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[...]} resolved to %c%s[...]
124 =item Ambiguous use of %c{%s{...}} resolved to %c%s{...}
126 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<${foo[2]}> (where foo
127 represents the name of a Perl keyword), which might be looking for
128 element number 2 of the array named C<@foo>, in which case please write
129 C<$foo[2]>, or you might have meant to pass an anonymous arrayref to
130 the function named foo, and then do a scalar deref on the value it
131 returns. If you meant that, write C<${foo([2])}>.
133 In regular expressions, the C<${foo[2]}> syntax is sometimes necessary
134 to disambiguate between array subscripts and character classes.
135 C</$length[2345]/>, for instance, will be interpreted as C<$length>
136 followed by the character class C<[2345]>. If an array subscript is what
137 you want, you can avoid the warning by changing C</${length[2345]}/>
138 to the unsightly C</${\$length[2345]}/>, by renaming your array to
139 something that does not coincide with a built-in keyword, or by
140 simply turning off warnings with C<no warnings 'ambiguous';>.
142 =item Ambiguous use of -%s resolved as -&%s()
144 (W ambiguous) You wrote something like C<-foo>, which might be the
145 string C<"-foo">, or a call to the function C<foo>, negated. If you meant
146 the string, just write C<"-foo">. If you meant the function call,
149 =item '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
151 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
152 redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to
153 redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
155 =item '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
157 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
158 redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and
159 into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
160 though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
161 which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
163 open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
170 =item Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
172 (W misc) The pattern match (C<//>), substitution (C<s///>), and
173 transliteration (C<tr///>) operators work on scalar values. If you apply
174 one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to
175 a scalar value (the length of an array, or the population info of a
176 hash) and then work on that scalar value. This is probably not what
177 you meant to do. See L<perlfunc/grep> and L<perlfunc/map> for
180 =item Args must match #! line
182 (F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was invoked
183 with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since some systems
184 impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try combining switches;
185 for example, turn C<-w -U> into C<-wU>.
187 =item Arg too short for msgsnd
189 (F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
191 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
193 (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element or a
194 subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
200 =item %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
202 (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array element,
208 or a hash or array slice, such as:
210 @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
211 @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
213 =item %s argument is not a subroutine name
215 (F) The argument to exists() for C<exists &sub> must be a subroutine
216 name, and not a subroutine call. C<exists &sub()> will generate this
219 =item Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
221 (W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
222 that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate the message
223 will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
225 =item Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
227 (W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you
228 forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take care of transforming
229 data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing
230 the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer.
231 If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be
232 the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
234 =item Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
236 (D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on array names in some
237 spots. This is now heavily deprecated.
239 =item assertion botched: %s
241 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
243 =item Assertion failed: file "%s"
245 (P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be examined.
247 =item Assignment to both a list and a scalar
249 (F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd arguments
250 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl won't
251 know which context to supply to the right side.
253 =item A thread exited while %d threads were running
255 (W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not necessarily the main
256 thread) exited while there were still other threads running.
257 Usually it's a good idea first to collect the return values of the
258 created threads by joining them, and only then to exit from the main
259 thread. See L<threads>.
261 =item Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
263 (F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not in
264 the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
266 =item Attempt to bless into a reference
268 (F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
269 the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
270 supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
276 bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
278 If you actually want to bless into the stringified version
279 of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for
282 bless $self, "$proto";
284 =item Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
286 (F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a key
287 which is not in its key set.
289 =item Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
291 (F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
292 declared readonly from a restricted hash.
294 =item Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%x
296 (P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
297 that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
298 outside any of those arenas.
300 =item Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
302 (P internal) Perl maintains a reference-counted internal table of
303 strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other
304 strings. This indicates someone tried to decrement the reference count
305 of a string that can no longer be found in the table.
307 =item Attempt to free temp prematurely
309 (W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the
310 free_tmps() routine. This indicates that something else is freeing the
311 SV before the free_tmps() routine gets a chance, which means that the
312 free_tmps() routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does
315 =item Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
317 (P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
319 =item Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
321 (W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to
322 see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone to 0
323 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was freed.
324 This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or
325 that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the SV was
326 mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has been
329 =item Attempt to join self
331 (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which is an
332 impossible task. You may be joining the wrong thread, or you may need
333 to move the join() to some other thread.
335 =item Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
337 (W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
338 function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template. This
339 means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become
340 invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use
341 literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to
344 =item Attempt to reload %s aborted.
346 (F) You tried to load a file with C<use> or C<require> that failed to
347 compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
348 unless you delete its entry from %INC. See L<perlfunc/require> and
351 =item Attempt to set length of freed array
353 (W) You tried to set the length of an array which has been freed. You
354 can do this by storing a reference to the scalar representing the last index
355 of an array and later assigning through that reference. For example
357 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
360 =item Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
362 (W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr()
363 used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to
364 dereference it first. See L<perlfunc/substr>.
366 =item Attribute "locked" is deprecated
368 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the "locked"
369 attribute on a code reference. The :locked attribute is obsolete, has had no
370 effect since 5005 threads were removed, and will be removed in a future
373 =item Attribute "unique" is deprecated
375 (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to modify the "unique"
376 attribute on an array, hash or scalar reference. The :unique attribute has
377 had no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and will be removed in a future release
380 =item Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
382 (F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl()
383 or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively,
384 S<sizeof(struct msqid_ds *)>, S<sizeof(struct semid_ds *)>, and
385 S<sizeof(struct shmid_ds *)>.
387 =item Bad evalled substitution pattern
389 (F) You've used the C</e> switch to evaluate the replacement for a
390 substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
391 most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
393 =item Bad filehandle: %s
395 (F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
396 symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an
397 open(), or did it in another package.
399 =item Bad free() ignored
401 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never
402 been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by
403 setting environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 0.
405 This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard"
406 dynamic linking, like C<AIX> and C<OS/2>. It is a bug of C<Berkeley DB>
407 which is left unnoticed if C<DB> uses I<forgiving> system malloc().
411 (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV pointer.
413 =item Badly placed ()'s
415 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
416 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
419 =item Bad name after %s::
421 (F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
422 didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside
431 $sym = "mypack::$var";
433 =item Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
435 (F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the
438 =item Bad realloc() ignored
440 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
441 never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled
442 by setting the environment variable C<PERL_BADFREE> to 1.
444 =item Bad symbol for array
446 (P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something that
447 wasn't a symbol table entry.
449 =item Bad symbol for dirhandle
451 (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle entry to something
452 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
455 =item Bad symbol for filehandle
457 (P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to something
458 that wasn't a symbol table entry.
460 =item Bad symbol for hash
462 (P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
463 wasn't a symbol table entry.
465 =item Bareword found in conditional
467 (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
468 conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as part
469 of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
473 It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted as
476 use constant TYPO => 1;
477 if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
479 The C<strict> pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
481 =item Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
483 (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
484 subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
485 symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
487 =item Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
489 (W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form C<Foo::>, but the
490 compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps
491 you need to predeclare a package?
