV. Resetting %ENV is not
1131 supported on some systems, notably VMS.
1133 =item Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
1135 (F)(P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
1136 opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
1137 package. If the method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1139 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1141 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1142 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1145 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1147 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1148 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1150 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1152 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue
1153 subroutine, but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl
1154 think you meant to return only one value. You probably meant to
1155 write parentheses around the call to the subroutine, which tell
1156 Perl that the call should be in list context.
1158 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1160 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1161 open already. Bizarre.
1163 =item Can't take log of %g
1165 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1166 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1167 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1170 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1172 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1173 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1174 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1176 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1178 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1179 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1180 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1182 =item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1184 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1185 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1186 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1187 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1189 =item Can't use '%c' after -mname
1191 (F) You tried to call perl with the B<-m> switch, but you put something
1192 other than "=" after the module name.
1194 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1196 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1197 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1198 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1200 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1202 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1203 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1205 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1207 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1208 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1210 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1212 (F) The first time the C<%!> hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1213 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1214 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1216 =item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1218 (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1219 byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1220 allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1222 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1224 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1227 =item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1229 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1230 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1231 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1232 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1235 =item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1237 (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1238 that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1239 For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1240 is inside a big-endian group.
1242 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1244 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1245 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1246 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1247 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1250 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1252 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1253 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1254 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1256 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1258 (F) You've told Perl to dereference a string, something which
1259 C<use strict> blocks to prevent it happening accidentally. See
1260 L<perlref/"Symbolic references">. This can be triggered by an C<@> or C<$>
1261 in a double-quoted string immediately before interpolating a variable,
1262 for example in C<"user @$twitter_id">, which says to treat the contents
1263 of C<$twitter_id> as an array reference; use a C<\> to have a literal C<@>
1264 symbol followed by the contents of C<$twitter_id>: C<"user \@$twitter_id">.
1266 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1268 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1269 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1270 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1272 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1274 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1275 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1276 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1277 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1278 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1281 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1283 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1284 references can be weakened.
1286 =item Can't "when" outside a topicalizer
1288 (F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1289 loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1290 from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1291 or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1293 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1295 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1296 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1297 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1299 =item Character following "\c" must be ASCII
1301 (F)(W deprecated, syntax) In C<\cI<X>>, I<X> must be an ASCII character.
1302 It is planned to make this fatal in all instances in Perl 5.18. In the
1303 cases where it isn't fatal, the character this evaluates to is
1304 derived by exclusive or'ing the code point of this character with 0x40.
1306 Note that non-alphabetic ASCII characters are discouraged here as well.
1308 =item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1314 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1315 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1316 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1320 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1323 =item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1329 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode
1330 expects all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved
1333 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1335 =item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1341 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1342 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1343 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1345 pack("c", $x & 255);
1347 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1350 =item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1352 (W unpack) You tried something like
1354 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1356 where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1357 below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the
1358 value modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1360 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1362 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1364 (W pack) You tried something like
1366 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1368 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1369 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1370 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1372 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1374 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1376 (W unpack) You tried something like
1378 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1380 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1381 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1382 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1384 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1386 =item "\c{" is deprecated and is more clearly written as ";"
1388 (D deprecated, syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way
1389 to specify non-printable characters. You used it with a "{" which
1390 evaluates to ";", which is printable. It is planned to remove the
1391 ability to specify a semi-colon this way in Perl 5.18. Just use a
1392 semi-colon or a backslash-semi-colon without the "\c".
1394 =item "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"
1396 (W syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way to specify
1397 non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which is better
1398 written as simply itself, perhaps preceded by a backslash for non-word
1401 =item Cloning substitution context is unimplemented
1403 (F) Creating a new thread inside the C<s///> operator is not supported.
1405 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1407 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1409 =item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1411 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1412 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1414 =item Closure prototype called
1416 (F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to an attribute
1417 handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure is created.
1418 This subroutine cannot be called.
1420 =item Code missing after '/'
1422 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be
1423 another template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1425 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
1427 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, all \p{} matches fail; all \P{} matches succeed
1429 (S utf8, non_unicode) You had a code point above the Unicode maximum
1432 Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code points, up
1433 to the limit of what is storable in an unsigned integer on your system,
1434 but these may not be accepted by other languages/systems. At one time,
1435 it was legal in some standards to have code points up to 0x7FFF_FFFF,
1436 but not higher. Code points above 0xFFFF_FFFF require larger than a
1439 None of the Unicode or Perl-defined properties will match a non-Unicode
1440 code point. For example,
1442 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\p{Any}/
1444 will not match, because the code point is not in Unicode. But
1446 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\P{Any}/
1450 This may be counterintuitive at times, as both these fail:
1452 chr(0x110000) =~ \p{ASCII_Hex_Digit=True} # Fails.
1453 chr(0x110000) =~ \p{ASCII_Hex_Digit=False} # Also fails!
1455 and both these succeed:
1457 chr(0x110000) =~ \P{ASCII_Hex_Digit=True} # Succeeds.
1458 chr(0x110000) =~ \P{ASCII_Hex_Digit=False} # Also succeeds!
1460 =item %s: Command not found
1462 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> or another shell
1463 shell instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
1464 into Perl yourself. The #! line at the top of your file could look like
1468 =item Compilation failed in require
1470 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1471 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1472 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1474 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1476 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1477 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1478 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1479 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1480 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1481 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1482 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1483 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1484 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1486 =item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1488 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to
1489 call cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked.
1490 The cond_broadcast() function is used to wake up another thread
1491 that is waiting in a cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't
1492 sent before the other thread has a chance to enter the wait, it
1493 is usual for the signaling thread first to wait for a lock on
1494 variable. This lock attempt will only succeed after the other
1495 thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the lock.
1497 =item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1499 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to
1500 call cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The
1501 cond_signal() function is used to wake up another thread that
1502 is waiting in a cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't
1503 sent before the other thread has a chance to enter the wait, it
1504 is usual for the signaling thread first to wait for a lock on
1505 variable. This lock attempt will only succeed after the other
1506 thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the lock.
1508 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1510 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1511 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1512 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1514 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1516 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1517 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1518 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1519 corresponding L<overload> pragma?.
1521 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1523 (F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to find
1524 the character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape.
1526 =item Constant is not %s reference
1528 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1529 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1530 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1531 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1532 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1534 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1536 (W redefine)(S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously
1537 been eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions">
1538 for commentary and workarounds.
1540 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1542 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1543 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1546 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1548 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1549 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1551 =item &CORE::%s cannot be called directly
1553 (F) You tried to call a subroutine in the C<CORE::> namespace
1554 with C<&foo> syntax or through a reference. Some subroutines
1555 in this package cannot yet be called that way, but must be
1556 called as barewords. Something like this will work:
1558 BEGIN { *shove = \&CORE::push; }
1559 shove @array, 1,2,3; # pushes on to @array
1561 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1563 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1565 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1567 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1568 expression compiler gave it.
