3 perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
7 These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
10 (W) A warning (optional).
11 (D) A deprecation (enabled by default).
12 (S) A severe warning (enabled by default).
13 (F) A fatal error (trappable).
14 (P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
15 (X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
16 (A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
18 The majority of messages from the first three classifications above
19 (W, D & S) can be controlled using the C<warnings> pragma.
21 If a message can be controlled by the C<warnings> pragma, its warning
22 category is included with the classification letter in the description
25 Optional warnings are enabled by using the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-w>
26 and B<-W> switches. Warnings may be captured by setting C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
27 to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead
28 of printing it. See L<perlvar>.
30 Severe warnings are always enabled, unless they are explicitly disabled
31 with the C<warnings> pragma or the B<-X> switch.
33 Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See
34 L<perlfunc/eval>. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively
35 disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the C<warnings> pragma.
38 The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
39 lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
40 denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
41 ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
42 letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
47 =item accept() on closed socket %s
49 (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you forget
50 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
53 =item Allocation too large: %x
55 (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
57 =item '%c' allowed only after types %s
59 (F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only
60 after certain types. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
62 =item Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
64 (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
65 keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for calling
66 one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
67 subroutine is not imported.
69 To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand
70 before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package.
71 Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's
72 imported with the C<use subs> pragma).
74 To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the C<CORE::> prefix
75 on the operator (e.g. C<CORE::log($x)>) or declare the subroutine
76 to be an object method (see L<perlsub/"Subroutine Attributes"> or
79 =item Ambiguous overloaded argument to %s resolved as %s
81 (W ambiguous) You called C<keys>, C<values> or C<each> on an object that had
82 overloading of C<%{}> or C<@{}> or both. In such a case, the object is
83 dereferenced according to its overloading, not its underlying reference type.
84 The warning is issued when C<%{}> overloading exists on a blessed arrayref,
85 when C<@{}> overloading exists on a blessed hashref, or when both overloadings
86 are defined (in which case C<%{}> is used). You can force the interpretation
87 of the object by explicitly dereferencing it as an array or hash instead of
88 passing the object itself to C<keys>, C<values> or C<each>.
90 =item Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
92 (F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
93 all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
94 first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
95 C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
97 =item Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
99 (W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
100 you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying
101 a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
103 =item Ambiguous use of %c resolved as operator %c
105 (W ambiguous) C<%>, C<&>, and C<*> are both infix operators (modulus,
106 bitwise and, and multiplication) I<and> initial special characters
107 (denoting hashes, subroutines and typeglobs), and you said something
108 like C<*foo * foo> that might be interpreted as either of them. We
109 assumed you meant the infix operator, but please try to make it more
110 clear -- in the example given, you might write C<*foo * foo()> if you
111 really meant to multiply a glob by the result of calling a function.
113 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s} resolved to %c%s
115 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<@{foo}>, which might be
116 asking for the variable C<@foo>, or it might be calling a function
117 named foo, and dereferencing it as an array reference. If you wanted
118 the varable, you can just write C<@foo>. If you wanted to call the
119 function, write C<@{foo()}> ... or you could just not have a variable
120 and a function with the same name, and save yourself a lot of trouble.
122 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s%s} resolved to %c%s%s
124 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<${foo[2]}> (where foo
125 represents the name of a Perl keyword), which might be looking for
126 element number 2 of the array named C<@foo>, in which case please write
127 C<$foo[2]>, or you might have meant to pass an anonymous arrayref to
128 the function named foo, and then do a scalar deref on the value it
129 returns. If you meant that, write C<${foo([2])}>.
131 In regular expressions, the C<${foo[2]}> syntax is sometimes necessary
132 to disambiguate between array subscripts and character classes.
133 C</$length[2345]/>, for instance, will be interpreted as C<$length>
134 followed by the character class C<[2345]>. If an array subscript is what
135 you want, you can avoid the warning by changing C</${length[2345]}/>
136 to the unsightly C</${\$length[2345]}/>, by renaming your array to
137 something that does not coincide with a built-in keyword, or by
138 simply turning off warnings with C<no warnings 'ambiguous';>.
140 =item Ambiguous use of -%s resolved as -&%s()
142 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<-foo>, which might be the
143 string C<"-foo">, or a call to the function C<foo>, negated. If you meant
144 the string, just write C<"-foo">. If you meant the function call,
147 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
149 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
150 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
151 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
153 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
155 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
156 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
157 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
158 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
159 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
161 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
168 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
170 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
171 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
172 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
173 a scalar value (the length of an array, or the population info of a
174 hash) and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
175 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
178 =item Args must match #! line
180 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
181 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
182 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
183 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
185 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
187 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
189 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
191 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element or a
192 subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
198 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
200 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
206 or a hash or array slice, such as:
208 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
209 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
211 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
213 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
214 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
217 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
219 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
220 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
221 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
223 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
225 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you
226 forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take care of transforming
227 data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing
228 the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer.
229 If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be
230 the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
232 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
234 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
235 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
237 =item assertion botched: %s
239 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
241 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
243 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
245 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
247 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
248 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
249 know which context to supply to the right side.
251 =item A thread exited while %d threads were running
253 (W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily the main
254 thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
255 Usually it's a good idea first to collect the return values of the
256 created threads by joining them, and only then to exit from the main
257 thread. See L<threads>.
259 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
261 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
262 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
264 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
266 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
267 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
268 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
274 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
276 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
277 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
280 bless $self, "$proto";
282 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
284 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
285 which is not in its key set.
287 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
289 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
290 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
292 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%x
294 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
295 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
296 outside any of those arenas.
298 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
300 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference-counted internal table of
301 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
302 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
303 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
305 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
307 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
308 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
309 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
310 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
313 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
315 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
317 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
319 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
320 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
321 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
322 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
323 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
324 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
327 =item Attempt to join self
329 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
330 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
331 to move the join() to some other thread.
333 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
335 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
336 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
337 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
338 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
339 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
342 =item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
344 (F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
345 compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
346 unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
349 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
351 (W) You tried to set the length of an array which has been freed. You
352 can do this by storing a reference to the scalar representing the last index
353 of an array and later assigning through that reference. For example
355 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
358 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
360 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
361 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
362 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
364 =item Attribute "locked" is deprecated
366 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the "locked"
367 attribute on a code reference. The :locked attribute is obsolete, has had no
368 effect since 5005 threads were removed, and will be removed in a future
371 =item Attribute "unique" is deprecated
373 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the "unique"
374 attribute on an array, hash or scalar reference. The :unique attribute has
375 had no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and will be removed in a future release
378 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
380 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
381 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
382 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
383 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
385 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
387 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
388 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
389 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
391 =item Bad filehandle: %s
393 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
394 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
395 open(), or did it in another package.
397 =item Bad free() ignored
399 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
400 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
401 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
403 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
404 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
405 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
409 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
411 =item Badly placed ()'s
413 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
414 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
417 =item Bad name after %s::
419 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
420 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
429 $sym = "mypack::$var";
431 =item Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
433 (F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the
436 =item Bad realloc() ignored
438 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
439 never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
440 by setting the environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
442 =item Bad symbol for array
444 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
445 wasn't a symbol table entry.
447 =item Bad symbol for dirhandle
449 (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
450 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
453 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
455 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
456 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
458 =item Bad symbol for hash
460 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
461 wasn't a symbol table entry.
463 =item Bareword found in conditional
465 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
466 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
467 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
471 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
474 use constant TYPO => 1;
475 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
477 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
479 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
481 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
482 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
483 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
485 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
487 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
488 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
489 you need to predeclare a package?
491 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
493 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
494 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
497 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
499 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
500 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
501 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
502 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
503 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
505 =item \1 better written as $1
507 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
508 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
509 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
510 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
511 there are more than 9 backreferences.
513 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
515 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
516 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
517 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
519 =item bind() on closed socket %s
521 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
522 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
524 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
526 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
527 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
529 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
531 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
533 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
535 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
538 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
540 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
541 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
542 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
544 =item Callback called exit
546 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
547 exited by calling exit.
549 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
551 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
552 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
553 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
554 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
555 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
556 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
557 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
558 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
560 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
562 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
563 compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
564 attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
565 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
567 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
569 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
570 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
572 =item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
574 (F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference in it,
575 then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax. The access
576 triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is no legal conversion
577 from that type of reference to a typeglob.
579 =item Cannot copy to %s in %s
581 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
582 be directly assigned to.
584 =item Cannot find encoding "%s"
586 (S io) You tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to a filehandle,
587 either with open() or binmode().
589 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
591 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
592 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
593 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
595 =item Can't bless non-reference value
597 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
598 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
600 =item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
602 (F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
603 a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
605 =item Can't "break" outside a given block
607 (F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
609 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
611 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
612 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
613 like this will reproduce the error:
616 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
617 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
619 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
621 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
622 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
623 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
624 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
626 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
628 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
629 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
630 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
631 Something like this will reproduce the error:
634 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
635 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
637 =item Can't chdir to %s
639 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
640 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
642 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
644 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
647 =item Can't coerce %s to %s in %s
649 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
650 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
660 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
662 =item Can't "continue" outside a when block
664 (F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
667 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
669 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
670 quotas or other plumbing problems.
672 =item Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
674 (F) Currently, only scalar variables can be declared with a specific
675 class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state" declaration. The semantics may be
676 extended for other types of variables in future.