493 =item BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
495 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
496 subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
499 =item BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
501 (F) Perl found a C<BEGIN {}> subroutine (or a C<use> directive, which
502 implies a C<BEGIN {}>) after one or more compilation errors had already
503 occurred. Since the intended environment for the C<BEGIN {}> could not
504 be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent code likely
505 depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
507 =item \1 better written as $1
509 (W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
510 The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
511 substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
512 because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if
513 there are more than 9 backreferences.
515 =item Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
517 (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
518 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
519 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
521 =item bind() on closed socket %s
523 (W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to
524 check the return value of your socket() call? See L<perlfunc/bind>.
526 =item binmode() on closed filehandle %s
528 (W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened.
529 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
531 =item "\b{" is deprecated; use "\b\{" instead
533 =item "\B{" is deprecated; use "\B\{" instead
535 (W deprecated, regexp) Use of an unescaped "{" immediately following a
536 C<\b> or C<\B> is now deprecated so as to reserve its use for Perl
537 itself in a future release.
539 =item Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
541 (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
543 =item Bizarre copy of %s in %s
545 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
548 =item Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
550 (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to
551 iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition
552 which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown.
554 =item Callback called exit
556 (F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
557 exited by calling exit.
559 =item %s() called too early to check prototype
561 (W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before the
562 parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could not check
563 that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an
564 early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the
565 subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype
566 checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling the
567 function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid
568 the warning. See L<perlsub>.
570 =item Cannot compress integer in pack
572 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
573 compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you
574 attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308).
575 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
577 =item Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
579 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer
580 format can only be used with positive integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
582 =item Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
584 (F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference in it,
585 then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax. The access
586 triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there is no legal conversion
587 from that type of reference to a typeglob.
589 =item Cannot copy to %s in %s
591 (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot
592 be directly assigned to.
594 =item Cannot find encoding "%s"
596 (S io) You tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to a filehandle,
597 either with open() or binmode().
599 =item Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
601 (F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER compressed
602 integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted
603 to compress something else. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
605 =item Can't bless non-reference value
607 (F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl "enforces"
608 encapsulation of objects. See L<perlobj>.
610 =item Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
612 (F) You called C<break>, but you're in a C<foreach> block rather than
613 a C<given> block. You probably meant to use C<next> or C<last>.
615 =item Can't "break" outside a given block
617 (F) You called C<break>, but you're not inside a C<given> block.
619 =item Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
621 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
622 object reference or package name contains an undefined value. Something
623 like this will reproduce the error:
626 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
627 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
629 =item Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
631 (F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run. It
632 ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply, but you
633 didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
634 object reference until it has been blessed. See L<perlobj>.
636 =item Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
638 (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
639 object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a
640 defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name.
641 Something like this will reproduce the error:
644 process $BADREF 1,2,3;
645 $BADREF->process(1,2,3);
647 =item Can't chdir to %s
649 (F) You called C<perl -x/foo/bar>, but C</foo/bar> is not a directory
650 that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
652 =item Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
654 (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for
657 =item Can't coerce %s to %s in %s
659 (F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
660 (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you can't
670 but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
672 =item Can't "continue" outside a when block
674 (F) You called C<continue>, but you're not inside a C<when>
677 =item Can't create pipe mailbox
679 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from exhausted
680 quotas or other plumbing problems.
682 =item Can't declare %s in "%s"
684 (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or
685 "state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
687 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
689 (S inplace) You tried to use the B<-i> switch on a special file, such as
690 a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was ignored.
692 =item Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
694 (S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
697 =item Can't do inplace edit without backup
699 (F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused if you try
700 reading from a deleted (but still opened) file. You have to say
701 C<-i.bak>, or some such.
703 =item Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
705 (S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than 14
706 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
707 inplace editing with the B<-i> switch. The file was ignored.
709 =item Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
711 (F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your
712 regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the
713 regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
715 =item Can't do waitpid with flags
717 (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
718 waitpid() without flags is emulated.
720 =item Can't emulate -%s on #! line
722 (F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
723 point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a B<-x> on the #!
726 =item Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
728 (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian,
729 or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and unpacking big- or
730 little-endian floating point values and pointers may not be possible.
731 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
733 =item Can't exec "%s": %s
735 (W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the
736 named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons include: the
737 permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in
738 C<$ENV{PATH}>, the executable in question was compiled for another
739 architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter that
740 can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your system doesn't support
745 (F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
746 that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you may
747 need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
749 =item Can't execute %s
751 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the copies of the script to execute
752 found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
754 =item Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
756 (F) A string of a form C<CORE::word> was given to prototype(), but there
757 is no builtin with the name C<word>.
759 =item Can't find %s character property "%s"
761 (F) You used C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> but the character property by that name
762 could not be found. Maybe you misspelled the name of the property?
763 See L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
764 for a complete list of available properties.
766 =item Can't find label %s
768 (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
769 possible for us to go to. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
771 =item Can't find %s on PATH
773 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
776 =item Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
778 (F) You used the B<-S> switch, but the script to execute could not be
779 found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions. The
780 script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
782 =item Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
784 (F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message means
785 that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed quotes count
786 nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
788 print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
790 If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included
791 unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good programmer's
792 editor will have a way to help you find these characters.
794 =item Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
796 (F) You may have tried to use C<\p> which means a Unicode
797 property (for example C<\p{Lu}> matches all uppercase
798 letters). If you did mean to use a Unicode property, see
799 L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>
800 for a complete list of available properties. If you didn't
801 mean to use a Unicode property, escape the C<\p>, either by C<\\p>
802 (just the C<\p>) or by C<\Q\p> (the rest of the string, or
807 (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
810 =item Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
812 (W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be retried
815 =item Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
817 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the difference
818 between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes.
819 Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in
820 the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into
821 account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all
822 the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to
823 the access-checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
824 the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only
825 if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine,
826 because the device name is overwritten with each call. If this warning
827 appears, the name lookup failed, and the access-checking routine gave up
828 and returned FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access-checking
829 routine knows about the Perl C<stat> operator and file tests, so you
830 shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises
831 only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
833 =item Can't get pipe mailbox device name
835 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
836 pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
838 =item Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
840 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your
841 mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
843 =item Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
845 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach
846 loop. You can't get there from here. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
848 =item Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
850 (F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look like
851 a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually occurs if
852 you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no.
853 See L<perlfunc/goto>.
855 =item Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
857 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
858 comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such
859 as the reduce() function in List::Util).
861 =item Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
863 (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
866 =item Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
868 (F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
869 subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
870 cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
871 routine anyway. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
873 =item Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
875 (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
876 signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
877 signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child
878 processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This
879 situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl
880 may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
882 =item Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
884 (F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a fatal error to
885 attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise non-numeric
888 =item Can't "last" outside a loop block
890 (F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block,
891 except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current
892 block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish"
893 block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can
894 usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the
895 inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once. See
898 =item Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
900 (F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
901 package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
903 =item Can't load '%s' for module %s
905 (F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension. This
906 may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one that is
907 incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known to happen
908 between major versions of perl), or (more likely) that your dynamic
909 extension was built against an older version of the library that is
910 installed on your system. You may need to rebuild your old dynamic
913 =item Can't localize lexical variable %s
915 (F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a
916 lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed. If you want to
917 localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the
920 =item Can't localize through a reference
922 (F) You said something like C<local $$ref>, which Perl can't currently
923 handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref
924 pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure
925 that $ref will still be a reference.