1570 =item corrupted regexp program
1572 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1575 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
1577 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1579 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1581 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1582 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1585 =item Deep recursion on anonymous subroutine
1587 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1589 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1590 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1591 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1592 which case it indicates something else.
1594 This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the F<perl> binary,
1595 setting the C pre-processor macro C<PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN> to the desired value.
1597 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1599 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1600 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1601 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1603 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1605 (D deprecated) C<defined()> is not usually right on hashes and has been
1606 discouraged since 5.004.
1608 Although C<defined %hash> is false on a plain not-yet-used hash, it
1609 becomes true in several non-obvious circumstances, including iterators,
1610 weak references, stash names, even remaining true after C<undef %hash>.
1611 These things make C<defined %hash> fairly useless in practice.
1613 If a check for non-empty is what you wanted then just put it in boolean
1614 context (see L<perldata/Scalar values>):
1620 If you had C<defined %Foo::Bar::QUUX> to check whether such a package
1621 variable exists then that's never really been reliable, and isn't
1622 a good way to enquire about the features of a package, or whether
1626 =item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1628 (F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
1629 most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
1630 of the C<....> part.
1632 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1635 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1637 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1638 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1640 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1642 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1643 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1644 that triggers this error.
1646 =item Deprecated character in \N{...}; marked by <-- HERE in \N{%s<-- HERE %s
1648 (D deprecated) Just about anything is legal for the C<...> in C<\N{...}>.
1649 But starting in 5.12, non-reasonable ones that don't look like names
1650 are deprecated. A reasonable name begins with an alphabetic character
1651 and continues with any combination of alphanumerics, dashes, spaces,
1652 parentheses or colons.
1654 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1656 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>. There
1657 has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1658 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1659 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1660 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1661 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1662 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1664 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1668 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1670 Beginning with perl 5.9.4, you can also use C<state> variables to have
1671 lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1673 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1675 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1677 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1678 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather
1679 than to create a dangling reference.
1681 =item Did not produce a valid header
1685 =item %s did not return a true value
1687 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1688 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1689 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1690 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1692 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1694 (W misc) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or
1697 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1699 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1700 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1703 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1705 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1706 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1711 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1712 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
1714 =item Document contains no data
1718 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1720 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1721 define a C<$VERSION.>
1723 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1725 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1726 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1728 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1730 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1732 =item do_study: out of memory
1734 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1736 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1738 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1739 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1740 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1741 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1742 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1743 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1744 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1745 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1747 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1749 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1750 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1752 =item dump is not supported
1754 (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1756 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1758 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1761 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1763 (W unpack) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a
1764 type in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1766 =item elseif should be elsif
1768 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks
1769 it's ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method
1770 named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1771 unlikely to be what you want.
1775 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1776 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1777 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1779 =item entering effective %s failed
1781 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1782 effective uids or gids failed.
1784 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1786 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1787 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1788 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1790 =item Error converting file specification %s
1792 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1793 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1794 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1795 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1796 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1798 =item Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1800 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1801 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1802 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1804 =item Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
1806 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1807 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1808 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk,
1809 it is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by using the
1810 C<re 'eval'> pragma or by explicitly building the pattern from an
1811 interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval(). See
1812 L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1814 =item Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
1816 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1817 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1818 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1820 =item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1822 (F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
1823 any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
1825 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1828 =item Excessively long <> operator
1830 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1831 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1832 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1833 variable and glob that.
1835 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1837 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented on some systems, e.g., Symbian
1838 OS. See L<perlport>.
1840 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
1842 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1844 =item Exiting eval via %s
1846 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1847 goto, or a loop control statement.
1849 =item Exiting format via %s
1851 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1852 goto, or a loop control statement.
1854 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1856 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1857 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1858 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1860 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1862 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1863 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1865 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1867 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1868 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1870 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1872 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1873 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1874 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1875 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1877 =item %s: Expression syntax
1879 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1880 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1882 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1884 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
1885 CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
1886 queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
1888 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1890 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1891 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1892 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1893 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1894 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1896 =item Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
1898 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1899 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1900 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1901 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1903 =item fcntl is not implemented
1905 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1906 PDP-11 or something?
1908 =item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
1910 (F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
1913 =item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1915 (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string start with a length indicator
1916 which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1917 a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1918 C<u63> as the format.
1920 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1922 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1923 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1924 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1925 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1927 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1929 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1930 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1931 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with ">". If you intended only to
1932 read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>. Another possibility
1933 is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0 (also known as STDIN) for
1934 output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
1936 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1938 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1939 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
1942 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
1944 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1945 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
1947 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1949 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1950 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1951 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1954 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1956 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1957 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1958 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1961 =item Format not terminated
1963 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1964 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1966 =item Format %s redefined
1968 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1971 no warnings 'redefine';
1972 eval "format NAME =...";
1975 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1985 (or something like that).
1987 =item %s found where operator expected
1989 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
1990 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1991 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1992 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1994 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1996 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1998 =item gethostent not implemented
2000 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
2001 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
2004 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
2006 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
2007 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
2009 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
2011 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
2012 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
2014 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
2016 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
2017 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2018 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
2020 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
2022 (F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
2023 that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
2024 declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
2025 which package the global variable is in (using "::").
2027 =item glob failed (%s)
2029 (S glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used
2030 for C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a C<glob>
2031 pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
2032 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
2033 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell)
2034 is broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables
2035 in config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as
2036 if it were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them
2037 all empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
2038 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
2039 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
2041 =item Glob not terminated
2043 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
2044 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
2045 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
2046 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
2048 =item gmtime(%f) too large
2050 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was larger than
2051 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
2052 date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2053 not-a-number value).
2055 =item gmtime(%f) too small
2057 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was smaller than
2058 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong date.
2060 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
2062 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
2063 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
2065 =item goto must have label
2067 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
2068 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
2070 =item Goto undefined subroutine%s
2072 (F) You tried to call a subroutine with C<goto &sub> syntax, but
2073 the indicated subroutine hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
2074 has since been undefined.
2076 =item ()-group starts with a count
2078 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is supposed to follow
2079 something: a template character or a ()-group. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2081 =item Group name must start with a non-digit word character in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2083 (F) Group names must follow the rules for perl identifiers, meaning
2084 they must start with a non-digit word character. A common cause of
2085 this error is using (?&0) instead of (?0). See L<perlre>.
2087 =item %s had compilation errors.
2089 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
2091 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
2093 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
2094 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
2095 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
2097 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
2099 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
2100 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
2102 =item %s has too many errors
2104 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
2105 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
2107 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
2109 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2110 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2111 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2113 =item -i used with no filenames on the command line, reading from STDIN
2115 (S inplace) The C<-i> option was passed on the command line, indicating
2116 that the script is intended to edit files inplace, but no files were
2117 given. This is usually a mistake, since editing STDIN inplace doesn't
2118 make sense, and can be confusing because it can make perl look like
2119 it is hanging when it is really just trying to read from STDIN. You
2120 should either pass a filename to edit, or remove C<-i> from the command
2121 line. See L<perlrun> for more details.