678 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
680 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
681 "state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
683 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
685 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
686 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
688 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
690 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
693 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
695 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
696 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
697 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
699 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
701 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
702 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
703 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
705 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
707 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
708 regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the
709 regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
711 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
713 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
714 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
716 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
718 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
719 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
722 =item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
724 (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
725 or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
726 little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
727 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
729 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
731 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
732 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
733 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
734 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
735 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
736 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
741 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
742 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
743 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
745 =item Can't execute %s
747 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
748 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
750 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
752 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
753 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
755 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
757 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
758 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property?
759 See L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
760 for a complete list of available properties.
762 =item Can't find label %s
764 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
765 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
767 =item Can't find %s on PATH
769 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
772 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
774 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
775 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
776 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
778 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
780 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
781 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
782 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
784 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
786 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
787 unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
788 editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
790 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
792 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode property (for
793 example C<\p{Lu}> matches all uppercase letters). If you did mean to use a
794 Unicode property, see
795 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
796 for a complete list of available properties.
797 If you didn't mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either
798 by C<\\p> (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, until
803 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
806 =item Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
808 (W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be retried
811 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
813 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
814 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
815 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
816 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
817 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
818 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
819 the access checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
820 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
821 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
822 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
823 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine gave up
824 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access checking
825 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
826 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
827 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
829 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
831 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
832 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
834 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
836 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
837 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
839 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
841 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
842 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
844 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
846 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
847 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
848 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
849 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
851 =item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
853 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
854 comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
855 as the reduce() function in List::Util).
857 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
859 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
862 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
864 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
865 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
866 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
867 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
869 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
871 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
872 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
873 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
874 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
875 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
876 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
878 =item Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
880 (F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a fatal error to
881 attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise non-numeric
884 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
886 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
887 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
888 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
889 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
890 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
891 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
894 =item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
896 (F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
897 package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
899 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
901 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension. This
902 may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one that is
903 incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known to happen
904 between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your dynamic
905 extension was built against an older version of the library that is
906 installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old dynamic
909 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
911 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
912 lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you want to
913 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
916 =item Can't localize through a reference
918 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
919 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
920 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
921 that $ref will still be a reference.
923 =item Can't locate %s
925 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
926 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
927 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
928 need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
929 the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
930 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
931 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
933 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
935 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
936 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
937 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
938 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
940 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
942 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
943 for example, C<foo.so> or C<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
944 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
946 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
948 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
949 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
950 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
952 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
954 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
955 doesn't seem to exist.
957 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
959 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
960 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
962 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
964 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
967 =item Can't modify %s in %s
969 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
970 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
972 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
974 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
977 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
979 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
980 such, see L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
982 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
984 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
987 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
989 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
990 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
991 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
992 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
993 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
994 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
996 =item Can't open %s: %s
998 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
999 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
1000 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
1001 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
1004 =item Can't open a reference
1006 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
1007 using the 3-arg open() syntax :
1011 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
1012 open is not supported.
1014 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
1016 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
1017 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
1018 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
1019 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
1021 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
1023 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1024 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
1025 the command line for writing.
1027 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
1029 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1030 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
1031 command line for reading.
1033 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
1035 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1036 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
1037 the command line for writing.
1039 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
1041 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1042 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
1045 =item Can't open perl script%s
1047 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
1049 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
1050 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1051 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1053 =item Can't read CRTL environ
1055 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1056 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1057 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1058 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1061 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1063 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1064 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1065 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1066 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1067 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1068 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1070 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1072 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1073 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1074 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1076 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1078 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1079 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1081 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1083 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1084 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1086 =item Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
1088 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
1089 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
1090 method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1092 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1094 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1095 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1098 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1100 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1101 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1103 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1105 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
1106 but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
1107 to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
1108 the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
1111 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1113 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1114 open already. Bizarre.
1116 =item Can't take log of %g
1118 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1119 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1120 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1123 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1125 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1126 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1127 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1129 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1131 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1132 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1133 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1137 (F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be unshifted, such
1138 as the main Perl stack.
1140 =item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1142 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1143 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1144 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1145 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1147 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1149 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1150 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1151 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1153 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1155 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1156 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1158 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1160 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1161 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1163 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1165 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1166 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1167 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1169 =item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1171 (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1172 byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1173 allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1175 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1177 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1180 =item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1182 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1183 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1184 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1185 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1188 =item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1190 (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1191 that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1192 For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1193 is inside a big-endian group.
1195 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1197 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1198 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1199 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1200 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1203 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1205 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1206 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1207 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1209 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1211 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1212 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1214 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1216 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1217 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1218 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1220 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1222 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1223 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1224 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1225 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1226 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1229 =item Can't use "when" outside a topicalizer
1231 (F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1232 loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1233 from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1234 or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1236 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1238 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1239 references can be weakened.
1241 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1243 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1244 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1245 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1247 =item Character following "\c" must be ASCII
1249 (F|W deprecated, syntax) In C<\cI<X>>, I<X> must be an ASCII character.
1250 It is planned to make this fatal in all instances in Perl 5.16. In the
1251 cases where it isn't fatal, the character this evaluates to is
1252 derived by exclusive or'ing the code point of this character with 0x40.
1254 Note that non-alphabetic ASCII characters are discouraged here as well.
1256 =item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1262 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1263 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1264 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1268 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1271 =item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1277 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode expects
1278 all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved as if you
1281 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1283 =item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1289 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1290 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1291 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1293 pack("c", $x & 255);
1295 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1298 =item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1300 (W unpack) You tried something like
1302 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1304 where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1305 below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the value
1306 modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1308 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1310 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1312 (W pack) You tried something like
1314 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1316 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1317 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1318 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1320 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1322 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1324 (W unpack) You tried something like
1326 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1328 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1329 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1330 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1332 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1334 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1336 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1338 =item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1340 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1341 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1343 =item Closure prototype called
1345 (F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to an attribute
1346 handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure is created.
1347 This subroutine cannot be called.
1349 =item Code missing after '/'
1351 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be another
1352 template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1354 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
1356 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, no properties match it; all inverse properties do
1358 (W utf8) You had a code point above the Unicode maximum of U+10FFFF.
1360 Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code
1361 points, up to the limit of what is storable in an unsigned integer on
1362 your system, but these may not be accepted by other languages/systems.
1363 At one time, it was legal in some standards to have code points up to
1364 0x7FFF_FFFF, but not higher. Code points above 0xFFFF_FFFF require
1365 larger than a 32 bit word.
1367 None of the Unicode or Perl-defined properties will match a non-Unicode
1368 code point. For example,
1370 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\p{Any}/
1372 will not match, because the code point is not in Unicode. But
1374 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\P{Any}/
1378 =item %s: Command not found
1380 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1381 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1383 =item Compilation failed in require
1385 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1386 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1387 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1389 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1391 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1392 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1393 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1394 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1395 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1396 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1397 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1398 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1399 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1401 =item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1403 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1404 cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_broadcast()
1405 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1406 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1407 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1408 first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1409 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1412 =item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1414 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1415 cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_signal()
1416 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1417 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1418 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread to
1419 first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1420 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1423 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1425 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1426 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1427 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1429 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1431 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1432 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1433 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1434 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1437 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1439 (F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to find
1440 the character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you
1441 forgot to load the corresponding C<charnames> pragma?
1445 =item Constant is not %s reference
1447 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1448 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1449 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1450 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1451 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1453 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1455 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1456 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1457 commentary and workarounds.
1459 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1461 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1462 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1465 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1467 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1468 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1470 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1472 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1474 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1476 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1477 expression compiler gave it.
1479 =item corrupted regexp program
1481 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1484 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
1486 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1488 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1490 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1491 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1494 =item "\c{" is deprecated and is more clearly written as ";"
1496 (D deprecated, syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way
1497 to specify non-printable characters. You used it with a "{" which
1498 evaluates to ";", which is printable. It is planned to remove the
1499 ability to specify a semi-colon this way in Perl 5.16. Just use a
1500 semi-colon or a backslash-semi-colon without the "\c".
1502 =item "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"
1504 (W syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way to specify
1505 non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which is better
1506 written as simply itself, perhaps preceded by a backslash for non-word
1509 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1511 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1512 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1513 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1514 which case it indicates something else.
1516 This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the F<perl> binary,
1517 setting the C pre-processor macro C<PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN> to the desired value.
1519 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1521 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1522 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1523 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1525 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1527 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1528 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1529 is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1531 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1533 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1534 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1536 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1538 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1539 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1540 that triggers this error.
1542 =item Deprecated character in \N{...}; marked by <-- HERE in \N{%s<-- HERE %s
1544 (D deprecated) Just about anything is legal for the C<...> in C<\N{...}>.
1545 But starting in 5.12, non-reasonable ones that don't look like names are
1546 deprecated. A reasonable name begins with an alphabetic character and
1547 continues with any combination of alphanumerics, dashes, spaces, parentheses or
1550 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1552 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>.
1553 There has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1554 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1555 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1556 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1557 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1558 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1560 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1564 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1566 Beginning with perl 5.9.4, you can also use C<state> variables to
1567 have lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1569 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1571 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1573 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1574 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather than
1575 to create a dangling reference.
1577 =item Did not produce a valid header
1581 =item %s did not return a true value
1583 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1584 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1585 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1586 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1588 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1590 (W misc) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or
1593 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1595 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1596 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1599 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1601 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1602 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1607 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1608 you called it with no args and both C<$@> and C<$_> were empty.
1610 =item Document contains no data
1614 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1616 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1617 define a C<$VERSION.>
1619 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1621 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1622 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1624 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1626 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1628 =item do_study: out of memory
1630 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1632 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1634 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1635 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1636 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1637 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1638 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1639 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1640 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1641 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1643 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1645 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1646 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1648 =item dump is not supported
1650 (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1652 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1654 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1657 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1659 (W) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a type
1660 in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1662 =item elseif should be elsif
1664 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1665 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1666 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1667 unlikely to be what you want.