927 =item Can't locate %s
929 (F) You said to C<do> (or C<require>, or C<use>) a file that couldn't be
930 found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC,
931 unless the file name included the full path to the file. Perhaps you
932 need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say where
933 the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to add the library name
934 to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled the name of the file. See
935 L<perlfunc/require> and L<lib>.
937 =item Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
939 (F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
940 autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes
941 are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to C<AutoSplit>
942 the file, say, by doing C<make install>.
944 =item Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
946 (F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like
947 for example, C<foo.so> or C<bar.dll>, but the L<DynaLoader> module was
948 unable to locate this library. See L<DynaLoader>.
950 =item Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
952 (F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a package
953 functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that particular
954 method, nor does any of its base classes. See L<perlobj>.
956 =item Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
958 (W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
959 doesn't seem to exist.
961 =item Can't locate PerlIO%s
963 (F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
964 e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
966 =item Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
968 (F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems, notably
971 =item Can't modify %s in %s
973 (F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise try
974 to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
976 =item Can't modify nonexistent substring
978 (P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was handed
981 =item Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
983 (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be declared as
984 such. See L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
986 =item Can't msgrcv to read-only var
988 (F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a receive
991 =item Can't "next" outside a loop block
993 (F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block, but
994 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
995 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
996 grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
997 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops
998 once. See L<perlfunc/next>.
1000 =item Can't open %s: %s
1002 (S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the C<< <> >>
1003 filehandle, either implicitly under the C<-n> or C<-p> command-line
1004 switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually this
1005 is because you don't have read permission for a file which you named on
1008 =item Can't open a reference
1010 (W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
1011 using the 3-arg open() syntax:
1015 but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of
1016 open is not supported.
1018 =item Can't open bidirectional pipe
1020 (W pipe) You tried to say C<open(CMD, "|cmd|")>, which is not supported.
1021 You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such
1022 as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using
1023 ">", and then read it in under a different file handle.
1025 =item Can't open error file %s as stderr
1027 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1028 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or '2>>' on
1029 the command line for writing.
1031 =item Can't open input file %s as stdin
1033 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1034 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
1035 command line for reading.
1037 =item Can't open output file %s as stdout
1039 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1040 redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>' on
1041 the command line for writing.
1043 =item Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
1045 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
1046 redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data destined
1049 =item Can't open perl script%s
1051 (F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated reason.
1053 If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on the
1054 shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that search, so
1055 you don't have to type the path or C<`which $scriptname`>.
1057 =item Can't read CRTL environ
1059 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV
1060 from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was
1061 missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ
1062 or define F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that environ is not
1065 =item Can't "redo" outside a loop block
1067 (F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block, but
1068 there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
1069 count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map()
1070 or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect
1071 though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that
1072 loops once. See L<perlfunc/redo>.
1074 =item Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
1076 (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
1077 file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it with
1078 the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
1080 =item Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
1082 (S inplace) The rename done by the B<-i> switch failed for some reason,
1083 probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
1085 =item Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
1087 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and tried
1088 to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
1090 =item Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
1092 (F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed
1093 to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the package. If
1094 the method name is C<???>, this is an internal error.
1096 =item Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
1098 (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
1099 temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue. This
1102 =item Can't return outside a subroutine
1104 (F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is, where
1105 there was no subroutine call to return out of. See L<perlsub>.
1107 =item Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
1109 (F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine,
1110 but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you meant
1111 to return only one value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
1112 the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the call should be in
1115 =item Can't stat script "%s"
1117 (P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even though you have it
1118 open already. Bizarre.
1120 =item Can't take log of %g
1122 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
1123 negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
1124 standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
1127 =item Can't take sqrt of %g
1129 (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
1130 negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes standard
1131 with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
1133 =item Can't undef active subroutine
1135 (F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
1136 however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
1137 redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
1139 =item Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
1141 (P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it
1142 into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so
1143 specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message
1144 indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
1146 =item Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
1148 (F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
1149 table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
1150 for example by undefining stashes: C<undef %Some::Package::>.
1152 =item Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
1154 (F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must
1155 be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors.
1157 =item Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1159 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1160 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1162 =item Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
1164 (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the
1165 Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to
1166 provide symbolic names for C<$!> errno values.
1168 =item Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
1170 (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian
1171 byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not
1172 allowed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1174 =item Can't use %s for loop variable
1176 (F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on a
1179 =item Can't use global %s in "%s"
1181 (F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This
1182 is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location
1183 (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to
1184 have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but
1187 =item Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
1189 (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
1190 that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier.
1191 For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that
1192 is inside a big-endian group.
1194 =item Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
1196 (F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons.
1197 You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator,
1198 and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable.
1199 Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the
1202 =item Can't use %s ref as %s ref
1204 (F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
1205 reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
1206 test the type of the reference, if need be.
1208 =item Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
1210 (F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
1211 references are disallowed. See L<perlref>.
1213 =item Can't use subscript on %s
1215 (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
1216 subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
1217 didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable.
1219 =item Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
1221 (W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that
1222 creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a
1223 backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
1224 expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a
1225 value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form
1228 =item Can't use "when" outside a topicalizer
1230 (F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a C<foreach>
1231 loop nor a C<given> block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
1232 from the C<when> block, so you won't get the error if the match fails,
1233 or if you use an explicit C<continue>.)
1235 =item Can't weaken a nonreference
1237 (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only
1238 references can be weakened.
1240 =item Can't x= to read-only value
1242 (F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
1243 with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself.
1244 Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
1246 =item Character following "\c" must be ASCII
1248 (F|W deprecated, syntax) In C<\cI<X>>, I<X> must be an ASCII character.
1249 It is planned to make this fatal in all instances in Perl 5.16. In the
1250 cases where it isn't fatal, the character this evaluates to is
1251 derived by exclusive or'ing the code point of this character with 0x40.
1253 Note that non-alphabetic ASCII characters are discouraged here as well.
1255 =item Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack
1261 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the C<"C"> format is
1262 only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1263 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1267 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1270 =item Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
1276 where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, C<U0>-mode expects
1277 all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved as if you
1280 pack("U0W", $x & 255)
1282 =item Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack
1288 where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the C<"c"> format
1289 is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC,
1290 and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
1292 pack("c", $x & 255);
1294 If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the C<"U"> format
1297 =item Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1299 (W unpack) You tried something like
1301 unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
1303 where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
1304 below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the value
1305 modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1307 unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
1309 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
1311 (W pack) You tried something like
1313 pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
1315 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1316 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1317 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1319 pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
1321 =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
1323 (W unpack) You tried something like
1325 unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
1327 where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
1328 value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl
1329 uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
1331 unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
1333 =item "\c{" is deprecated and is more clearly written as ";"
1335 (D deprecated, syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way
1336 to specify non-printable characters. You used it with a "{" which
1337 evaluates to ";", which is printable. It is planned to remove the
1338 ability to specify a semi-colon this way in Perl 5.16. Just use a
1339 semi-colon or a backslash-semi-colon without the "\c".