2123 =item Identifier too long
2125 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
2126 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
2127 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
2128 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
2130 =item Ignoring zero length \N{} in character class
2132 (W) Named Unicode character escapes C<(\N{...})> may return a zero-length
2133 sequence. When such an escape is used in a character class its
2134 behaviour is not well defined. Check that the correct escape has
2135 been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
2137 =item Illegal binary digit %s
2139 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
2141 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
2143 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
2144 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
2147 =item Illegal character after '_' in prototype for %s : %s
2149 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2150 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2152 =item Illegal character \%o (carriage return)
2154 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
2155 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
2156 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
2157 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
2158 to your Perl administrator.
2160 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
2162 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2163 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +.
2165 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
2167 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
2168 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
2170 =item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
2172 (F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
2174 =item Illegal division by zero
2176 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
2177 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
2180 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
2182 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
2183 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
2184 number stopped before the illegal character.
2186 =item Illegal modulus zero
2188 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
2189 numbers don't take to this kindly.
2191 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
2193 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
2194 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
2196 =item Illegal octal digit %s
2198 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2200 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
2202 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2203 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
2205 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: -%c
2207 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
2208 following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtw]>.
2210 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
2212 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
2213 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
2214 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
2216 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
2218 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
2219 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
2220 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
2223 =item (in cleanup) %s
2225 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
2226 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
2227 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
2228 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
2229 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
2231 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
2232 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
2234 =item Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on parent '%s'
2236 (F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not
2237 C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See the C3
2238 documentation in L<mro> for more information.
2240 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
2242 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
2243 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
2244 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
2246 =item Infinite recursion in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2248 (F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input
2249 text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive patterns
2250 either consume text or fail.
2252 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2255 =item Initialization of state variables in list context currently forbidden
2257 (F) Currently the implementation of "state" only permits the
2258 initialization of scalar variables in scalar context. Re-write
2259 C<state ($a) = 42> as C<state $a = 42> to change from list to scalar
2260 context. Constructions such as C<state (@a) = foo()> will be
2261 supported in a future perl release.
2263 =item Insecure dependency in %s
2265 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
2266 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
2267 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
2268 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
2269 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
2270 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
2271 L<perlsec> for more information.
2273 =item Insecure directory in %s
2275 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2276 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
2277 the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
2280 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
2282 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2283 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
2284 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
2285 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
2286 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
2288 =item Insecure user-defined property %s
2290 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
2291 expression that contains a call to a user-defined character property
2292 function, i.e. C<\p{IsFoo}> or C<\p{InFoo}>.
2293 See L<perlunicode/User-Defined Character Properties> and L<perlsec>.
2295 =item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2297 (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2298 or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2299 integers for your architecture.
2301 =item Integer overflow in %s number
2303 (S overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2304 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2305 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2306 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2307 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
2308 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2309 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2310 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2313 =item Integer overflow in srand
2315 (S overflow) The number you have passed to srand is too big to fit
2316 in your architecture's integer representation. The number has been
2317 replaced with the largest integer supported (0xFFFFFFFF on 32-bit
2318 architectures). This means you may be getting less randomness than
2319 you expect, because different random seeds above the maximum will
2320 return the same sequence of random numbers.
2322 =item Integer overflow in version
2324 =item Integer overflow in version %d
2326 (W overflow) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for
2327 the size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
2328 because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use an
2329 element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by trying
2330 to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like 100/9.
2332 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2334 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
2335 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2338 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2340 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2341 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2342 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2343 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2344 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2345 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
2347 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2349 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2350 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2353 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
2355 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
2356 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
2357 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
2358 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
2360 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2362 (F) The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2363 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2365 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2367 (F) The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2368 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2370 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2372 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2373 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
2375 =item Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2377 (W regexp) The numeric escape (for example C<\xHH>) of value < 256
2378 didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion
2379 from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma.
2380 The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD) instead.
2381 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2382 escape was discovered.
2384 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
2386 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2388 (F) The character constant represented by C<...> is not a valid hexadecimal
2389 number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use a character other than
2390 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
2392 =item Invalid module name %s with -%c option: contains single ':'
2394 (F) The module argument to perl's B<-m> and B<-M> command-line options
2395 cannot contain single colons in the module name, but only in the
2396 arguments after "=". In other words, B<-MFoo::Bar=:baz> is ok, but
2397 B<-MFoo:Bar=baz> is not.
2399 =item Invalid mro name: '%s'
2401 (F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")> or C<use mro 'foo'>,
2402 where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO). Currently,
2403 the only valid ones supported are C<dfs> and C<c3>, unless you have loaded
2404 a module that is a MRO plugin. See L<mro> and L<perlmroapi>.
2406 =item Invalid negative number (%s) in chr
2408 (W utf8) You passed a negative number to C<chr>. Negative numbers are
2409 not valid characters numbers, so it return the Unicode replacement
2412 =item invalid option -D%c, use -D'' to see choices
2414 (S debugging) Perl was called with invalid debugger flags. Call perl
2415 with the B<-D> option with no flags to see the list of acceptable values.
2416 See also L<perlrun/B<-D>I<letters>>.
2418 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2420 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2421 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2422 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2423 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2424 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2426 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2428 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2429 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2431 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2433 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2434 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2435 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2438 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2440 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other
2441 than a colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2442 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2443 list was terminated too soon.
2445 =item Invalid strict version format (%s)
2447 (F) A version number did not meet the "strict" criteria for versions.
2448 A "strict" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2449 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2450 v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least three components.
2451 The parenthesized text indicates which criteria were not met.
2452 See the L<version> module for more details on allowed version formats.
2454 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2456 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2457 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2459 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2462 =item Invalid version format (%s)
2464 (F) A version number did not meet the "lax" criteria for versions.
2465 A "lax" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2466 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2467 v-string. If the v-string has fewer than three components, it
2468 must have a leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading 'v' is
2469 optional. Both decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a
2470 trailing "alpha" component separated by an underscore character
2471 after a fractional or dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized
2472 text indicates which criteria were not met. See the L<version> module
2473 for more details on allowed version formats.
2475 =item Invalid version object
2477 (F) The internal structure of the version object was invalid.
2478 Perhaps the internals were modified directly in some way or
2479 an arbitrary reference was blessed into the "version" class.
2481 =item ioctl is not implemented
2483 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2484 strange for a machine that supports C.
2486 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
2488 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2489 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
2491 =item IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
2493 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2494 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO, Perl must be configured
2497 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2499 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2500 neither as a system call nor an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2502 =item $* is no longer supported
2504 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older
2505 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. In
2506 previous versions of perl the use of C<$*> enabled or disabled multi-line
2507 matching within a string.
2509 Instead of using C<$*> you should use the C</m> (and maybe C</s>) regexp
2510 modifiers. You can enable C</m> for a lexical scope (even a whole file)
2511 with C<use re '/m'>. (In older versions: when C<$*> was set to a true value
2512 then all regular expressions behaved as if they were written using C</m>.)
2514 =item $# is no longer supported
2516 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older
2517 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported. You
2518 should use the printf/sprintf functions instead.