1671 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1672 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1673 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1675 =item entering effective %s failed
1677 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1678 effective uids or gids failed.
1680 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1682 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1683 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1684 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1686 =item Error converting file specification %s
1688 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1689 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1690 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1691 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1692 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1694 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1696 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1697 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1698 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1700 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval'
1702 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1703 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1704 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk, it
1705 is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by explicitly
1706 building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using
1707 that in an eval(). See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1709 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
1711 (F) A regular expression contained the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width
1712 assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the C<use re 'eval'>
1713 pragma is in effect. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>.
1715 =item EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1717 (F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming
1718 any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is consumed.
1720 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
1723 =item Excessively long <> operator
1725 (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a
1726 Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
1727 filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a
1728 variable and glob that.
1730 =item exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
1732 (F) The C<exec> function is not implemented in MacPerl. See L<perlport>.
1734 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
1736 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1738 =item Exiting eval via %s
1740 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1741 goto, or a loop control statement.
1743 =item Exiting format via %s
1745 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1746 goto, or a loop control statement.
1748 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1750 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1751 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1752 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1754 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1756 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1757 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1759 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1761 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1762 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1764 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1766 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1767 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1768 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1769 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1771 =item %s: Expression syntax
1773 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1774 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1776 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1778 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
1779 CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
1780 queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
1782 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1784 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1785 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1786 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1787 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1788 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1790 =item Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
1792 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1793 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1794 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1795 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1797 =item fcntl is not implemented
1799 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1800 PDP-11 or something?
1802 =item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
1804 (F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
1807 =item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1809 (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string start with a length indicator
1810 which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1811 a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1814 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1816 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1817 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1818 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1819 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1821 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1823 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1824 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1825 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
1826 intended only to read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1827 Another possibility is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0
1828 (also known as STDIN) for output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
1830 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1832 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1833 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
1836 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
1838 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1839 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
1841 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1843 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1844 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1845 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1848 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1850 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1851 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1852 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1855 =item Format not terminated
1857 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1858 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1860 =item Format %s redefined
1862 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1865 no warnings 'redefine';
1866 eval "format NAME =...";
1869 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1879 (or something like that).
1881 =item %s found where operator expected
1883 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
1884 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1885 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1886 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1888 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1890 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1892 =item gethostent not implemented
1894 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1895 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1898 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1900 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1901 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1903 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1905 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1906 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1908 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1910 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1911 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1912 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1914 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1916 (F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
1917 that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
1918 declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
1919 which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1921 =item glob failed (%s)
1923 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1924 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1925 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1926 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1927 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1928 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1929 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1930 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1931 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1932 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1933 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1935 =item Glob not terminated
1937 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1938 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1939 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1940 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1942 =item gmtime(%f) too large
1944 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with an number that was larger than
1945 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
1946 date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
1947 not-a-number value).
1949 =item gmtime(%f) too small
1951 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with an number that was smaller than
1952 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
1953 date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
1954 not-a-number value).
1956 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1958 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1959 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1961 =item goto must have label
1963 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1964 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1966 =item ()-group starts with a count
1968 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is
1969 supposed to follow something: a template character or a ()-group.
1970 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1972 =item %s had compilation errors.
1974 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> fails.
1976 =item Had to create %s unexpectedly
1978 (S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought
1979 to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and had to be
1980 created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
1982 =item Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
1984 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on hash names in some
1985 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
1987 =item %s has too many errors
1989 (F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors.
1990 Further error messages would likely be uninformative.
1992 =item Having no space between pattern and following word is deprecated
1996 You had a word that isn't a regex modifier immediately following a pattern
1997 without an intervening space. For example, the two constructs:
1999 $a =~ m/$foo/sand $bar
2000 $a =~ m/$foo/s and $bar
2002 both currently mean the same thing, but it is planned to disallow the first form
2005 $a =~ m/$foo/and $bar
2007 will be disallowed too.
2009 =item Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
2011 (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
2012 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
2013 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
2015 =item Identifier too long
2017 (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) to
2018 about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound
2019 names (like C<$A::B>). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
2020 of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations.
2022 =item Ignoring zero length \N{} in character class
2024 (W) Named Unicode character escapes (\N{...}) may return a
2025 zero length sequence. When such an escape is used in a character class
2026 its behaviour is not well defined. Check that the correct escape has
2027 been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
2029 =item Illegal binary digit %s
2031 (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
2033 =item Illegal binary digit %s ignored
2035 (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
2036 binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before the
2039 =item Illegal character \%o (carriage return)
2041 (F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
2042 would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this error
2043 when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason, your
2044 version of Perl appears to have been built without this support. Talk
2045 to your Perl administrator.
2047 =item Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
2049 (W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype declaration.
2050 Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, and \.
2052 =item Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
2054 (F) When using the C<sub> keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine,
2055 you must always specify a block of code. See L<perlsub>.
2057 =item Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
2059 (F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See L<perlsub>.
2061 =item Illegal division by zero
2063 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong in
2064 your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
2067 =item Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
2069 (W digit) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or
2070 A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal
2071 number stopped before the illegal character.
2073 =item Illegal modulus zero
2075 (F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
2076 numbers don't take to this kindly.
2078 =item Illegal number of bits in vec
2080 (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of
2081 two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
2083 =item Illegal octal digit %s
2085 (F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2087 =item Illegal octal digit %s ignored
2089 (W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
2090 Interpretation of the octal number stopped before the 8 or 9.
2092 =item Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: -%c
2094 (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
2095 following switches: B<-[CDIMUdmtw]>.
2097 =item Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
2099 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's
2100 internal environ array, and encountered an element without the C<=>
2101 delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is ignored.
2103 =item Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
2105 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical
2106 name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and
2107 didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was
2110 =item (in cleanup) %s
2112 (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method raised
2113 the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually called by the
2114 system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of
2115 times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that
2116 would otherwise result in the same message being repeated.
2118 Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the C<G_KEEPERR> flag could
2119 also result in this warning. See L<perlcall/G_KEEPERR>.
2121 =item Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on parent '%s'
2123 (F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not
2124 C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See the C3
2125 documentation in L<mro> for more information.
2127 =item In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
2129 (F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored as
2130 Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC
2131 encoding is limited to code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
2133 =item Infinite recursion in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2135 (F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input
2136 text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive patterns
2137 either consume text or fail.
2139 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2142 =item Initialization of state variables in list context currently forbidden
2144 (F) Currently the implementation of "state" only permits the initialization
2145 of scalar variables in scalar context. Re-write C<state ($a) = 42> as
2146 C<state $a = 42> to change from list to scalar context. Constructions such
2147 as C<state (@a) = foo()> will be supported in a future perl release.
2149 =item Insecure dependency in %s
2151 (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't like.
2152 The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running setuid or
2153 setgid, or when you specify B<-T> to turn it on explicitly. The
2154 tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or indirectly
2155 from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your trust. If any
2156 such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See
2157 L<perlsec> for more information.
2159 =item Insecure directory in %s
2161 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2162 setgid script if C<$ENV{PATH}> contains a directory that is writable by
2163 the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
2166 =item Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
2168 (F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
2169 setgid script if any of C<$ENV{PATH}>, C<$ENV{IFS}>, C<$ENV{CDPATH}>,
2170 C<$ENV{ENV}>, C<$ENV{BASH_ENV}> or C<$ENV{TERM}> are derived from data
2171 supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
2172 the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See L<perlsec>.
2174 =item Integer overflow in %s number
2176 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2177 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2178 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2179 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2180 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
2181 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2182 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2183 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
2186 =item Integer overflow in format string for %s
2188 (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2189 or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2190 integers for your architecture.
2192 =item Integer overflow in version
2194 (F) Some portion of a version initialization is too large for the
2195 size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
2196 because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use a
2197 element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by
2198 trying to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like
2201 =item Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2203 (P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
2204 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2207 =item Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
2209 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of times
2210 you've called C<fork> and C<exec>, to determine whether the current call
2211 to C<exec> should affect the current script or a subprocess (see
2212 L<perlvms/"exec LIST">). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so
2213 Perl is making a guess and treating this C<exec> as a request to
2214 terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command.
2216 =item Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2218 (P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
2219 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
2222 =item %s (...) interpreted as function
2224 (W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator
2225 followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list
2226 operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
2227 L<perlop/Terms and List Operators (Leftward)>.
2229 =item Invalid %s attribute: %s
2231 (F) The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized
2232 by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2234 =item Invalid %s attributes: %s
2236 (F) The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
2237 recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See L<attributes>.
2239 =item Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
2241 (W printf) Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See
2242 L<perlfunc/sprintf>.
2244 =item Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2246 (W regexp) The numeric escape (for example C<\xHH>) of value < 256
2247 didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion
2248 from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma.
2249 The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD) instead.
2250 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2251 escape was discovered.
2253 =item Invalid mro name: '%s'
2255 (F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")>
2256 or C<use mro 'foo'>, where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO).
2257 (Currently, the only valid ones are C<dfs> and C<c3>). See L<mro>.
2259 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2261 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2262 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2263 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2264 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2265 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2267 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2269 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2270 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2272 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2274 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2275 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2276 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2279 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2281 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other than a
2282 colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2283 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2284 list was terminated too soon.
2286 =item Invalid strict version format (%s)
2288 (F) A version number did not meet the "strict" criteria for versions.
2289 A "strict" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2290 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2291 v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least three components.