1341 =item "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"
1343 (W syntax) The C<\cI<X>> construct is intended to be a way to specify
1344 non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which is better
1345 written as simply itself, perhaps preceded by a backslash for non-word
1348 =item close() on unopened filehandle %s
1350 (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
1352 =item closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
1354 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not really
1355 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
1357 =item Closure prototype called
1359 (F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to an attribute
1360 handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure is created.
1361 This subroutine cannot be called.
1363 =item Code missing after '/'
1365 (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be another
1366 template code following the slash. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1368 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
1370 =item Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, no properties match it; all inverse properties do
1372 (W utf8) You had a code point above the Unicode maximum of U+10FFFF.
1374 Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code
1375 points, up to the limit of what is storable in an unsigned integer on
1376 your system, but these may not be accepted by other languages/systems.
1377 At one time, it was legal in some standards to have code points up to
1378 0x7FFF_FFFF, but not higher. Code points above 0xFFFF_FFFF require
1379 larger than a 32 bit word.
1381 None of the Unicode or Perl-defined properties will match a non-Unicode
1382 code point. For example,
1384 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\p{Any}/
1386 will not match, because the code point is not in Unicode. But
1388 chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\P{Any}/
1392 =item %s: Command not found
1394 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1395 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1397 =item Compilation failed in require
1399 (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C<require> statement.
1400 Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it
1401 encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
1403 =item Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
1405 (W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion in complex
1406 situations where back-tracking is required. Recursion depth is limited
1407 to 32766, or perhaps less in architectures where the stack cannot grow
1408 arbitrarily. ("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
1409 recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shortening the string
1410 under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with C<while>) rather than
1411 in the regular expression engine; or rewriting the regular expression so
1412 that it is simpler or backtracks less. (See L<perlfaq2> for information
1413 on I<Mastering Regular Expressions>.)
1415 =item cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
1417 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1418 cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_broadcast()
1419 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1420 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1421 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread
1422 first to wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1423 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1426 =item cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
1428 (W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
1429 cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked. The cond_signal()
1430 function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
1431 cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other thread
1432 has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling thread
1433 first to wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt will only succeed
1434 after the other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the
1437 =item connect() on closed socket %s
1439 (W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget
1440 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1441 L<perlfunc/connect>.
1443 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s
1445 (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define
1446 an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name
1447 specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
1448 corresponding C<overload> or C<charnames> pragma? See L<charnames> and
1451 =item Constant(%s)%s: %s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1453 (F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to find
1454 the character name specified in the C<\N{...}> escape. Perhaps you
1455 forgot to load the corresponding C<charnames> pragma?
1459 =item Constant is not %s reference
1461 (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C<use constant> pragma)
1462 is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference.
1463 The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This
1464 usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value.
1465 See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> and L<constant>.
1467 =item Constant subroutine %s redefined
1469 (S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
1470 eligible for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for
1471 commentary and workarounds.
1473 =item Constant subroutine %s undefined
1475 (W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible
1476 for inlining. See L<perlsub/"Constant Functions"> for commentary and
1479 =item Copy method did not return a reference
1481 (F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See
1482 L<overload/Copy Constructor>.
1484 =item CORE::%s is not a keyword
1486 (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
1488 =item corrupted regexp pointers
1490 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
1491 expression compiler gave it.
1493 =item corrupted regexp program
1495 (P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program without a
1498 =item Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
1500 (P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
1502 =item Count after length/code in unpack
1504 (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string, but
1505 you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
1508 =item Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
1510 (W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or indirectly)
1511 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indicates an
1512 infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs, in
1513 which case it indicates something else.
1515 This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the F<perl> binary,
1516 setting the C pre-processor macro C<PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN> to the desired value.
1518 =item defined(@array) is deprecated
1520 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
1521 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the
1522 array is empty, just use C<if (@array) { # not empty }> for example.
1524 =item defined(%hash) is deprecated
1526 (D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
1527 checks for an undefined I<scalar> value. If you want to see if the hash
1528 is empty, just use C<if (%hash) { # not empty }> for example.
1530 =item %s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
1532 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
1533 there are neither package declarations nor a C<$VERSION>.
1535 =item Delimiter for here document is too long
1537 (F) In a here document construct like C<<<FOO>, the label C<FOO> is too
1538 long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to write code
1539 that triggers this error.
1541 =item Deprecated character in \N{...}; marked by <-- HERE in \N{%s<-- HERE %s
1543 (D deprecated) Just about anything is legal for the C<...> in C<\N{...}>.
1544 But starting in 5.12, non-reasonable ones that don't look like names
1545 are deprecated. A reasonable name begins with an alphabetic character
1546 and continues with any combination of alphanumerics, dashes, spaces,
1547 parentheses or colons.
1549 =item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
1551 (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to C<my $x if 0>.
1552 There has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable
1553 not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
1554 conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of
1555 static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people
1556 relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static effect by
1557 declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
1559 sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
1563 { my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
1565 Beginning with perl 5.9.4, you can also use C<state> variables to
1566 have lexicals that are initialized only once (see L<feature>):
1568 sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
1570 =item DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
1572 (F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which is
1573 just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort rather than
1574 to create a dangling reference.
1576 =item Did not produce a valid header
1580 =item %s did not return a true value
1582 (F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate that
1583 it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. It's
1584 traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though any true value would
1585 do. See L<perlfunc/require>.
1587 =item (Did you mean &%s instead?)
1589 (W misc) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or
1592 =item (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
1594 (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
1595 variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope, which
1598 =item (Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
1600 (W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
1601 @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
1606 (F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of C<die "">) or
1607 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
1609 =item Document contains no data
1613 =item %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
1615 (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
1616 define a C<$VERSION.>
1618 =item '/' does not take a repeat count
1620 (F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/' code.
1621 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1623 =item Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
1625 (P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
1627 =item do_study: out of memory
1629 (P) This should have been caught by safemalloc() instead.
1631 =item (Do you need to predeclare %s?)
1633 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
1634 "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module
1635 name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
1636 because of ordering problems in your file, or because of a missing
1637 "sub", "package", "require", or "use" statement. If you're referencing
1638 something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
1639 subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
1640 "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
1642 =item dump() better written as CORE::dump()
1644 (W misc) You used the obsolescent C<dump()> built-in function, without fully
1645 qualifying it as C<CORE::dump()>. Maybe it's a typo. See L<perlfunc/dump>.
1647 =item dump is not supported
1649 (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
1651 =item Duplicate free() ignored
1653 (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
1656 =item Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
1658 (W) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a type
1659 in a pack template. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
1661 =item elseif should be elsif
1663 (S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks it's
1664 ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named
1665 "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. This is
1666 unlikely to be what you want.
1670 (F) C<\p> and C<\P> are used to introduce a named Unicode property, as
1671 described in L<perlunicode> and L<perlre>. You used C<\p> or C<\P> in
1672 a regular expression without specifying the property name.
1674 =item entering effective %s failed
1676 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
1677 effective uids or gids failed.
1679 =item %ENV is aliased to %s
1681 (F) You're running under taint mode, and the C<%ENV> variable has been
1682 aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the
1683 program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
1685 =item Error converting file specification %s
1687 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with file
1688 specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a
1689 single form when it must operate on them directly. Either you've passed
1690 an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the
1691 conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
1693 =item %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
1695 (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
1696 expression that contains the C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion, which
1697 is unsafe. See L<perlre/(?{ code })>, and L<perlsec>.