2520 =item '%s' is not a code reference
2522 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of
2523 overload::constant needs to be a code reference. Either
2524 an anonymous subroutine, or a reference to a subroutine.
2526 =item '%s' is not an overloadable type
2528 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2531 =item Junk on end of regexp in regex m/%s/
2533 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2535 =item Label not found for "last %s"
2537 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2538 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2541 =item Label not found for "next %s"
2543 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2544 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2547 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
2549 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2550 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2553 =item leaving effective %s failed
2555 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2556 effective uids or gids failed.
2558 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
2560 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2561 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2562 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2564 =item length() used on %s
2566 (W syntax) You used length() on either an array or a hash when you
2567 probably wanted a count of the items.
2569 Array size can be obtained by doing:
2573 The number of items in a hash can be obtained by doing:
2577 =item Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
2579 (F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse
2580 (using L<lex_stuff_pvn|perlapi/lex_stuff_pvn> or similar), but tried to insert a character that
2581 couldn't be part of the current input. This is an inherent pitfall
2582 of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the reasons to avoid it. Where
2583 it is necessary to stuff, stuffing only plain ASCII is recommended.
2585 =item Lexing code internal error (%s)
2587 (F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a
2590 =item listen() on closed socket %s
2592 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2593 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2596 =item List form of piped open not implemented
2598 (F) On some platforms, notably Windows, the three-or-more-arguments
2599 form of C<open> does not support pipes, such as C<open($pipe, '|-', @args)>.
2600 Use the two-argument C<open($pipe, '|prog arg1 arg2...')> form instead.
2602 =item localtime(%f) too large
2604 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was larger
2605 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2606 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
2607 not-a-number value).
2609 =item localtime(%f) too small
2611 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was smaller
2612 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2615 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
2617 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2618 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2620 =item Lost precision when %s %f by 1
2622 (W imprecision) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by one
2623 is too large for the underlying floating point representation to store
2624 accurately, hence the target of C<++> or C<--> is unchanged. Perl issues this
2625 warning because it has already switched from integers to floating point
2626 when values are too large for integers, and now even floating point is
2627 insufficient. You may wish to switch to using L<Math::BigInt> explicitly.
2629 =item lstat() on filehandle%s
2631 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2632 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2633 instead on the filehandle.)
2635 =item lvalue attribute %s already-defined subroutine
2637 (W misc) Although L<attributes.pm|attributes> allows this, turning the lvalue
2638 attribute on or off on a Perl subroutine that is already defined
2639 does not always work properly. It may or may not do what you
2640 want, depending on what code is inside the subroutine, with exact
2641 details subject to change between Perl versions. Only do this
2642 if you really know what you are doing.
2644 =item lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined
2646 (W misc) Using the C<:lvalue> declarative syntax to make a Perl
2647 subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it has been defined is
2648 not permitted. To make the subroutine an lvalue subroutine,
2649 add the lvalue attribute to the definition, or put the C<sub
2650 foo :lvalue;> declaration before the definition.
2652 See also L<attributes.pm|attributes>.
2654 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2656 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2657 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2659 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2661 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2662 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2664 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2666 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2673 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2674 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2675 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2676 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2678 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2680 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2681 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2682 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2683 when the function is called.
2685 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2687 (S utf8)(F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2688 encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
2690 One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2691 you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
2692 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2694 If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2695 sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2696 set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2699 See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
2701 =item Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N
2703 (F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
2705 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2707 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2708 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2710 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2712 (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2713 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2715 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2717 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2718 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2720 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2722 (F) Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2723 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2725 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2727 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2728 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
2729 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2732 =item Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded
2734 (F) Perl aborted due to too high a number of signals pending. This
2735 usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
2736 too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
2737 resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
2738 safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
2740 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2742 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2743 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2746 =item '%' may not be used in pack
2748 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2749 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2750 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2752 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2754 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2755 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2757 =item Method %s not permitted
2761 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2763 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2764 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2765 ended earlier on the current line.
2767 =item Misplaced _ in number
2769 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2770 separate two digits.
2772 =item Missing argument in %s
2774 (W uninitialized) A printf-type format required more arguments than were
2777 =item Missing argument to -%c
2779 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2780 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2782 =item Missing braces on \N{}
2784 =item Missing braces on \N{} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2786 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2787 double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space
2788 (or comment) between the C<\N> and the C<{> in a regex with the C</x> modifier.
2789 This modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately
2792 =item Missing braces on \o{}
2794 (F) A C<\o> must be followed immediately by a C<{> in double-quotish context.
2796 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2798 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2799 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2801 =item Missing command in piped open
2803 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2804 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2807 =item Missing control char name in \c
2809 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2812 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2814 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2815 they have a name with which they can be found.
2817 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2819 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2820 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2821 can vary from one line to the next.
2823 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2825 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2826 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2828 =item Missing right brace on \%c{} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2830 (F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}>, C<\P{...}>, or C<\N{...}>.
2832 =item Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N
2834 (F) C<\N> has two meanings.
2836 The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed in braces,
2837 meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that
2838 name. Thus C<\N{ASTERISK}> is another way of writing C<*>, valid in both
2839 double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns,
2840 it doesn't have the meaning an unescaped C<*> does.
2842 Starting in Perl 5.12.0, C<\N> also can have an additional meaning (only)
2843 in patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short
2844 for C<[^\n]>, and like C<.> but is not affected by the C</s> regex modifier.)
2846 This can lead to some ambiguities. When C<\N> is not followed immediately
2847 by a left brace, Perl assumes the C<[^\n]> meaning. Also, if the braces
2848 form a valid quantifier such as C<\N{3}> or C<\N{5,}>, Perl assumes that this
2849 means to match the given quantity of non-newlines (in these examples,
2850 3; and 5 or more, respectively). In all other case, where there is a
2851 C<\N{> and a matching C<}>, Perl assumes that a character name is desired.
2853 However, if there is no matching C<}>, Perl doesn't know if it was
2854 mistakenly omitted, or if C<[^\n]{> was desired, and raises this error.
2855 If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant the latter,
2856 escape the brace with a backslash, like so: C<\N\{>
2858 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2860 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2861 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2864 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2866 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2867 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2868 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2870 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2872 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2873 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2874 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2876 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2879 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2881 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2882 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2885 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2886 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to
2889 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2891 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2892 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2895 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2897 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2898 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2900 =item Module name must be constant
2902 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2904 =item Module name required with -%c option
2906 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2907 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2908 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2910 =item More than one argument to '%s' open
2912 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2913 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2914 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2915 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2917 =item msg%s not implemented
2919 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2921 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2923 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2924 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2926 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
2928 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
2929 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
2930 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2932 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2934 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2937 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
2939 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2940 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2941 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2943 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2945 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2946 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2947 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2948 provided for this purpose.
2950 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
2951 %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
2952 the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
2953 will not trigger this warning.