2292 The parenthesized text indicates which criteria were not met.
2293 See the L<version> module for more details on allowed version formats.
2295 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2297 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2298 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2299 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2302 =item Invalid version format (%s)
2304 (F) A version number did not meet the "lax" criteria for versions.
2305 A "lax" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2306 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2307 v-string. If the v-string has less than three components, it must have a
2308 leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading 'v' is optional. Both
2309 decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a trailing "alpha"
2310 component separated by an underscore character after a fractional or
2311 dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized text indicates which
2312 criteria were not met. See the L<version> module for more details on
2313 allowed version formats.
2315 =item Invalid version object
2317 (F) The internal structure of the version object was invalid. Perhaps
2318 the internals were modified directly in some way or an arbitrary reference
2319 was blessed into the "version" class.
2321 =item ioctl is not implemented
2323 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2324 strange for a machine that supports C.
2326 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
2328 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2329 Check you control flow and number of arguments.
2331 =item IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
2333 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2334 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO Perl must be configured
2337 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2339 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2340 neither as a system call or an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2342 =item $* is no longer supported
2344 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older perls, has
2345 been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. In previous versions of perl the use of
2346 C<$*> enabled or disabled multi-line matching within a string.
2348 Instead of using C<$*> you should use the C</m> (and maybe C</s>) regexp
2349 modifiers. (In older versions: when C<$*> was set to a true value then all regular
2350 expressions behaved as if they were written using C</m>.)
2352 =item $# is no longer supported
2354 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older perls, has
2355 been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported. You should use the
2356 printf/sprintf functions instead.
2358 =item `%s' is not a code reference
2360 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant
2361 needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
2364 =item `%s' is not an overloadable type
2366 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2369 =item junk on end of regexp
2371 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2373 =item Label not found for "last %s"
2375 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2376 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2379 =item Label not found for "next %s"
2381 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2382 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2385 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
2387 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2388 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2391 =item leaving effective %s failed
2393 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2394 effective uids or gids failed.
2396 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
2398 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2399 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2400 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2402 =item Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
2404 (F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse
2405 (using L<lex_stuff_pvn_flags|perlapi/lex_stuff_pvn_flags> or similar), but
2406 tried to insert a character that couldn't be part of the current input.
2407 This is an inherent pitfall of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the
2408 reasons to avoid it. Where it is necessary to stuff, stuffing only
2409 plain ASCII is recommended.
2411 =item Lexing code internal error (%s)
2413 (F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a
2416 =item listen() on closed socket %s
2418 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2419 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2422 =item localtime(%f) too large
2424 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with an number that was larger
2425 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2426 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
2427 not-a-number value).
2429 =item localtime(%f) too small
2431 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with an number that was smaller
2432 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2433 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
2434 not-a-number value).
2436 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
2438 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2439 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2441 =item Lost precision when %s %f by 1
2443 (W) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by one is too large
2444 for the underlying floating point representation to store accurately,
2445 hence the target of C<++> or C<--> is unchanged. Perl issues this warning
2446 because it has already switched from integers to floating point when values
2447 are too large for integers, and now even floating point is insufficient.
2448 You may wish to switch to using L<Math::BigInt> explicitly.
2450 =item lstat() on filehandle %s
2452 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2453 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2454 instead on the filehandle.)
2456 =item lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined
2458 (W misc) Making a subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it has been defined
2459 by declaring the subroutine with an lvalue attribute is not
2460 possible. To make the subroutine an lvalue subroutine add the
2461 lvalue attribute to the definition, or put the declaration before
2464 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
2466 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
2467 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
2468 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
2470 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2472 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2473 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2475 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2477 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2478 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2480 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2482 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2489 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2490 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2491 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2492 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2494 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2496 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2497 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2498 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2499 when the function is called.
2501 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2503 (S utf8) (F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2504 encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
2506 One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2507 you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
2508 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2510 If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2511 sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2512 set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2515 See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
2517 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2519 (F) Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2520 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
2522 =item Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N
2524 (F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
2526 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2528 (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2529 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2531 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2533 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2534 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2536 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2538 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2539 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2541 =item Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded
2543 (F) Perl aborted due to a too high number of signals pending. This
2544 usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
2545 too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
2546 resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
2547 safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
2549 =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2551 (W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the
2552 regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. The <-- HERE
2553 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
2556 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2558 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2559 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2562 =item % may not be used in pack
2564 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2565 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2566 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2568 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2570 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2571 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2573 =item Method %s not permitted
2577 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2579 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2580 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2581 ended earlier on the current line.
2583 =item Misplaced _ in number
2585 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2586 separate two digits.
2588 =item Missing argument in %s
2590 (W uninitialized) A printf-type format required more arguments than were
2593 =item Missing argument to -%c
2595 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2596 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2598 =item Missing braces on \N{}
2600 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2601 double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space (or
2602 comment) between the C<\N> and the C<{> in a regex with the C</x> modifier.
2603 This modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately follow
2606 =item Missing braces on \o{}
2608 (F) A C<\o> must be followed immediately by a C<{> in double-quotish context.
2610 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2612 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2613 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2615 =item Missing command in piped open
2617 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2618 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2621 =item Missing control char name in \c
2623 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2626 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2628 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2629 they have a name with which they can be found.
2631 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2633 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2634 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2635 can vary from one line to the next.
2637 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2639 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2640 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2642 =item Missing right brace on %s
2644 (F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}>, C<\P{...}>, or C<\N{...}>.
2646 =item Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N
2649 C<\N> has two meanings.
2651 The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed
2652 in braces, meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that name.
2653 Thus C<\N{ASTERISK}> is another way of writing C<*>, valid in both
2654 double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns, it doesn't
2655 have the meaning an unescaped C<*> does.
2657 Starting in Perl 5.12.0, C<\N> also can have an additional meaning (only) in
2658 patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short for
2659 C<[^\n]>, and like C<.> but is not affected by the C</s> regex modifier.)
2661 This can lead to some ambiguities. When C<\N> is not followed immediately by a
2662 left brace, Perl assumes the C<[^\n]> meaning. Also, if
2663 the braces form a valid quantifier such as C<\N{3}> or C<\N{5,}>, Perl assumes
2664 that this means to match the given quantity of non-newlines (in these examples,
2665 3; and 5 or more, respectively). In all other case, where there is a C<\N{>
2666 and a matching C<}>, Perl assumes that a character name is desired.
2668 However, if there is no matching C<}>, Perl doesn't know if it was mistakenly
2669 omitted, or if C<[^\n]{> was desired, and
2670 raises this error. If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant
2671 the latter, escape the brace with a backslash, like so: C<\N\{>
2673 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2675 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2676 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2679 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2681 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2682 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2683 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2685 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2687 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2688 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2689 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2691 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2694 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2696 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2697 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2700 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2701 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
2704 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2706 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2707 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2710 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2712 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2713 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2715 =item Module name must be constant
2717 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2719 =item Module name required with -%c option
2721 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2722 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2723 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2725 =item More than one argument to '%s' open
2727 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2728 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2729 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2730 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2732 =item msg%s not implemented
2734 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2736 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2738 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2739 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2741 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
2743 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
2744 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
2745 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2747 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2749 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2752 =item "%s" variable %s can't be in a package
2754 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2755 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2756 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2758 =item \N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...}
2760 (F) The new (5.12) meaning of C<\N> as C<[^\n]> is not valid in a bracketed
2761 character class, for the same reason that C<.> in a character class loses its
2762 specialness: it matches almost everything, which is probably not what you want.
2764 =item \N{NAME} must be resolved by the lexer
2766 (F) When compiling a regex pattern, an unresolved named character or sequence
2767 was encountered. This can happen in any of several ways that bypass the lexer,
2768 such as using single-quotish context, or an extra backslash in double quotish:
2770 $re = '\N{SPACE}'; # Wrong!
2771 $re = "\\N{SPACE}"; # Wrong!
2774 Instead, use double-quotes with a single backslash:
2776 $re = "\N{SPACE}"; # ok
2779 The lexer can be bypassed as well by creating the pattern from smaller
2783 /${re}{SPACE}/; # Wrong!
2785 It's not a good idea to split a construct in the middle like this, and it
2786 doesn't work here. Instead use the solution above.
2788 Finally, the message also can happen under the C</x> regex modifier when the
2789 C<\N> is separated by spaces from the C<{>, in which case, remove the spaces.
2791 /\N {SPACE}/x; # Wrong!
2794 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2796 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2797 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2798 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2799 provided for this purpose.
2801 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
2802 %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
2803 the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
2804 will not trigger this warning.
2806 =item Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
2808 (F) The character constant represented by C<...> is not a valid hexadecimal
2809 number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use a character other than 0 - 9
2810 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
2812 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
2814 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
2815 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2817 =item Negative length
2819 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2820 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2822 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
2824 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
2825 greater than or equal to zero.
2827 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2829 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
2830 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
2831 expression about where the problem was discovered.
2833 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2834 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
2836 =item %s never introduced
2838 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2839 scope before it could possibly have been used.
2841 =item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
2843 (F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
2844 real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
2847 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
2849 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2850 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2851 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2852 securable. See L<perlsec>.
2854 =item No comma allowed after %s
2856 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2857 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2858 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2860 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2861 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2862 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2863 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2864 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see, please see
2865 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2866 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2867 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2868 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2869 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2870 this error was triggered?
2872 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
2874 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2875 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2876 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
2878 =item No DB::DB routine defined
2880 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2881 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2882 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
2885 =item No dbm on this machine
2887 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
2888 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
2890 =item No DB::sub routine defined
2892 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2893 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2894 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
2895 of each ordinary subroutine call.