1699 =item %s: Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval'
1701 (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
1702 C<(?{ ... })> zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
1703 pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security risk,
1704 it is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by using the
1705 C<re 'eval'> pragma or by explicitly building the pattern from an
1706 interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval(). See
1707 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 on some systems, e.g., Symbian
1733 OS. See L<perlport>.
1735 =item Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
1737 (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
1739 =item Exiting eval via %s
1741 (W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a
1742 goto, or a loop control statement.
1744 =item Exiting format via %s
1746 (W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a
1747 goto, or a loop control statement.
1749 =item Exiting pseudo-block via %s
1751 (W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like a
1752 sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a
1753 loop control statement. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
1755 =item Exiting subroutine via %s
1757 (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such
1758 as a goto, or a loop control statement.
1760 =item Exiting substitution via %s
1762 (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such
1763 as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
1765 =item Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
1767 (W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has
1768 the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. This is
1769 usually not what you want. Consider providing a default target package,
1770 e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
1772 =item %s: Expression syntax
1774 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
1775 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
1777 =item %s failed--call queue aborted
1779 (F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
1780 CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
1781 queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
1783 =item False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
1785 (W regexp) A character class range must start and end at a literal
1786 character, not another character class like C<\d> or C<[:alpha:]>. The "-"
1787 in your false range is interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the
1788 "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
1789 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
1791 =item Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
1793 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
1794 system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more
1795 details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell
1796 you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
1798 =item fcntl is not implemented
1800 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a
1801 PDP-11 or something?
1803 =item FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
1805 (F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which
1808 =item Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
1810 (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string start with a length indicator
1811 which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point in asking for
1812 a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you specified
1813 C<u63> as the format.
1815 =item Filehandle %s opened only for input
1817 (W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you intended
1818 it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or
1819 "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to
1820 write the file, use ">" or ">>". See L<perlfunc/open>.
1822 =item Filehandle %s opened only for output
1824 (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing, If
1825 you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open it
1826 with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with ">". If you intended only to
1827 read from the file, use "<". See L<perlfunc/open>. Another possibility
1828 is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0 (also known as STDIN) for
1829 output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
1831 =item Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
1833 (W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1834 as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed STDOUT or STDERR
1837 =item Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
1839 (W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same filehandle id
1840 as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previously.
1842 =item Final $ should be \$ or $name
1844 (F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to be
1845 a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name that
1846 happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash or the
1849 =item flock() on closed filehandle %s
1851 (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself closed
1852 some time before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on
1853 filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the
1856 =item Format not terminated
1858 (F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl got
1859 to the end of your file without finding such a line.
1861 =item Format %s redefined
1863 (W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
1866 no warnings 'redefine';
1867 eval "format NAME =...";
1870 =item Found = in conditional, should be ==
1880 (or something like that).
1882 =item %s found where operator expected
1884 (S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an operator.
1885 If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was expecting to see an
1886 operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it indicates that an
1887 operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
1889 =item gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
1891 (S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
1893 =item gethostent not implemented
1895 (F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(), probably
1896 because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname
1899 =item get%sname() on closed socket %s
1901 (W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
1902 socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
1904 =item getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
1906 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to C<sys$getuai> underlying the
1907 C<getpwnam> operator returned an invalid UIC.
1909 =item getsockopt() on closed socket %s
1911 (W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
1912 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
1913 L<perlfunc/getsockopt>.
1915 =item Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
1917 (F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
1918 that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or "state"),
1919 declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say
1920 which package the global variable is in (using "::").
1922 =item glob failed (%s)
1924 (W glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
1925 C<glob> and C<< <*.c> >>. Usually, this means that you supplied a
1926 C<glob> pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
1927 nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
1928 resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell) is
1929 broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related variables in
1930 config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it
1931 were csh (e.g. C<full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'>); otherwise, make them all
1932 empty (except that C<d_csh> should be C<'undef'>) so that Perl will
1933 think csh is missing. In either case, after editing config.sh, run
1934 C<./Configure -S> and rebuild Perl.
1936 =item Glob not terminated
1938 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
1939 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
1940 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
1941 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
1943 =item gmtime(%f) too large
1945 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was larger than
1946 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
1947 date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
1948 not-a-number value).
1950 =item gmtime(%f) too small
1952 (W overflow) You called C<gmtime> with a number that was smaller than
1953 it can reliably handle and C<gmtime> probably returned the wrong
1954 date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
1955 not-a-number value).
1957 =item Got an error from DosAllocMem
1959 (P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete
1960 version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
1962 =item goto must have label
1964 (F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
1965 unspecified destination. See L<perlfunc/goto>.
1967 =item ()-group starts with a count
1969 (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is supposed to follow
1970 something: a template character or a ()-group. 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
2003 form in Perl 5.16. And,
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 format string for %s
2176 (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of C<printf()>
2177 or C<sprintf()> are too large. The numbers must not overflow the size of
2178 integers for your architecture.
2180 =item Integer overflow in %s number
2182 (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have specified
2183 either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is too big for
2184 your architecture, and has been converted to a floating point number.
2185 On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number
2186 representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
2187 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Note that Perl
2188 transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation
2189 internally--subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent
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 hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
2255 (F) The character constant represented by C<...> is not a valid hexadecimal
2256 number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use a character other than
2257 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
2259 =item Invalid mro name: '%s'
2261 (F) You tried to C<mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")> or C<use mro 'foo'>,
2262 where C<foo> is not a valid method resolution order (MRO). Currently,
2263 the only valid ones supported are C<dfs> and C<c3>, unless you have loaded
2264 a module that is a MRO plugin. See L<mro> and L<perlmroapi>.
2266 =item Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2268 (F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
2269 greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you forgot the
2270 C<{}> from your ending C<\x{}> - C<\x> without the curly braces can go only
2271 up to C<ff>. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
2272 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
2274 =item Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
2276 (F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum
2277 character greater than the maximum character. See L<perlop>.
2279 =item Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
2281 (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
2282 elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
2283 parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
2286 =item Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
2288 (W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something other
2289 than a colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a layer list.
2290 If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that
2291 list was terminated too soon.
2293 =item Invalid strict version format (%s)
2295 (F) A version number did not meet the "strict" criteria for versions.
2296 A "strict" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2297 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2298 v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least three components.
2299 The parenthesized text indicates which criteria were not met.
2300 See the L<version> module for more details on allowed version formats.
2302 =item Invalid type '%s' in %s
2304 (F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type.
2305 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2306 (W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be
2309 =item Invalid version format (%s)
2311 (F) A version number did not meet the "lax" criteria for versions.
2312 A "lax" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
2313 decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
2314 v-string. If the v-string has fewer than three components, it must
2315 have a leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading 'v' is optional.
2316 Both decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a trailing "alpha"
2317 component separated by an underscore character after a fractional or
2318 dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized text indicates which
2319 criteria were not met. See the L<version> module for more details on
2320 allowed version formats.