2955 =item \N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2957 (F) The new (5.12) meaning of C<\N> as C<[^\n]> is not valid in a bracketed
2958 character class, for the same reason that C<.> in a character class loses
2959 its specialness: it matches almost everything, which is probably not
2962 =item \N{NAME} must be resolved by the lexer in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2964 (F) When compiling a regex pattern, an unresolved named character or
2965 sequence was encountered. This can happen in any of several ways that
2966 bypass the lexer, such as using single-quotish context, or an extra
2967 backslash in double-quotish:
2969 $re = '\N{SPACE}'; # Wrong!
2970 $re = "\\N{SPACE}"; # Wrong!
2973 Instead, use double-quotes with a single backslash:
2975 $re = "\N{SPACE}"; # ok
2978 The lexer can be bypassed as well by creating the pattern from smaller
2982 /${re}{SPACE}/; # Wrong!
2984 It's not a good idea to split a construct in the middle like this, and it
2985 doesn't work here. Instead use the solution above.
2987 Finally, the message also can happen under the C</x> regex modifier when the
2988 C<\N> is separated by spaces from the C<{>, in which case, remove the spaces.
2990 /\N {SPACE}/x; # Wrong!
2993 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
2995 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
2996 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2998 =item Negative length
3000 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
3001 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
3003 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
3005 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
3006 greater than or equal to zero.
3008 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3010 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses.
3011 So things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the
3012 regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
3014 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
3015 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
3017 =item %s never introduced
3019 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
3020 scope before it could possibly have been used.
3022 =item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
3024 (F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
3025 real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
3028 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
3030 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
3031 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
3032 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
3033 securable. See L<perlsec>.
3035 =item No code specified for -%c
3037 (F) Perl's B<-e> and B<-E> command-line options require an argument. If
3038 you want to run an empty program, pass the empty string as a separate
3039 argument or run a program consisting of a single 0 or 1:
3045 =item No comma allowed after %s
3047 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is
3048 not allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
3049 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
3051 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported
3052 a constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
3053 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating
3054 system does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did
3055 use an explicit import list for the constants you expect to see;
3056 please see L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an
3057 explicit import list would probably have caught this error earlier
3058 it naturally does not remedy the fact that your operating system
3059 still does not support that constant. Maybe you have a typo in
3060 the constants of the symbol import list of B<use> or B<import> or in the
3061 constant name at the line where this error was triggered?
3063 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
3065 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3066 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
3067 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
3069 =item No DB::DB routine defined
3071 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3072 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3073 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
3076 =item No dbm on this machine
3078 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
3079 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
3081 =item No DB::sub routine defined
3083 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
3084 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
3085 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
3086 of each ordinary subroutine call.
3088 =item No directory specified for -I
3090 (F) The B<-I> command-line switch requires a directory name as part of the
3091 I<same> argument. Use B<-Ilib>, for instance. B<-I lib> won't work.
3093 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
3095 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3096 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
3097 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
3099 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
3101 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
3102 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3104 =item No input file after < on command line
3106 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3107 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
3108 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
3110 =item No next::method '%s' found for %s
3112 (F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
3113 in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
3114 it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
3115 or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
3117 =item "no" not allowed in expression
3119 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
3120 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
3122 =item No output file after > on command line
3124 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3125 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
3126 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
3128 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
3130 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
3131 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
3132 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
3134 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
3136 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
3137 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
3138 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
3140 =item No Perl script found in input
3142 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
3143 with #! and containing the word "perl".
3145 =item No setregid available
3147 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
3150 =item No setreuid available
3152 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
3155 =item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
3157 (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed
3158 variable but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type.
3159 The indicated package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the
3162 =item No such class %s
3164 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state"
3165 declaration, but this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
3167 =item No such hook: %s
3169 (F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl.
3170 Currently, Perl accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks.
3172 =item No such pipe open
3174 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
3175 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
3176 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
3178 =item No such signal: SIG%s
3180 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
3181 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
3182 names on your system.
3184 =item Not a CODE reference
3186 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3187 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3188 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3191 =item Not a GLOB reference
3193 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
3194 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
3195 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
3196 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3198 =item Not a HASH reference
3200 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
3201 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
3202 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3204 =item Not an ARRAY reference
3206 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
3207 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3208 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3210 =item Not an unblessed ARRAY reference
3212 (F) You passed a reference to a blessed array to C<push>, C<shift> or
3213 another array function. These only accept unblessed array references
3214 or arrays beginning explicitly with C<@>.
3216 =item Not a SCALAR reference
3218 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
3219 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3220 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3222 =item Not a subroutine reference
3224 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3225 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3226 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3229 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
3231 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
3232 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
3234 =item Not enough arguments for %s
3236 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
3238 =item Not enough format arguments
3240 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
3241 supplied. See L<perlform>.
3245 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3246 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3249 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
3251 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
3252 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
3253 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
3254 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
3255 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
3257 =item Non-octal character '%c'. Resolved as "%s"
3259 (W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character was
3260 unexpectedly encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value
3263 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
3265 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
3266 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
3267 select. See L<perlfunc/select>.
3269 =item Null filename used
3271 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
3272 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
3274 =item NULL OP IN RUN
3276 (S debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
3279 =item Null picture in formline
3281 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
3282 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
3283 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
3287 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
3289 =item NULL regexp argument
3291 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
3293 =item NULL regexp parameter
3295 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
3297 =item Number too long
3299 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
3300 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
3301 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
3302 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
3305 =item Number with no digits
3307 (F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like
3308 a number. This happens, for example with C<\o{}>, with no number between
3311 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
3313 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
3314 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
3315 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
3317 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
3319 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
3320 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
3322 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
3324 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3325 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3327 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
3329 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3330 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3332 =item Offset outside string
3334 (F)(W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
3335 with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
3336 imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
3337 take place when going past the end of the string when either
3338 C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
3339 for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
3342 =item %s() on unopened %s
3344 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
3345 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
3346 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
3348 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
3350 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
3351 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3355 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3359 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3361 =item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
3363 (D io, deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
3364 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
3365 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3368 =item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
3370 (D io, deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
3371 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
3372 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3375 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
3377 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
3378 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
3379 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
3380 the C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
3382 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for non-Unicode code point 0x%X
3384 (S utf8, non_unicode) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3385 semantics on a code point that is not in Unicode, so what it should do
3386 is not defined. Perl has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn you.
3388 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3389 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3391 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3392 C<no warnings 'non_unicode';>.
3394 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
3396 (S utf8, surrogate) You performed an operation requiring Unicode
3397 semantics on a Unicode surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use of
3398 surrogates for anything but storing strings in UTF-16, but semantics
3399 are (reluctantly) defined for the surrogates, and they are to do
3400 nothing for this operation. Because the use of surrogates can be
3401 dangerous, Perl warns.
3403 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3404 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3406 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3407 C<no warnings 'surrogate';>.
3409 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
3411 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
3412 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
3413 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
3414 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
3417 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
3419 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
3420 in the current lexical scope.
3422 =item Out of memory!
3424 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3425 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
3426 no option but to exit immediately.