2897 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
2899 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
2901 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2903 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2904 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2905 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2907 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
2909 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
2910 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2912 =item No input file after < on command line
2914 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2915 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2916 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2920 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2921 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2923 =item No next::method '%s' found for %s
2925 (F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
2926 in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
2927 it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
2928 or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
2930 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2932 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2933 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2935 =item No output file after > on command line
2937 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2938 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2939 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2941 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2943 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2944 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2945 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2947 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2949 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2950 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2951 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2953 =item No Perl script found in input
2955 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2956 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2958 =item No setregid available
2960 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2963 =item No setreuid available
2965 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2968 =item No %s specified for -%c
2970 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2971 you haven't specified one.
2972 =item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2974 (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed variable
2975 but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type. The indicated
2976 package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the L<fields> pragma.
2978 =item No such class %s
2980 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state" declaration, but
2981 this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
2983 =item No such hook: %s
2985 (F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl. Currently, Perl
2986 accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks
2988 =item No such pipe open
2990 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2991 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2992 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2994 =item No such signal: SIG%s
2996 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
2997 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
2998 names on your system.
3000 =item Not a CODE reference
3002 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3003 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3004 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3007 =item Not a format reference
3009 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
3010 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
3012 =item Not a GLOB reference
3014 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
3015 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
3016 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
3017 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3019 =item Not a HASH reference
3021 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
3022 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
3023 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3025 =item Not an ARRAY reference
3027 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
3028 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3029 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3031 =item Not a perl script
3033 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
3034 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
3037 =item Not a SCALAR reference
3039 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
3040 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3041 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3043 =item Not a subroutine reference
3045 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3046 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3047 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3050 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
3052 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
3053 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
3055 =item Not enough arguments for %s
3057 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
3059 =item Not enough format arguments
3061 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
3062 supplied. See L<perlform>.
3066 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3067 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3070 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
3072 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
3073 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
3074 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
3075 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
3076 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
3078 =item Non-octal character '%c'. Resolved as "%s"
3080 (W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character was unexpectedly
3081 encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value is as indicated.
3083 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
3085 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
3086 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
3087 select. See L<perlfunc/select>
3089 =item Null filename used
3091 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
3092 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
3094 =item NULL OP IN RUN
3096 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
3099 =item Null picture in formline
3101 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
3102 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
3103 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
3107 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
3109 =item NULL regexp argument
3111 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
3113 =item NULL regexp parameter
3115 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
3117 =item Number too long
3119 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
3120 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
3121 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
3122 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
3125 =item Number with no digits
3127 (F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like a number.
3128 This happens, for example with C<\o{}>, with no number between the braces.
3130 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
3132 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
3133 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
3136 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
3138 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
3139 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
3140 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
3142 See also L<perlport> for writing portable code.
3144 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
3146 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
3147 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
3149 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
3151 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3152 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3154 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
3156 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3157 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3159 =item Offset outside string
3161 (F|W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
3162 with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
3163 imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
3164 take place when going past the end of the string when either
3165 C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
3166 for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
3169 =item %s() on unopened %s
3171 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
3172 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
3173 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
3175 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
3177 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
3178 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3182 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3186 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3188 =item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
3190 (W io, deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
3191 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
3192 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3195 =item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
3197 (W io, deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
3198 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
3199 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3202 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
3204 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
3205 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
3206 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
3207 C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
3209 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
3211 (W) You performed an operation requiring Unicode semantics on a Unicode
3212 surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use of surrogates for anything but
3213 storing strings in UTF-16, but semantics are (reluctantly) defined for
3214 the surrogates, and they are to do nothing for this operation. Because
3215 the use of surrogates can be dangerous, Perl warns.
3217 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3218 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3220 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3221 C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
3223 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for non-Unicode code point 0x%X
3225 (W) You performed an operation requiring Unicode semantics on a code
3226 point that is not in Unicode, so what it should do is not defined. Perl
3227 has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn you.
3229 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3230 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3232 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3233 C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
3235 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
3237 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
3238 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
3239 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
3240 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
3243 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
3245 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
3246 in the current lexical scope.
3248 =item Out of memory!
3250 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3251 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
3252 no option but to exit immediately.
3254 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
3255 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
3256 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
3257 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
3258 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
3260 =item Out of memory during %s extend
3262 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
3263 the largest possible memory allocation.
3265 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
3267 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3268 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
3269 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
3270 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
3272 =item Out of memory during request for %s
3274 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
3275 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
3278 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
3279 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
3280 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
3281 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
3282 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
3283 where the failed request happened.
3285 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
3287 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
3288 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
3289 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
3291 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
3293 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
3294 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
3297 =item '.' outside of string in pack
3299 (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
3300 position to before the start of the packed string being built.
3302 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
3304 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3305 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3307 =item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
3309 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3310 the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
3311 UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3313 =item Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
3315 (F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was dereferenced,
3316 but the overloaded operation did not return a reference. See
3319 =item Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
3321 (F) An object with a C<qr> overload was used as part of a match, but the
3322 overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See L<overload>.
3324 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
3326 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
3327 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
3328 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
3329 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
3331 =item \p{} uses Unicode rules, not locale rules
3333 (W) You compiled a regular expression that contained a Unicode property
3334 match (C<\p> or C<\P>), but the regular expression is also being told to
3335 use the run-time locale, not Unicode. Instead, use a POSIX character
3336 class, which should know about the locale's rules.
3337 (See L<perlrecharclass/POSIX Character Classes>.)
3339 Even if the run-time locale is ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), which is a subset of
3340 Unicode, some properties will give results that are not valid for that
3343 Here are a couple of examples to help you see what's going on. If the
3344 locale is ISO 8859-7, the character at code point 0xD7 is the "GREEK
3345 CAPITAL LETTER CHI". But in Unicode that code point means the
3346 "MULTIPLICATION SIGN" instead, and C<\p> always uses the Unicode
3347 meaning. That means that C<\p{Alpha}> won't match, but C<[[:alpha:]]>
3348 should. Only in the Latin1 locale are all the characters in the same
3349 positions as they are in Unicode. But, even here, some properties give
3350 incorrect results. An example is C<\p{Changes_When_Uppercased}> which
3351 is true for "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS", but since the upper
3352 case of that character is not in Latin1, in that locale it doesn't
3353 change when upper cased.
3355 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
3357 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3358 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3362 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
3363 page. See L<perlform>.
3367 (P) An internal error.
3369 =item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
3371 (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
3372 an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
3373 platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
3374 enter this branch on this platform.
3376 =item panic: ck_grep
3378 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
3380 =item panic: ck_split
3382 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
3384 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
3386 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
3387 there are in the savestack.
3389 =item panic: del_backref
3391 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
3394 =item panic: Devel::DProf inconsistent subroutine return
3396 (P) Devel::DProf called a subroutine that exited using goto(LABEL),
3397 last(LABEL) or next(LABEL). Leaving that way a subroutine called from
3398 an XSUB will lead very probably to a crash of the interpreter. This is
3399 a bug that will hopefully one day get fixed.
3403 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
3404 it wasn't an eval context.
3406 =item panic: do_subst
3408 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
3411 =item panic: do_trans_%s
3413 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
3416 =item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
3418 (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
3423 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
3427 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
3428 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
3430 =item panic: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
3432 (P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries tried
3433 repeatedly, but each time something re-created entries in the glob. Most
3434 likely the glob contains an object with a reference back to the glob and a
3435 destructor that adds a new object to the glob.
3437 =item panic: hfreeentries failed to free hash
3439 (P) The internal routine used to clear a hash's entries tried repeatedly,
3440 but each time something added more entries to the hash. Most likely the hash
3441 contains an object with a reference back to the hash and a destructor that
3442 adds a new object to the hash.
3444 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
3446 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
3448 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
3450 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
3452 =item panic: kid popen errno read
3454 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
3458 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
3459 it wasn't a block context.
3461 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
3463 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
3466 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
3468 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
3469 invalid enum on the top of it.
3471 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
3473 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
3474 references to an object.
3478 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
3480 =item panic: memory wrap
3482 (P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
3484 =item panic: pad_alloc
3486 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3487 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3489 =item panic: pad_free curpad
3491 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3492 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3494 =item panic: pad_free po
3496 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3498 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
3500 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3501 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3503 =item panic: pad_sv po
3505 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3507 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
3509 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3510 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3512 =item panic: pad_swipe po
3514 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3516 =item panic: pp_iter
3518 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
3520 =item panic: pp_match%s
3522 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
3525 =item panic: pp_split
3527 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
3529 =item panic: realloc
3531 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
3533 =item panic: restartop
3535 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
3536 didn't supply the destination.
3540 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
3541 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
3543 =item panic: scan_num
3545 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
3547 =item panic: sv_chop %s
3549 (P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the
3550 scalar's string buffer.
3552 =item panic: sv_insert
3554 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
3557 =item panic: top_env
3559 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
3561 =item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
3563 (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't permitted
3566 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
3568 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
3569 to even) byte length.
3571 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
3573 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an odd (as opposed
3574 to even) byte length.
3578 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
3580 =item Parsing code internal error (%s)
3582 (F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API in
3585 =item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3587 (F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
3588 consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before the
3589 nesting limit is exceeded.
3591 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3594 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
3596 (W parenthesis) You said something like
3602 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
3604 Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
3606 =item C<-p> destination: %s
3608 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
3609 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
3610 redirected it with select().)
3612 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
3614 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3615 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
3616 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
3618 =item Perl_my_%s() not available
3620 (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
3621 so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
3622 conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
3623 '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3625 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
3627 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
3628 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
3629 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
3631 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3633 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3634 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
3636 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
3638 See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
3640 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3642 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3644 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3645 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3648 are supported and installed on your system.