2322 =item Invalid version object
2324 (F) The internal structure of the version object was invalid. Perhaps
2325 the internals were modified directly in some way or an arbitrary reference
2326 was blessed into the "version" class.
2328 =item ioctl is not implemented
2330 (F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty
2331 strange for a machine that supports C.
2333 =item ioctl() on unopened %s
2335 (W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened.
2336 Check your control flow and number of arguments.
2338 =item IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
2340 (F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
2341 you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO, Perl must be configured
2344 =item IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
2346 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
2347 neither as a system call nor an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
2349 =item $* is no longer supported
2351 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$*>, deprecated in older
2352 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported. In
2353 previous versions of perl the use of C<$*> enabled or disabled multi-line
2354 matching within a string.
2356 Instead of using C<$*> you should use the C</m> (and maybe C</s>) regexp
2357 modifiers. You can enable C</m> for a lexical scope (even a whole file)
2358 with C<use re '/m'>. (In older versions: when C<$*> was set to a true value
2359 then all regular expressions behaved as if they were written using C</m>.)
2361 =item $# is no longer supported
2363 (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable C<$#>, deprecated in older
2364 perls, has been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported. You
2365 should use the printf/sprintf functions instead.
2367 =item `%s' is not a code reference
2369 (W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant
2370 needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference
2373 =item `%s' is not an overloadable type
2375 (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is
2378 =item junk on end of regexp
2380 (P) The regular expression parser is confused.
2382 =item Label not found for "last %s"
2384 (F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop
2385 of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2388 =item Label not found for "next %s"
2390 (F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of
2391 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2394 =item Label not found for "redo %s"
2396 (F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of
2397 that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
2400 =item leaving effective %s failed
2402 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, switching the real and
2403 effective uids or gids failed.
2405 =item length/code after end of string in unpack
2407 (F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack
2408 length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in
2409 an undefined value for the length. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2411 =item Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
2413 (F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse
2414 (using L<lex_stuff_pvn_flags|perlapi/lex_stuff_pvn_flags> or similar), but tried to insert a character
2415 that couldn't be part of the current input. This is an inherent pitfall
2416 of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the reasons to avoid it. Where it
2417 is necessary to stuff, stuffing only plain ASCII is recommended.
2419 =item Lexing code internal error (%s)
2421 (F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a
2424 =item listen() on closed socket %s
2426 (W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget
2427 to check the return value of your socket() call? See
2430 =item localtime(%f) too large
2432 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was larger
2433 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2434 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
2435 not-a-number value).
2437 =item localtime(%f) too small
2439 (W overflow) You called C<localtime> with a number that was smaller
2440 than it can reliably handle and C<localtime> probably returned the
2441 wrong date. This warning is also triggered with nan (the special
2442 not-a-number value).
2444 =item Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
2446 (F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can
2447 handle. This restriction may be eased in a future release.
2449 =item Lost precision when %s %f by 1
2451 (W) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by one is too large
2452 for the underlying floating point representation to store accurately,
2453 hence the target of C<++> or C<--> is unchanged. Perl issues this warning
2454 because it has already switched from integers to floating point when values
2455 are too large for integers, and now even floating point is insufficient.
2456 You may wish to switch to using L<Math::BigInt> explicitly.
2458 =item lstat() on filehandle %s
2460 (W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
2461 by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a fstat()
2462 instead on the filehandle.)
2464 =item lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined
2466 (W misc) Making a subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it has been defined
2467 by declaring the subroutine with an lvalue attribute is not
2468 possible. To make the subroutine an lvalue subroutine add the
2469 lvalue attribute to the definition, or put the declaration before
2472 =item Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
2474 (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation, array and hash
2475 values cannot be returned in subroutines used in lvalue context. See
2476 L<perlsub/"Lvalue subroutines">.
2478 =item Malformed integer in [] in pack
2480 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2481 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2483 =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack
2485 (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits
2486 are permitted. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2488 =item Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
2490 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of the form
2497 with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If C<prefix1> is indeed a prefix of
2498 a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may
2499 appear if components are not found, or are too long. See
2500 "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in L<perlos2>.
2502 =item Malformed prototype for %s: %s
2504 (F) You tried to use a function with a malformed prototype. The
2505 syntax of function prototypes is given a brief compile-time check for
2506 obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run
2507 when the function is called.
2509 =item Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
2511 (S utf8) (F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with UTF-8
2512 encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
2514 One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that
2515 you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy
2516 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
2518 If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
2519 sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is
2520 set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
2523 See also L<Encode/"Handling Malformed Data">.
2525 =item Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N
2527 (F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
2529 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
2531 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2532 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2534 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
2536 (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2537 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2539 =item Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
2541 (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding
2542 rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more progress.
2544 =item Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
2546 (F) Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
2547 doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
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 Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded
2558 (F) Perl aborted due to too high a number of signals pending. This
2559 usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals
2560 too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from
2561 resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals
2562 safely. (See L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">.)
2564 =item "%s" may clash with future reserved word
2566 (W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a perl4
2567 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about is
2570 =item % may not be used in pack
2572 (F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
2573 checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other way.
2574 See L<perlfunc/unpack>.
2576 =item Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
2578 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
2579 doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
2581 =item Method %s not permitted
2585 =item Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
2587 (S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused
2588 by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually
2589 ended earlier on the current line.
2591 =item Misplaced _ in number
2593 (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
2594 separate two digits.
2596 =item Missing argument in %s
2598 (W uninitialized) A printf-type format required more arguments than were
2601 =item Missing argument to -%c
2603 (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
2604 immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
2606 =item Missing braces on \N{}
2608 (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within
2609 double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space
2610 (or comment) between the C<\N> and the C<{> in a regex with the C</x> modifier.
2611 This modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately
2614 =item Missing braces on \o{}
2616 (F) A C<\o> must be followed immediately by a C<{> in double-quotish context.
2618 =item Missing comma after first argument to %s function
2620 (F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
2621 "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
2623 =item Missing command in piped open
2625 (W pipe) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or
2626 C<open(FH, "command |")> construction, but the command was missing or
2629 =item Missing control char name in \c
2631 (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control
2634 =item Missing name in "my sub"
2636 (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that
2637 they have a name with which they can be found.
2639 =item Missing $ on loop variable
2641 (F) Apparently you've been programming in B<csh> too much. Variables
2642 are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it
2643 can vary from one line to the next.
2645 =item (Missing operator before %s?)
2647 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2648 "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing operator is a comma.
2650 =item Missing right brace on %s
2652 (F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}>, C<\P{...}>, or C<\N{...}>.
2654 =item Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N
2656 (F) C<\N> has two meanings.
2658 The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed in braces,
2659 meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that
2660 name. Thus C<\N{ASTERISK}> is another way of writing C<*>, valid in both
2661 double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns,
2662 it doesn't have the meaning an unescaped C<*> does.
2664 Starting in Perl 5.12.0, C<\N> also can have an additional meaning (only)
2665 in patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short
2666 for C<[^\n]>, and like C<.> but is not affected by the C</s> regex modifier.)