3428 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
3429 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
3430 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
3431 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
3432 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
3434 =item Out of memory during %s extend
3436 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
3437 the largest possible memory allocation.
3439 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
3441 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3442 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
3443 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
3444 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
3446 =item Out of memory during request for %s
3448 (X)(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
3449 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
3452 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
3453 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
3454 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
3455 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
3456 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
3457 where the failed request happened.
3459 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
3461 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
3462 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
3463 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
3465 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
3467 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
3468 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
3471 =item '.' outside of string in pack
3473 (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
3474 position to before the start of the packed string being built.
3476 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
3478 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3479 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3481 =item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
3483 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3484 the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
3485 UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3487 =item overload arg '%s' is invalid
3489 (W overload) The L<overload> pragma was passed an argument it did not
3490 recognize. Did you mistype an operator?
3492 =item Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
3494 (F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was dereferenced,
3495 but the overloaded operation did not return a reference. See
3498 =item Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
3500 (F) An object with a C<qr> overload was used as part of a match, but the
3501 overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See L<overload>.
3503 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
3505 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
3506 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
3507 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
3508 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
3510 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
3512 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3513 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3517 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
3518 page. See L<perlform>.
3522 (P) An internal error.
3524 =item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
3526 (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
3527 an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
3528 platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
3529 enter this branch on this platform.
3531 =item panic: ck_grep, type=%u
3533 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
3535 =item panic: ck_split, type=%u
3537 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
3539 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index %ld
3541 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
3542 there are in the savestack.
3544 =item panic: del_backref
3546 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
3551 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
3552 it wasn't an eval context.
3554 =item panic: do_subst
3556 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
3559 =item panic: do_trans_%s
3561 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
3564 =item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
3566 (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
3571 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
3573 =item panic: goto, type=%u, ix=%ld
3575 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
3576 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
3578 =item panic: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
3580 (P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries tried
3581 repeatedly, but each time something re-created entries in the glob.
3582 Most likely the glob contains an object with a reference back to
3583 the glob and a destructor that adds a new object to the glob.
3585 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD, %s
3587 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
3589 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT, %s
3591 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
3593 =item panic: kid popen errno read
3595 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
3597 =item panic: last, type=%u
3599 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
3600 it wasn't a block context.
3602 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
3604 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
3607 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency %u
3609 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
3610 invalid enum on the top of it.
3612 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
3614 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
3615 references to an object.
3617 =item panic: malloc, %s
3619 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
3621 =item panic: memory wrap
3623 (P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
3625 =item panic: pad_alloc, %p!=%p
3627 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3628 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3630 =item panic: pad_free curpad, %p!=%p
3632 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3633 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3635 =item panic: pad_free po
3637 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3639 =item panic: pad_reset curpad, %p!=%p
3641 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3642 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3644 =item panic: pad_sv po
3646 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3648 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad, %p!=%p
3650 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3651 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3653 =item panic: pad_swipe po
3655 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3657 =item panic: pp_iter, type=%u
3659 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
3661 =item panic: pp_match%s
3663 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
3666 =item panic: pp_split, pm=%p, s=%p
3668 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
3670 =item panic: realloc, %s
3672 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
3674 =item panic: reference miscount on nsv in sv_replace() (%d != 1)
3676 (P) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
3677 reference count other than 1.
3679 =item panic: restartop in %s
3681 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
3682 didn't supply the destination.
3684 =item panic: return, type=%u
3686 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
3687 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
3689 =item panic: scan_num, %s
3691 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
3693 =item panic: Sequence (?{...}): no code block found
3695 (P) while compiling a pattern that has embedded (?{}) or (??{}) code
3696 blocks, perl couldn't locate the code block that should have already been
3697 seen and compiled by perl before control passed to the regex compiler.
3699 =item panic: sv_chop %s
3701 (P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the
3702 scalar's string buffer.
3704 =item panic: sv_insert, midend=%p, bigend=%p
3706 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
3709 =item panic: strxfrm() gets absurd - a => %u, ab => %u
3711 (P) The interpreter's sanity check of the C function strxfrm() failed.
3712 In your current locale the returned transformation of the string "ab" is
3713 shorter than that of the string "a", which makes no sense.
3715 =item panic: top_env
3717 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
3719 =item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
3721 (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't
3722 permitted at run time.
3724 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
3726 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
3727 to even) byte length.
3729 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
3731 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an odd (as opposed
3732 to even) byte length.
3734 =item panic: yylex, %s
3736 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
3738 =item Parsing code internal error (%s)
3740 (F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API in
3743 =item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3745 (F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
3746 consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before
3747 the nesting limit is exceeded.
3749 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3752 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
3754 (W parenthesis) You said something like
3760 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
3762 Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
3764 =item C<-p> destination: %s
3766 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
3767 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
3768 redirected it with select().)
3770 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
3772 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3773 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
3774 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
3776 =item Perl folding rules are not up-to-date for 0x%x; please use the perlbug utility to report
3778 (W regex, deprecated) You used a regular expression with
3779 case-insensitive matching, and there is a bug in Perl in which the
3780 built-in regular expression folding rules are not accurate. This may
3781 lead to incorrect results. Please report this as a bug using the
3782 "perlbug" utility. (This message is marked deprecated, so that it by
3783 default will be turned-on.)
3785 =item Perl_my_%s() not available
3787 (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
3788 so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
3789 conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
3790 '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3792 =item Perl %s required (did you mean %s?)--this is only %s, stopped
3794 (F) The code you are trying to run has asked for a newer version of
3795 Perl than you are running. Perhaps C<use 5.10> was written instead
3796 of C<use 5.010> or C<use v5.10>. Without the leading C<v>, the number is
3797 interpreted as a decimal, with every three digits after the
3798 decimal point representing a part of the version number. So 5.10
3799 is equivalent to v5.100.
3801 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
3803 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
3804 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
3805 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
3807 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3809 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3810 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
3812 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
3814 (X) See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
3816 =item Perls since %s too modern--this is %s, stopped
3818 (F) The code you are trying to run claims it will not run
3819 on the version of Perl you are using because it is too new.
3820 Maybe the code needs to be updated, or maybe it is simply
3821 wrong and the version check should just be removed.
3823 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3825 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3827 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3828 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3831 are supported and installed on your system.
3832 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3834 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3835 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3836 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
3837 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
3838 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
3839 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
3840 Perl can and will use, and the script will be run. Before you really
3841 fix the problem, however, you will get the same error message each
3842 time you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
3843 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3845 =item pid %x not a child
3847 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
3848 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
3849 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
3851 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
3853 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
3855 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3857 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
3858 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
3859 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
3860 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
3861 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
3863 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
3865 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
3866 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
3868 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3870 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
3871 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
3872 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
3873 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
3874 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3875 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3877 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3879 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
3880 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
3881 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
3882 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
3883 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3884 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3886 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3888 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
3889 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
3890 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
3891 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
3892 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3893 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3895 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
3897 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
3898 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
3899 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
3900 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
3902 You probably wrote something like this:
3909 when you should have written this:
3916 If you really want comments, build your list the
3917 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
3921 'b', # another comment
3924 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
3926 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
3927 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
3928 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
3931 You probably wrote something like this:
3935 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
3936 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
3940 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
3942 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
3943 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
3944 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
3945 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
3947 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
3949 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
3950 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
3952 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
3954 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
3955 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
3956 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
3957 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
3959 =item Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
3961 (W ambiguous) You said something like C<m/$\/> in a regex.