3649 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3651 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3652 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3653 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
3654 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
3655 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
3656 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
3657 Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before you really fix
3658 the problem, however, you will get the same error message each time
3659 you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
3660 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3662 =item pid %x not a child
3664 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
3665 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
3666 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
3668 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
3670 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
3672 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3674 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
3675 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
3676 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
3677 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
3678 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
3680 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
3682 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
3683 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
3685 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3687 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
3688 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
3689 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
3690 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
3691 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3692 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3694 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3696 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
3697 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
3698 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
3699 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
3700 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3701 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3703 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3705 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
3706 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
3707 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
3708 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
3709 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3710 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3712 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
3714 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
3715 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
3716 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
3717 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
3719 You probably wrote something like this:
3726 when you should have written this:
3733 If you really want comments, build your list the
3734 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
3738 'b', # another comment
3741 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
3743 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
3744 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
3745 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
3748 You probably wrote something like this:
3752 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
3753 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
3757 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
3759 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
3760 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
3761 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
3762 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
3764 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
3766 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
3767 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
3769 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
3771 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
3772 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
3773 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
3774 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
3776 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
3778 (W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
3779 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
3780 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
3781 to the array you apparently lost track of.
3783 =item Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
3785 (W ambiguous) You said something like C<m/$\/> in a regex.
3786 The regex C<m/foo$\s+bar/m> translates to: match the word 'foo', the output
3787 record separator (see L<perlvar/$\>) and the letter 's' (one time or more)
3788 followed by the word 'bar'.
3790 If this is what you intended then you can silence the warning by using
3791 C<m/${\}/> (for example: C<m/foo${\}s+bar/>).
3793 If instead you intended to match the word 'foo' at the end of the line
3794 followed by whitespace and the word 'bar' on the next line then you can use
3795 C<m/$(?)\/> (for example: C<m/foo$(?)\s+bar/>).
3797 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
3799 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
3803 is now misinterpreted as
3807 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
3808 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
3809 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
3812 =item Premature end of script headers
3816 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
3818 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3819 before now. Check your control flow.
3821 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
3823 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
3824 before now. Check your control flow.
3826 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3828 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3829 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3830 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3831 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
3834 =item Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
3836 (W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is useless,
3837 since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments.
3839 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
3841 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
3842 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
3844 =item Prototype not terminated
3846 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
3849 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3851 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
3852 meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3853 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3855 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3857 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
3858 {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
3859 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3861 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3863 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
3864 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
3865 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
3866 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
3867 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
3869 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3872 =item Range iterator outside integer range
3874 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
3875 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
3876 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
3877 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
3879 =item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
3881 (W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
3882 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
3884 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
3886 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
3887 before now. Check your control flow.
3889 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
3891 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
3893 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
3895 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
3897 =item Reallocation too large: %x
3899 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
3901 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
3903 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
3906 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
3908 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
3909 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
3910 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
3912 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
3914 (F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, Perl
3915 believes it found an infinite loop in the C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a
3916 crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth.
3918 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
3920 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking
3921 a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance
3924 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
3926 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
3927 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
3928 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
3929 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
3931 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
3932 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
3933 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
3934 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
3936 =item Reference is already weak
3938 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
3939 Doing so has no effect.
3941 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
3943 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
3944 a reference count of other than 1.
3946 =item Reference to invalid group 0
3948 (F) You used C<\g0> or similar in a regular expression. You may refer to
3949 capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers (normal
3950 backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
3951 backreferences), but using 0 does not make sense.
3953 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3955 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
3956 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If you
3957 wanted to have the character with ordinal 7 inserted into the regular expression,
3958 prepend zeroes to make it three digits long: C<\007>
3960 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3963 =item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3965 (F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there are
3966 not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the expression before
3967 where the C<\g{-7}> was located.
3969 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3972 =item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3974 (F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k<NAME> >> in your regular
3975 expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses such
3976 as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<(?<NAME>...). Check if the name has been spelled
3977 correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
3979 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3982 =item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3984 (F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
3985 most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
3986 of the C<....> part.
3988 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3991 =item regexp memory corruption
3993 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
3994 expression compiler gave it.
3996 =item Regexp out of space
3998 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
4001 =item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompatible)
4003 (F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
4004 numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
4005 terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
4007 =item Replacement list is longer than search list
4009 (W misc) You have used a replacement list that is longer than the
4010 search list. So the additional elements in the replacement list
4013 =item Reversed %s= operator
4015 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
4016 always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
4018 =item rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4020 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either closed or not
4021 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4023 =item Scalars leaked: %d
4025 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
4026 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
4027 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
4028 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
4030 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
4032 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
4033 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
4034 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
4035 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4036 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4037 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4038 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4040 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
4041 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
4042 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4045 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
4047 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
4048 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
4049 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
4050 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4051 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4052 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4053 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4055 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
4056 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
4057 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4060 =item Search pattern not terminated
4062 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
4063 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4064 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
4066 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
4067 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
4068 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
4069 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
4071 =item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
4073 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
4076 The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
4077 C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
4078 parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
4079 the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
4081 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
4083 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
4084 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
4086 =item seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4088 (W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed or not
4089 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4091 =item select not implemented
4093 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
4095 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
4097 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
4098 the current implementation.
4100 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
4102 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
4103 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
4105 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
4107 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
4108 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
4110 =item sem%s not implemented
4112 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
4114 =item send() on closed socket %s
4116 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
4117 before now. Check your control flow.
4119 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4121 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <-- HERE
4122 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4125 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4127 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
4128 has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4129 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4131 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4133 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
4134 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4135 discovered. This happens when using the C<(?^...)> construct to tell
4136 Perl to use the default regular expression modifiers, and you
4137 redundantly specify a default modifier; or having a modifier that can't
4138 be turned off (such as C<"p"> or C<"l">) after a minus; or specifying
4139 more than one of the C<"d">, C<"l">, or C<"u"> modifiers. For other
4140 causes, see L<perlre>.
4142 =item Sequence \%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4144 (F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument following the escape
4145 sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly written.
4147 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4149 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
4150 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
4151 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4154 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4156 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains braces, they must balance
4157 for Perl to properly detect the end of the clause. The <-- HERE shows in
4158 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4161 =item "500 Server error"
4167 (A) This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
4168 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
4169 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
4170 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
4171 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
4172 produce a valid header".
4174 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
4176 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
4177 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
4178 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
4179 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
4180 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
4181 Please see the following for more information:
4183 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
4184 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
4185 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
4187 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
4189 =item setegid() not implemented
4191 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
4192 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4195 =item seteuid() not implemented
4197 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
4198 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4201 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
4203 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
4204 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
4207 =item setrgid() not implemented
4209 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
4210 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4213 =item setruid() not implemented
4215 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
4216 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4219 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
4221 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
4222 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
4223 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
4225 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
4227 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the
4228 world, because the world might have written on it already.
4230 =item Setuid script not plain file
4232 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that isn't read from a file,
4233 but from a socket, a pipe or another device.
4235 =item shm%s not implemented
4237 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
4239 =item !=~ should be !~
4241 (W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
4242 interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
4243 operators: probably not what you intended.
4245 =item <> should be quotes
4247 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
4250 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
4252 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
4253 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
4254 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
4255 probably not what you had in mind.
4257 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
4259 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
4262 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
4264 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
4265 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
4267 =item Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks encapsulation
4269 (F) You should not use the C<~~> operator on an object that does not
4270 overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's underlying structure for
4273 =item sort is now a reserved word
4275 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
4276 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
4278 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
4280 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
4281 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4283 =item splice() offset past end of array
4285 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
4286 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the end
4287 of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want, try
4288 explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset. See
4293 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
4294 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
4295 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
4297 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
4299 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
4300 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
4301 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
4302 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
4305 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
4307 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
4308 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4310 =item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
4312 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
4313 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
4314 C<can> may break this.
4316 =item Subroutine %s redefined
4318 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
4321 no warnings 'redefine';
4322 eval "sub name { ... }";
4325 =item Substitution loop
4327 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
4328 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
4329 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
4330 L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
4332 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
4334 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4335 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4336 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4338 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
4340 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4341 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4342 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4344 =item substr outside of string
4346 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
4347 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
4348 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
4349 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
4350 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
4352 =item sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
4354 (P) Perl tried to force the upgrade an SV to a type which was actually
4355 inferior to its current type.
4357 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4359 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
4360 branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
4361 contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
4362 clustering parentheses:
4364 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
4366 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4367 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4369 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4371 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is a
4372 number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
4373 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4375 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
4377 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
4378 and effective uids or gids.
4382 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
4386 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
4388 A keyword is misspelled.
4389 A semicolon is missing.
4391 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
4392 An opening or closing brace is missing.
4393 A closing quote is missing.
4395 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
4396 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
4397 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
4398 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
4399 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
4400 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
4401 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
4402 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
4403 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
4406 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
4408 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
4409 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
4412 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
4414 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
4415 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
4416 or "my $var" or "our $var".
4418 =item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
4420 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4422 =item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
4424 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4426 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
4428 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
4429 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
4430 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
4431 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
4433 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
4435 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4436 before now. Check your control flow.
4438 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
4440 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
4441 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
4443 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
4445 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
4446 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
4448 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
4450 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
4451 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4453 =item telldir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4455 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to telldir() is either closed or not really
4456 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4458 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
4460 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
4461 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
4470 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
4471 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
4473 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
4475 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
4476 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
4477 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
4478 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
4481 =item The %s function is unimplemented
4483 (F) The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
4484 to the probings of Configure.