2668 This can lead to some ambiguities. When C<\N> is not followed immediately
2669 by a left brace, Perl assumes the C<[^\n]> meaning. Also, if the braces
2670 form a valid quantifier such as C<\N{3}> or C<\N{5,}>, Perl assumes that this
2671 means to match the given quantity of non-newlines (in these examples,
2672 3; and 5 or more, respectively). In all other case, where there is a
2673 C<\N{> and a matching C<}>, Perl assumes that a character name is desired.
2675 However, if there is no matching C<}>, Perl doesn't know if it was
2676 mistakenly omitted, or if C<[^\n]{> was desired, and raises this error.
2677 If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant the latter,
2678 escape the brace with a backslash, like so: C<\N\{>
2680 =item Missing right curly or square bracket
2682 (F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing
2683 ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the place you
2686 =item (Missing semicolon on previous line?)
2688 (S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
2689 "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put a semicolon on
2690 the previous line just because you saw this message.
2692 =item Modification of a read-only value attempted
2694 (F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
2695 constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
2696 catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
2698 sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
2701 Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string.
2703 Yet another way is to assign to a C<foreach> loop I<VAR> when I<VAR>
2704 is aliased to a constant in the look I<LIST>:
2707 foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
2708 $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
2711 =item Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
2713 (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
2714 subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
2717 =item Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
2719 (P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
2720 couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
2722 =item Module name must be constant
2724 (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use".
2726 =item Module name required with -%c option
2728 (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but
2729 you omitted the name of the module. Consult L<perlrun> for full details
2730 about C<-M> and C<-m>.
2732 =item More than one argument to '%s' open
2734 (F) The C<open> function has been asked to open multiple files. This
2735 can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a
2736 list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open mode.
2737 See L<perlfunc/open> for details.
2739 =item msg%s not implemented
2741 (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
2743 =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
2745 (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>.
2746 They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C.
2748 =item '/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
2750 (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but this did not
2751 follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value.
2752 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2754 =item "my sub" not yet implemented
2756 (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
2759 =item "my" variable %s can't be in a package
2761 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
2762 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
2763 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
2765 =item Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
2767 (W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names.
2768 If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it
2769 again somehow to suppress the message. The C<our> declaration is
2770 provided for this purpose.
2772 NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used only once so $c, @c,
2773 %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered
2774 the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others it
2775 will not trigger this warning.
2777 =item \N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...}
2779 (F) The new (5.12) meaning of C<\N> as C<[^\n]> is not valid in a bracketed
2780 character class, for the same reason that C<.> in a character class loses
2781 its specialness: it matches almost everything, which is probably not
2784 =item \N{NAME} must be resolved by the lexer
2786 (F) When compiling a regex pattern, an unresolved named character or
2787 sequence was encountered. This can happen in any of several ways that
2788 bypass the lexer, such as using single-quotish context, or an extra
2789 backslash in double-quotish:
2791 $re = '\N{SPACE}'; # Wrong!
2792 $re = "\\N{SPACE}"; # Wrong!
2795 Instead, use double-quotes with a single backslash:
2797 $re = "\N{SPACE}"; # ok
2800 The lexer can be bypassed as well by creating the pattern from smaller
2804 /${re}{SPACE}/; # Wrong!
2806 It's not a good idea to split a construct in the middle like this, and it
2807 doesn't work here. Instead use the solution above.
2809 Finally, the message also can happen under the C</x> regex modifier when the
2810 C<\N> is separated by spaces from the C<{>, in which case, remove the spaces.
2812 /\N {SPACE}/x; # Wrong!
2815 =item Negative '/' count in unpack
2817 (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was
2818 negative. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2820 =item Negative length
2822 (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer
2823 length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine.
2825 =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
2827 (F) When C<vec> is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be
2828 greater than or equal to zero.
2830 =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
2832 (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So
2833 things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
2834 expression about where the problem was discovered.
2836 Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and
2837 C<??> appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L<perlre>.
2839 =item %s never introduced
2841 (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of
2842 scope before it could possibly have been used.
2844 =item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
2846 (F) C<next::method> needs to be called within the context of a
2847 real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context.
2850 =item No %s allowed while running setuid
2852 (F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or
2853 setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there
2854 will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least
2855 securable. See L<perlsec>.
2857 =item No comma allowed after %s
2859 (F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not
2860 allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments.
2861 Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
2863 One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
2864 constant to your name space with B<use> or B<import> while no such
2865 importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system
2866 does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
2867 explicit import list for the constants you expect to see; please see
2868 L<perlfunc/use> and L<perlfunc/import>. While an explicit import list
2869 would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not
2870 remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that
2871 constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import
2872 list of B<use> or B<import> or in the constant name at the line where
2873 this error was triggered?
2875 =item No command into which to pipe on command line
2877 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2878 redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
2879 doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
2881 =item No DB::DB routine defined
2883 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2884 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2885 module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each
2888 =item No dbm on this machine
2890 (P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should
2891 supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See L<SDBM_File>.
2893 =item No DB::sub routine defined
2895 (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but
2896 for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F<perl5db.pl> or a C<Devel::>
2897 module) didn't define a C<DB::sub> routine to be called at the beginning
2898 of each ordinary subroutine call.
2900 =item No B<-e> allowed in setuid scripts
2902 (F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
2904 =item No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
2906 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2907 redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't
2908 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
2910 =item No group ending character '%c' found in template
2912 (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
2913 matching counterpart. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
2915 =item No input file after < on command line
2917 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2918 redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
2919 name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
2923 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
2924 even on machines that don't support the #! construct.
2926 =item No next::method '%s' found for %s
2928 (F) C<next::method> found no further instances of this method name
2929 in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
2930 it throwing an exception, use C<maybe::next::method>
2931 or C<next::can>. See L<mro>.
2933 =item "no" not allowed in expression
2935 (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
2936 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
2938 =item No output file after > on command line
2940 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2941 redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it
2942 doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
2944 =item No output file after > or >> on command line
2946 (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
2947 redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't
2948 find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
2950 =item No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
2952 (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in "our"
2953 declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing
2954 semantics. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
2956 =item No Perl script found in input
2958 (F) You called C<perl -x>, but no line was found in the file beginning
2959 with #! and containing the word "perl".
2961 =item No setregid available
2963 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for
2966 =item No setreuid available
2968 (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for
2971 =item No %s specified for -%c
2973 (F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory argument, but
2974 you haven't specified one.
2976 =item No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
2978 (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed variable
2979 but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type. The indicated
2980 package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the L<fields> pragma.
2982 =item No such class %s
2984 (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state"
2985 declaration, but this class doesn't exist at this point in your program.
2987 =item No such hook: %s
2989 (F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl.
2990 Currently, Perl accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks.
2992 =item No such pipe open
2994 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to
2995 close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught
2996 earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
2998 =item No such signal: SIG%s
3000 (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was
3001 not recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal
3002 names on your system.
3004 =item Not a CODE reference
3006 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3007 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3008 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3011 =item Not a format reference
3013 (F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an anonymous
3014 format, but this indicates you did, and that it didn't exist.