3962 The regex C<m/foo$\s+bar/m> translates to: match the word 'foo', the output
3963 record separator (see L<perlvar/$\>) and the letter 's' (one time or more)
3964 followed by the word 'bar'.
3966 If this is what you intended then you can silence the warning by using
3967 C<m/${\}/> (for example: C<m/foo${\}s+bar/>).
3969 If instead you intended to match the word 'foo' at the end of the line
3970 followed by whitespace and the word 'bar' on the next line then you can use
3971 C<m/$(?)\/> (for example: C<m/foo$(?)\s+bar/>).
3973 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
3975 (W ambiguous) You said something like '@foo' in a double-quoted string
3976 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
3977 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
3978 to the array you apparently lost track of.
3980 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
3982 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
3986 is now misinterpreted as
3990 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
3991 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
3992 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
3995 =item Premature end of script headers
3999 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
4001 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4002 before now. Check your control flow.
4004 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
4006 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
4007 before now. Check your control flow.
4009 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
4011 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
4012 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
4013 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
4014 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
4017 =item Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
4019 (W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is
4020 useless, since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments.
4022 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
4024 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
4025 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
4027 =item Prototype not terminated
4029 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
4032 =item \p{} uses Unicode rules, not locale rules
4034 (W) You compiled a regular expression that contained a Unicode property
4035 match (C<\p> or C<\P>), but the regular expression is also being told to
4036 use the run-time locale, not Unicode. Instead, use a POSIX character
4037 class, which should know about the locale's rules.
4038 (See L<perlrecharclass/POSIX Character Classes>.)
4040 Even if the run-time locale is ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), which is a subset of
4041 Unicode, some properties will give results that are not valid for that
4044 Here are a couple of examples to help you see what's going on. If the
4045 locale is ISO 8859-7, the character at code point 0xD7 is the "GREEK
4046 CAPITAL LETTER CHI". But in Unicode that code point means the
4047 "MULTIPLICATION SIGN" instead, and C<\p> always uses the Unicode
4048 meaning. That means that C<\p{Alpha}> won't match, but C<[[:alpha:]]>
4049 should. Only in the Latin1 locale are all the characters in the same
4050 positions as they are in Unicode. But, even here, some properties give
4051 incorrect results. An example is C<\p{Changes_When_Uppercased}> which
4052 is true for "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS", but since the upper
4053 case of that character is not in Latin1, in that locale it doesn't
4054 change when upper cased.
4056 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4058 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if
4059 you meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
4060 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4062 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4064 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of
4065 the {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
4066 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4068 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4070 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
4071 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
4072 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
4073 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
4074 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
4076 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4079 =item Range iterator outside integer range
4081 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
4082 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
4083 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
4084 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
4086 =item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4088 (W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
4089 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4091 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
4093 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
4094 before now. Check your control flow.
4096 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
4098 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4100 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
4102 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4104 =item Reallocation too large: %x
4106 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
4108 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
4110 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
4113 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
4115 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
4116 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
4117 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
4119 =item Recursive call to Perl_load_module in PerlIO_find_layer
4121 (P) It is currently not permitted to load modules when creating
4122 a filehandle inside an %INC hook. This can happen with C<open my
4123 $fh, '<', \$scalar>, which implicitly loads PerlIO::scalar. Try
4124 loading PerlIO::scalar explicitly first.
4126 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
4128 (F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, Perl
4129 believes it found an infinite loop in the C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a
4130 crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth.
4132 =item refcnt_dec: fd %d%s
4134 =item refcnt: fd %d%s
4136 =item refcnt_inc: fd %d%s
4138 (P) Perl's I/O implementation failed an internal consistency check. If
4139 you see this message, something is very wrong.
4141 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
4143 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
4144 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
4145 usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
4146 to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
4148 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
4149 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
4150 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
4151 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
4153 =item Reference is already weak
4155 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
4156 Doing so has no effect.
4158 =item Reference to invalid group 0 in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4160 (F) You used C<\g0> or similar in a regular expression. You may refer
4161 to capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers
4162 (normal backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
4163 backreferences). Using 0 does not make sense.
4165 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4167 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
4168 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If
4169 you wanted to have the character with ordinal 7 inserted into the regular
4170 expression, prepend zeroes to make it three digits long: C<\007>
4172 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4175 =item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4177 (F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k<NAME> >> in your regular
4178 expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses
4179 such as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<< (?<NAME>...) >>. Check if the name has been
4180 spelled correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
4182 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4185 =item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4187 (F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there
4188 are not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the
4189 expression before where the C<\g{-7}> was located.
4191 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4194 =item regexp memory corruption
4196 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
4197 expression compiler gave it.
4199 =item Regexp modifier "/%c" may appear a maximum of twice
4201 =item Regexp modifier "/%c" may not appear twice
4203 (F syntax, regexp) The regular expression pattern had too many occurrences
4204 of the specified modifier. Remove the extraneous ones.
4206 =item Regexp modifier "%c" may not appear after the "-" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4208 (F) Turning off the given modifier has the side effect of turning on
4209 another one. Perl currently doesn't allow this. Reword the regular
4210 expression to use the modifier you want to turn on (and place it before
4211 the minus), instead of the one you want to turn off.
4213 =item Regexp modifiers "/%c" and "/%c" are mutually exclusive
4215 (F syntax, regexp) The regular expression pattern had more than one of these
4216 mutually exclusive modifiers. Retain only the modifier that is
4217 supposed to be there.
4219 =item Regexp out of space in regex m/%s/
4221 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
4224 =item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompatible)
4226 (F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
4227 numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
4228 terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
4230 =item Replacement list is longer than search list
4232 (W misc) You have used a replacement list that is longer than the
4233 search list. So the additional elements in the replacement list
4236 =item Reversed %s= operator
4238 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
4239 always come last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
4241 =item rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4243 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either closed or not
4244 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4246 =item Scalars leaked: %d
4248 (W internal) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping
4249 of scalars: not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time
4250 Perl exited. What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which
4251 is of course bad, especially if the Perl program is intended to be
4254 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
4256 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
4257 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
4258 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
4259 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4260 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4261 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4262 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4264 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
4265 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
4266 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4269 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
4271 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
4272 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
4273 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
4274 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4275 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4276 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4277 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4279 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
4280 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
4281 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4284 =item Search pattern not terminated
4286 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
4287 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4288 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
4290 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
4291 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
4292 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
4293 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
4295 =item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
4297 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
4300 The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
4301 C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
4302 parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
4303 the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
4305 =item seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4307 (W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed or not
4308 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4310 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
4312 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
4313 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
4315 =item select not implemented
4317 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
4319 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
4321 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
4322 the current implementation.