4486 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
4488 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
4489 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
4490 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
4493 =item The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
4495 (F) This attribute was never supported on C<my> or C<sub> declarations.
4497 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
4499 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
4501 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
4502 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
4503 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
4504 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
4505 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
4506 target of the change to
4507 %ENV which produced the warning.
4509 =item thread failed to start: %s
4511 (W threads)(S) The entry point function of threads->create() failed for some reason.
4513 =item times not implemented
4515 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
4516 suspect you're not running on Unix.
4518 =item "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
4520 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4521 B<-T> option (or the B<-t> option), but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
4522 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
4523 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
4526 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
4527 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
4528 editing the #! line so that the B<-%c> option is a part of Perl's first
4529 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -%c> to C<perl -%c -n>.
4531 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
4532 B<-%c> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -%c scriptname>.
4534 =item To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
4536 (F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
4537 uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
4538 specified an illegal mapping.
4539 See L<perlunicode/"User-Defined Character Properties">.
4541 =item Too deeply nested ()-groups
4543 (F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level.
4545 =item Too few args to syscall
4547 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
4548 system call to call, silly dilly.
4550 =item Too late for "-%s" option
4552 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4553 B<-M>, B<-m> or B<-C> option.
4555 In the case of B<-M> and B<-m>, this is an error because those options are
4556 not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
4558 The B<-C> option only works if it is specified on the command line as well
4559 (with the same sequence of letters or numbers following). Either specify
4560 this option on the command line, or, if your system supports it, make your
4561 script executable and run it directly instead of passing it to perl.
4563 =item Too late to run %s block
4565 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
4566 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
4567 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
4568 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
4571 =item Too many args to syscall
4573 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
4575 =item Too many arguments for %s
4577 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
4581 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4582 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4586 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4587 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4589 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
4591 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
4592 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
4594 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
4596 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
4597 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
4598 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
4600 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
4602 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][],
4603 y/// or y[][] construct.
4605 =item '%s' trapped by operation mask
4607 (F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's
4608 disallowed. See L<Safe>.
4610 =item truncate not implemented
4612 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
4613 Configure knows about.
4615 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
4617 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
4618 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
4619 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
4620 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
4622 =item Type of argument to %s must be hashref or arrayref
4624 (F) You called C<keys>, C<values> or C<each> with an argument that was
4625 expected to be a reference to a hash or a reference to an array.
4627 =item umask not implemented
4629 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
4630 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
4632 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
4634 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
4636 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
4638 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4639 many execution contexts were entered and left.
4641 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
4643 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4644 many values were temporarily localized.
4646 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
4648 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4649 many blocks were entered and left.
4651 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
4653 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4654 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
4656 =item Undefined format "%s" called
4658 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4659 another package? See L<perlform>.
4661 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
4663 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
4664 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4666 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
4668 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
4669 since been undefined.
4671 =item Undefined subroutine called
4673 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
4674 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
4676 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
4678 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
4679 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4681 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
4683 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4684 another package? See L<perlform>.
4686 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
4688 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
4689 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
4692 =item %s: Undefined variable
4694 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4695 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4697 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
4699 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
4700 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
4702 =item Unicode non-character U+%X is illegal for open interchange
4704 (W utf8) Certain codepoints, such as U+FFFE and U+FFFF, are defined by the
4705 Unicode standard to be non-characters. Those are legal codepoints, but are
4706 reserved for internal use; so, applications shouldn't attempt to exchange
4707 them. If you know what you are doing you can turn
4708 off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4710 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
4712 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
4715 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
4717 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
4718 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
4719 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->, C<< <& >>, C<< >& >>.
4721 =item Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
4723 (W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
4724 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
4725 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
4726 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
4727 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
4728 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
4730 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
4732 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
4733 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
4734 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
4735 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
4737 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
4739 (W) You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
4741 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4743 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
4744 is not known. The condition may be lookahead or lookbehind (the condition
4745 is true if the lookahead or lookbehind is true), a (?{...}) construct (the
4746 condition is true if the code evaluates to a true value), or a number (the
4747 condition is true if the set of capturing parentheses named by the number
4750 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4751 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4753 =item Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
4755 (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4756 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4758 =item Unknown Unicode option value %x
4760 (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4761 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4763 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
4765 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
4766 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
4768 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a module
4769 (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have imported this module
4771 =item Unknown verb pattern '%s' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4773 (F) You either made a typo or have incorrectly put a C<*> quantifier
4774 after an open brace in your pattern. Check the pattern and review
4775 L<perlre> for details on legal verb patterns.
4779 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4781 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
4782 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
4783 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
4784 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4786 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4788 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
4789 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
4790 matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4791 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4793 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
4795 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
4796 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
4797 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
4798 you were last editing.
4800 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
4802 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
4803 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
4804 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
4807 =item Unrecognized character %s; marked by <-- HERE after %s near column %d
4809 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
4810 in your Perl script (or eval) near the specified column. Perhaps you tried
4811 to run a compressed script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
4813 =item Unrecognized escape \%c in character class passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4815 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4816 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
4817 understood literally, but this may change in a future version of Perl.
4818 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4819 escape was discovered.
4821 =item Unrecognized escape \%c passed through
4823 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4824 recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally, but this may
4825 change in a future version of Perl.
4827 =item Unrecognized escape \%c passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4829 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4830 recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally, but this may
4831 change in a future version of Perl.
4832 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4833 escape was discovered.
4835 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
4837 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
4838 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
4841 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
4843 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
4844 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
4845 bad switch on your behalf.)
4847 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
4849 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
4850 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
4851 PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
4853 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
4855 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
4857 =item Unsupported function %s
4859 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
4860 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
4862 =item Unsupported function fork
4864 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
4866 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
4867 of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
4868 changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
4870 =item Unsupported script encoding %s
4872 (F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
4873 declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot read.
4875 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
4877 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
4878 least that's what Configure thought.
4880 =item Unterminated attribute list
4882 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
4883 start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
4884 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
4885 attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
4887 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
4889 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
4890 an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
4891 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
4892 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
4894 =item Unterminated compressed integer
4896 (F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
4897 compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
4898 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4900 =item Unterminated verb pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4902 (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB)> but did not terminate
4903 the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
4905 =item Unterminated verb pattern argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4907 (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB:ARG)> but did not terminate
4908 the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
4910 =item Unterminated \g{...} pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4912 (F) You missed a close brace on a \g{..} pattern (group reference) in
4913 a regular expression. Fix the pattern and retry.
4915 =item Unterminated <> operator
4917 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
4918 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
4919 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
4920 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
4922 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
4924 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
4925 still valid when C<untie> was called.
4927 =item Usage: POSIX::%s(%s)
4929 (F) You called a POSIX function with incorrect arguments.
4930 See L<POSIX/FUNCTIONS> for more information.
4932 =item Usage: Win32::%s(%s)
4934 (F) You called a Win32 function with incorrect arguments.
4935 See L<Win32> for more information.
4937 =item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4939 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
4940 meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
4942 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
4946 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
4948 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4949 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4951 =item Useless localization of %s
4953 (W syntax) The localization of lvalues such as C<local($x=10)> is
4954 legal, but in fact the local() currently has no effect. This may change at
4955 some point in the future, but in the meantime such code is discouraged.
4957 =item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4959 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
4960 meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
4962 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
4966 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
4968 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4969 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4971 =item Useless use of /d modifier in transliteration operator
4973 (W misc) You have used the /d modifier where the searchlist has the
4974 same length as the replacelist. See L<perlop> for more information
4975 about the /d modifier.
4977 =item Useless use of %s in void context
4979 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
4980 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
4981 value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
4982 often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
4983 to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
4984 get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
4989 when you meant to say
4991 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
4993 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
4994 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
4999 when you should have said
5003 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
5004 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
5005 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
5006 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
5007 L<perlref> for more on this.
5009 This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
5010 since they are often used in statements like
5012 1 while sub_with_side_effects();
5014 String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
5017 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
5019 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
5021 =item Useless use of sort in scalar context
5023 (W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
5027 This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
5029 =item Useless use of %s with no values
5031 (W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
5032 apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
5033 usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
5034 possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
5035 if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
5036 you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
5038 =item "use" not allowed in expression
5040 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
5041 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
5043 =item Use of assignment to $[ is deprecated
5045 (D deprecated) The C<$[> variable (index of the first element in an array)
5046 is deprecated. See L<perlvar/"$[">.
5048 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
5050 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted
5051 form if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
5053 =item Use of comma-less variable list is deprecated
5055 (D deprecated) The values you give to a format should be
5056 separated by commas, not just aligned on a line.
5058 =item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
5060 (D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
5061 $ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
5062 behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
5065 Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
5066 blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
5068 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
5070 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution. The /c
5071 modifier is not presently meaningful in substitutions.
5073 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
5075 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't
5076 use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is
5077 used. (This may change in the future.)
5079 =item Use of := for an empty attribute list is not allowed
5081 (F) The construction C<my $x := 42> used to parse as equivalent to
5082 C<my $x : = 42> (applying an empty attribute list to C<$x>).
5083 This construct was deprecated in 5.12.0, and has now been made a syntax
5084 error, so C<:=> can be reclaimed as a new operator in the future.
5086 If you need an empty attribute list, for example in a code generator, add
5087 a space before the C<=>.
5089 =item Use of ?PATTERN? without explicit operator is deprecated
5091 (D deprecated) You have written something like C<?\w?>, for a regular
5092 expression that matches only once. Starting this term directly with
5093 the question mark delimiter is now deprecated, so that the question mark
5094 will be available for use in new operators in the future. Write C<m?\w?>
5095 instead, explicitly using the C<m> operator: the question mark delimiter
5096 still invokes match-once behaviour.
5098 =item Use of freed value in iteration
5100 (F) Perhaps you modified the iterated array within the loop?
5101 This error is typically caused by code like the following:
5104 @a = () for (1,2,@a);
5106 You are not supposed to modify arrays while they are being iterated over.
5107 For speed and efficiency reasons, Perl internally does not do full
5108 reference-counting of iterated items, hence deleting such an item in the
5109 middle of an iteration causes Perl to see a freed value.
5111 =item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
5113 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
5114 to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
5116 =item Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
5118 (W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a C<split>
5119 operator. Since C<split> always tries to match the pattern
5120 repeatedly, the C</g> has no effect.
5122 =item Use of "goto" to jump into a construct is deprecated
5124 (D deprecated) Using C<goto> to jump from an outer scope into an inner
5125 scope is deprecated and should be avoided.
5127 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
5129 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines
5130 are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the
5131 subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g.
5132 C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<<
5135 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
5136 methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
5137 code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
5138 currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
5141 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
5142 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
5143 to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
5144 named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
5147 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
5148 you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
5149 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
5151 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
5153 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
5154 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
5156 =item Use of %s is deprecated
5158 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
5159 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
5160 old way has bad side effects.
5162 =item Use of %s on a handle without * is deprecated
5164 (D deprecated) You used C<tie>, C<tied> or C<untie> on a scalar but that
5165 scalar happens to hold a typeglob, which means its filehandle will
5166 be tied. If you mean to tie a handle, use an explicit * as in
5169 This is a long-standing bug that will be removed in Perl 5.16, as
5170 there is currently no way to tie the scalar itself when it holds
5171 a typeglob, and no way to untie a scalar that has had a typeglob
5174 =item Use of -l on filehandle %s
5176 (W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
5177 it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
5178 The operation returned C<undef>. Use a filename instead.
5180 =item Use of "package" with no arguments is deprecated
5182 (D deprecated) You used the C<package> keyword without specifying a package
5183 name. So no namespace is current at all. Using this can cause many
5184 otherwise reasonable constructs to fail in baffling ways. C<use strict;>
5187 =item Use of qw(...) as parentheses is deprecated
5189 (D deprecated) You have something like C<foreach $x qw(a b c) {...}>,
5190 using a C<qw(...)> list literal where a parenthesised expression is
5191 expected. Historically the parser fooled itself into thinking that
5192 C<qw(...)> literals were always enclosed in parentheses, and as a result
5193 you could sometimes omit parentheses around them. (You could never do
5194 the C<foreach qw(a b c) {...}> that you might have expected, though.)
5195 The parser no longer lies to itself in this way. Wrap the list literal
5196 in parentheses, like C<foreach $x (qw(a b c)) {...}>.
5198 =item Use of reference "%s" as array index
5200 (W misc) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
5201 isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
5202 to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
5204 If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
5205 C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
5206 either, because you can overload the numification and stringification
5207 operators and then you presumably know what you are doing.
5209 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
5211 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
5212 versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
5213 explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
5214 use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
5215 suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
5216 a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
5218 =item Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
5220 (W taint, deprecated) You have supplied C<system()> or C<exec()> with multiple
5221 arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used to be allowed
5222 but will become a fatal error in a future version of perl. Untaint your
5223 arguments. See L<perlsec>.
5225 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
5227 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
5228 defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
5229 To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
5231 To help you figure out what was undefined, perl will try to tell you the
5232 name of the variable (if any) that was undefined. In some cases it cannot
5233 do this, so it also tells you what operation you used the undefined value
5234 in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your program and the operation
5235 displayed in the warning may not necessarily appear literally in your
5236 program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is usually optimized into C<"that "
5237 . $foo>, and the warning will refer to the C<concatenation (.)> operator,
5238 even though there is no C<.> in your program.
5240 =item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
5242 (D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
5243 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
5244 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will
5245 be removed in a future version.
5247 =item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
5249 (D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
5250 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
5251 allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will be
5252 removed in a future version.
5254 =item Using !~ with %s doesn't make sense
5256 (F) Using the C<!~> operator with C<s///r>, C<tr///r> or C<y///r> is
5257 currently reserved for future use, as the exact behaviour has not
5258 been decided. (Simply returning the boolean opposite of the
5259 modified string is usually not particularly useful.)
5261 =item Using just the first character returned by \N{} in character class
5263 (W) A charnames handler may return a sequence of more than one character.
5264 Currently all but the first one are discarded when used in a regular
5265 expression pattern bracketed character class.
5267 =item Using just the first characters returned by \N{}
5269 (W) A charnames handler may return a sequence of characters. There is a finite
5270 limit as to the number of characters that can be used, which this sequence
5271 exceeded. In the message, the characters in the sequence are separated by
5272 dots, and each is shown by its ordinal in hex. Anything to the left of the
5273 C<HERE> was retained; anything to the right was discarded.
5275 =item Unicode surrogate U+%X is illegal in UTF-8
5277 =item UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
5279 (W utf8) You had a UTF-16 surrogate in a context where they are
5280 not considered acceptable. These code points, between U+D800 and
5281 U+DFFF (inclusive), are used by Unicode only for UTF-16. However, Perl
5282 internally allows all unsigned integer code points (up to the size limit
5283 available on your platform), including surrogates. But these can cause
5284 problems when being input or output, which is likely where this message
5285 came from. If you really really know what you are doing you can turn
5286 off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
5288 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
5290 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
5291 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
5292 can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
5293 false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
5294 constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
5295 C<defined> operator.
5297 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
5299 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
5300 %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
5301 longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
5304 =item Variable "%s" is not available
5306 (W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is
5307 attempting to capture an outer lexical that is not currently available.
5308 This can happen for one of two reasons. First, the outer lexical may be
5309 declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that has not yet been created.
5310 (Remember that named subs are created at compile time, while anonymous
5311 subs are created at run-time.) For example,
5313 sub { my $a; sub f { $a } }
5315 At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current value of $a,
5316 since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely,
5317 the following won't give a warning since the anonymous subroutine has by
5318 now been created and is live:
5320 sub { my $a; eval 'sub f { $a }' }->();
5322 The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a variable that has
5323 gone out of scope, for example,
5331 Here, when the '$a' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not currently being
5332 executed, so its $a is not available for capture.
5334 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
5336 (W misc) With "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
5337 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
5338 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
5339 that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
5340 front of your variable.
5342 =item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in m/%s/
5344 (F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
5345 known at compile time. See L<perlre>.
5347 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
5349 (W misc) A "my", "our" or "state" variable has been redeclared in the current
5350 scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the previous
5351 instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note that the
5352 earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope or until
5353 all closure referents to it are destroyed.
5355 =item Variable syntax
5357 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
5358 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
5361 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
5363 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
5364 lexical variable defined in an outer named subroutine.
5366 When the inner subroutine is called, it will see the value of
5367 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
5368 call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
5369 outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
5370 longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
5371 variable will no longer be shared.
5373 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
5374 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
5375 reference variables in outer subroutines are created, they
5376 are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
5378 =item Verb pattern '%s' has a mandatory argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5380 (F) You used a verb pattern that requires an argument. Supply an argument
5381 or check that you are using the right verb.
5383 =item Verb pattern '%s' may not have an argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5385 (F) You used a verb pattern that is not allowed an argument. Remove the
5386 argument or check that you are using the right verb.
5388 =item Version number must be a constant number
5390 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
5391 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
5394 =item Version string '%s' contains invalid data; ignoring: '%s'
5396 (W misc) The version string contains invalid characters at the end, which
5399 =item Warning: something's wrong
5401 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
5402 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
5404 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
5406 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
5407 the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
5410 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
5412 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
5413 looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
5414 term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
5415 function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
5419 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
5423 but in actual fact, you got
5427 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
5429 =item Wide character in %s
5431 (S utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting
5432 one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print). The easiest
5433 way to quiet this warning is simply to add the C<:utf8> layer to the
5434 output, e.g. C<binmode STDOUT, ':utf8'>. Another way to turn off the
5435 warning is to add C<no warnings 'utf8';> but that is often closer to
5436 cheating. In general, you are supposed to explicitly mark the
5437 filehandle with an encoding, see L<open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>.
5439 =item Within []-length '%c' not allowed
5441 (F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by C<[TEMPLATE]> only if
5442 C<TEMPLATE> always matches the same amount of packed bytes that can be
5443 determined from the template alone. This is not possible if it contains an
5444 of the codes @, /, U, u, w or a *-length. Redesign the template.
5446 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
5448 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
5449 before now. Check your control flow.
5451 =item %s "\x%X" does not map to Unicode
5453 (F) When reading in different encodings Perl tries to map everything
5454 into Unicode characters. The bytes you read in are not legal in
5455 this encoding, for example
5457 utf8 "\xE4" does not map to Unicode
5459 if you try to read in the a-diaereses Latin-1 as UTF-8.
5461 =item 'X' outside of string
5463 (F) You had a (un)pack template that specified a relative position before
5464 the beginning of the string being (un)packed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5466 =item 'x' outside of string in unpack
5468 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
5469 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5471 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
5473 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
5474 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
5475 about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
5478 =item You need to quote "%s"
5480 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
5481 Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
5482 which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
5483 assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
5484 what you want, put an & in front.)
5486 =item Your random numbers are not that random
5488 (F) When trying to initialise the random seed for hashes, Perl could
5489 not get any randomness out of your system. This usually indicates
5490 Something Very Wrong.
5496 L<warnings>, L<perllexwarn>.