4324 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
4326 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
4327 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
4329 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
4331 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
4332 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
4334 =item sem%s not implemented
4336 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
4338 =item send() on closed socket %s
4340 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
4341 before now. Check your control flow.
4343 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4345 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The
4346 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4347 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4349 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4351 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved
4352 but has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
4353 expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4355 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4357 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
4358 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4359 discovered. This happens when using the C<(?^...)> construct to tell
4360 Perl to use the default regular expression modifiers, and you
4361 redundantly specify a default modifier. For other
4362 causes, see L<perlre>.
4364 =item Sequence \%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4366 (F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument following the escape
4367 sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly written.
4369 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex m/%s/
4371 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
4372 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See
4375 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated with ')'
4377 (F) The end of the perl code contained within the {...} must be
4378 followed immediately by a ')'.
4380 =item Z<>500 Server error
4386 (A) This is the error message generally seen in a browser window
4387 when trying to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The
4388 actual error text varies widely from server to server. The most
4389 frequently-seen variants are "500 Server error", "Method (something)
4390 not permitted", "Document contains no data", "Premature end of script
4391 headers", and "Did not produce a valid header".
4393 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
4395 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by
4396 the user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the
4397 user account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment
4398 variables (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't
4399 in a location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or
4400 less. Please see the following for more information:
4402 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
4403 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
4404 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
4406 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
4408 =item setegid() not implemented
4410 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
4411 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4414 =item seteuid() not implemented
4416 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
4417 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4420 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
4422 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
4423 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
4426 =item setrgid() not implemented
4428 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
4429 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4432 =item setruid() not implemented
4434 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
4435 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4438 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
4440 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
4441 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
4442 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
4444 =item shm%s not implemented
4446 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
4448 =item !=~ should be !~
4450 (W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
4451 interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
4452 operators: probably not what you intended.
4454 =item <> should be quotes
4456 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
4459 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
4461 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
4462 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
4463 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
4464 probably not what you had in mind.
4466 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
4468 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
4471 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
4473 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
4474 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
4476 =item Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks encapsulation
4478 (F) You should not use the C<~~> operator on an object that does not
4479 overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's underlying structure for
4482 =item sort is now a reserved word
4484 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
4485 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
4487 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
4489 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
4490 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4492 =item Source filters apply only to byte streams
4494 (F) You tried to activate a source filter (usually by loading a
4495 source filter module) within a string passed to C<eval>. This is
4496 not permitted under the C<unicode_eval> feature. Consider using
4497 C<evalbytes> instead. See L<feature>.
4499 =item splice() offset past end of array
4501 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
4502 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the
4503 end of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want,
4504 try explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset.
4505 See L<perlfunc/splice>.
4509 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
4510 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
4511 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
4513 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
4515 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
4516 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
4517 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
4518 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
4521 =item "state" variable %s can't be in a package
4523 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
4524 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
4525 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
4527 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
4529 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
4530 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4532 =item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
4534 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
4535 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
4536 C<can> may break this.
4538 =item Subroutine %s redefined
4540 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
4543 no warnings 'redefine';
4544 eval "sub name { ... }";
4547 =item Substitution loop
4549 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
4550 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
4551 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
4552 L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
4554 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
4556 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4557 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4558 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4560 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
4562 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4563 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4564 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4566 =item substr outside of string
4568 (W substr)(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
4569 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
4570 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
4571 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
4572 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
4574 =item sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
4576 (P) Perl tried to force the upgrade of an SV to a type which was actually
4577 inferior to its current type.
4579 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4581 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most
4582 two branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or
4583 both to contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose
4584 it in clustering parentheses:
4586 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
4588 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
4589 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4591 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4593 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is
4594 a number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
4595 expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4597 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
4599 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
4600 and effective uids or gids.
4604 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
4608 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
4610 A keyword is misspelled.
4611 A semicolon is missing.
4613 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
4614 An opening or closing brace is missing.
4615 A closing quote is missing.
4617 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
4618 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
4619 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
4620 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
4621 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
4622 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
4623 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
4624 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
4625 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>.
4627 =item syntax error at line %d: '%s' unexpected
4629 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
4630 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
4633 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
4635 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
4636 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
4637 or "my $var" or "our $var".
4639 =item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
4641 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4643 =item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
4645 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4647 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
4649 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
4650 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
4651 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
4652 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
4654 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
4656 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4657 before now. Check your control flow.
4659 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
4661 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
4662 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
4664 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
4666 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
4667 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
4669 =item telldir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4671 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to telldir() is either closed or not really
4672 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4674 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
4676 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
4677 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4679 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
4681 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
4682 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
4691 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
4692 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[> and L<arybase>.
4694 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
4696 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
4697 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
4698 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
4699 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
4702 =item The %s function is unimplemented
4704 (F) The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
4705 to the probings of Configure.
4707 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
4709 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
4710 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
4711 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
4714 =item The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
4716 (F) This attribute was never supported on C<my> or C<sub> declarations.
4718 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
4720 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
4722 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
4723 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
4724 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
4725 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
4726 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
4727 target of the change to
4728 %ENV which produced the warning.
4730 =item thread failed to start: %s
4732 (W threads)(S) The entry point function of threads->create() failed for some reason.
4734 =item times not implemented
4736 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
4737 suspect you're not running on Unix.
4739 =item "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
4741 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains
4742 the B<-T> option (or the B<-t> option), but Perl was not invoked with
4743 B<-T> in its command line. This is an error because, by the time
4744 Perl discovers a B<-T> in a script, it's too late to properly taint
4745 everything from the environment. So Perl gives up.
4747 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
4748 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be
4749 fixed by editing the #! line so that the B<-%c> option is a part of
4750 Perl's first argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -%c> to C<perl -%c -n>.
4752 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
4753 B<-%c> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -%c scriptname>.
4755 =item To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
4757 (F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
4758 uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
4759 specified an illegal mapping.
4760 See L<perlunicode/"User-Defined Character Properties">.
4762 =item Too deeply nested ()-groups
4764 (F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level.
4766 =item Too few args to syscall
4768 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
4769 system call to call, silly dilly.
4771 =item Too late for "-%s" option
4773 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4774 B<-M>, B<-m> or B<-C> option.
4776 In the case of B<-M> and B<-m>, this is an error because those options
4777 are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
4779 The B<-C> option only works if it is specified on the command line as
4780 well (with the same sequence of letters or numbers following). Either
4781 specify this option on the command line, or, if your system supports
4782 it, make your script executable and run it directly instead of passing
4785 =item Too late to run %s block
4787 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
4788 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
4789 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
4790 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
4793 =item Too many args to syscall
4795 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
4797 =item Too many arguments for %s
4799 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
4803 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4804 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4808 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4809 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4811 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
4813 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
4814 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
4816 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
4818 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
4819 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
4820 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
4822 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
4824 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][],
4825 y/// or y[][] construct.
4827 =item '%s' trapped by operation mask
4829 (F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's
4830 disallowed. See L<Safe>.