3016 =item Not a GLOB reference
3018 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a
3019 symbol table entry that looks like C<*foo>), but found a reference to
3020 something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what
3021 kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3023 =item Not a HASH reference
3025 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a
3026 reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
3027 find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3029 =item Not an ARRAY reference
3031 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found
3032 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3033 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3035 =item Not a perl script
3037 (F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #! line
3038 even on machines that don't support the #! construct. The line must
3041 =item Not a SCALAR reference
3043 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found
3044 a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
3045 to find out what kind of ref it really was. See L<perlref>.
3047 =item Not a subroutine reference
3049 (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a
3050 subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can
3051 use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See
3054 =item Not a subroutine reference in overload table
3056 (F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that
3057 doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See L<overload>.
3059 =item Not enough arguments for %s
3061 (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
3063 =item Not enough format arguments
3065 (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
3066 supplied. See L<perlform>.
3070 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
3071 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
3074 =item no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
3076 (S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
3077 timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent
3078 to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
3079 F<SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL> to translate to the number of seconds which
3080 need to be added to UTC to get local time.
3082 =item Non-octal character '%c'. Resolved as "%s"
3084 (W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character was
3085 unexpectedly encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value is as
3088 =item Non-string passed as bitmask
3090 (W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select().
3091 Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for
3092 select. See L<perlfunc/select>.
3094 =item Null filename used
3096 (F) You can't require the null filename, especially because on many
3097 machines that means the current directory! See L<perlfunc/require>.
3099 =item NULL OP IN RUN
3101 (P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode
3104 =item Null picture in formline
3106 (F) The first argument to formline must be a valid format picture
3107 specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you
3108 supplied it an uninitialized value. See L<perlform>.
3112 (P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
3114 =item NULL regexp argument
3116 (P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big time.
3118 =item NULL regexp parameter
3120 (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
3122 =item Number too long
3124 (F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
3125 about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future
3126 versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In
3127 the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
3130 =item Number with no digits
3132 (F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like
3133 a number. This happens, for example with C<\o{}>, with no number between
3136 =item Octal number in vector unsupported
3138 (F) Numbers with a leading C<0> are not currently allowed in vectors.
3139 The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in a
3142 =item Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
3144 (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
3145 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
3146 L<perlport> for more on portability concerns.
3148 =item Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
3150 (W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number of
3151 arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
3153 =item Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
3155 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3156 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3158 =item Odd number of elements in hash assignment
3160 (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash,
3161 which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
3163 =item Offset outside string
3165 (F|W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation
3166 with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
3167 imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
3168 take place when going past the end of the string when either
3169 C<sysread()>ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
3170 for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour
3173 =item %s() on unopened %s
3175 (W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
3176 never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket()
3177 call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
3179 =item -%s on unopened filehandle %s
3181 (W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle
3182 that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also L<perlfunc/-X>.
3186 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3190 (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
3192 =item Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
3194 (W io, deprecated) You used open() to associate a filehandle to
3195 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
3196 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3199 =item Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
3201 (W io, deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a dirhandle to
3202 a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
3203 Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing
3206 =item Operation "%s": no method found, %s
3208 (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no
3209 handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms
3210 of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless
3211 the C<fallback> overloading key is specified to be true. See L<overload>.
3213 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
3215 (W) You performed an operation requiring Unicode semantics on a Unicode
3216 surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use of surrogates for anything but
3217 storing strings in UTF-16, but semantics are (reluctantly) defined for
3218 the surrogates, and they are to do nothing for this operation. Because
3219 the use of surrogates can be dangerous, Perl warns.
3221 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3222 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3224 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3225 C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
3227 =item Operation "%s" returns its argument for non-Unicode code point 0x%X
3229 (W) You performed an operation requiring Unicode semantics on a code
3230 point that is not in Unicode, so what it should do is not defined. Perl
3231 has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn you.
3233 If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
3234 matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
3236 If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by
3237 C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
3239 =item Operator or semicolon missing before %s
3241 (S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the parser
3242 was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to
3243 use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For
3244 example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said
3247 =item "our" variable %s redeclared
3249 (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same global once before
3250 in the current lexical scope.
3252 =item Out of memory!
3254 (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3255 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has
3256 no option but to exit immediately.
3258 At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
3259 process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C<limit> and
3260 C<limit datasize n> (where C<n> is the number of kilobytes) to check
3261 the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C<ulimit -a>
3262 and C<ulimit -d n>, respectively.
3264 =item Out of memory during %s extend
3266 (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond
3267 the largest possible memory allocation.
3269 =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s
3271 (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
3272 remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
3273 the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a
3274 possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
3276 =item Out of memory during request for %s
3278 (X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
3279 insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
3282 The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
3283 depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable.
3284 However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an
3285 emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error
3286 is trappable I<once>, and the error message will include the line and file
3287 where the failed request happened.
3289 =item Out of memory during ridiculously large request
3291 (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error
3292 is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
3293 C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>.
3295 =item Out of memory for yacc stack
3297 (F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
3298 parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
3301 =item '.' outside of string in pack
3303 (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
3304 position to before the start of the packed string being built.
3306 =item '@' outside of string in unpack
3308 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3309 the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3311 =item '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
3313 (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
3314 the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also invalid
3315 UTF-8. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3317 =item Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
3319 (F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was dereferenced,
3320 but the overloaded operation did not return a reference. See
3323 =item Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
3325 (F) An object with a C<qr> overload was used as part of a match, but the
3326 overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See L<overload>.
3328 =item %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
3330 (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a
3331 package-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
3332 some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
3333 mixed-case attribute name, instead. See L<attributes>.
3335 =item \p{} uses Unicode rules, not locale rules
3337 (W) You compiled a regular expression that contained a Unicode property
3338 match (C<\p> or C<\P>), but the regular expression is also being told to
3339 use the run-time locale, not Unicode. Instead, use a POSIX character
3340 class, which should know about the locale's rules.
3341 (See L<perlrecharclass/POSIX Character Classes>.)
3343 Even if the run-time locale is ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), which is a subset of
3344 Unicode, some properties will give results that are not valid for that
3347 Here are a couple of examples to help you see what's going on. If the
3348 locale is ISO 8859-7, the character at code point 0xD7 is the "GREEK
3349 CAPITAL LETTER CHI". But in Unicode that code point means the
3350 "MULTIPLICATION SIGN" instead, and C<\p> always uses the Unicode
3351 meaning. That means that C<\p{Alpha}> won't match, but C<[[:alpha:]]>
3352 should. Only in the Latin1 locale are all the characters in the same
3353 positions as they are in Unicode. But, even here, some properties give
3354 incorrect results. An example is C<\p{Changes_When_Uppercased}> which
3355 is true for "LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS", but since the upper
3356 case of that character is not in Latin1, in that locale it doesn't
3357 change when upper cased.
3359 =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow
3361 (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
3362 signed integers. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3366 (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a
3367 page. See L<perlform>.
3371 (P) An internal error.
3373 =item panic: attempt to call %s in %s
3375 (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
3376 an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
3377 platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
3378 enter this branch on this platform.
3380 =item panic: ck_grep
3382 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
3384 =item panic: ck_split
3386 (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a split.
3388 =item panic: corrupt saved stack index
3390 (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than
3391 there are in the savestack.
3393 =item panic: del_backref
3395 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak
3398 =item panic: Devel::DProf inconsistent subroutine return
3400 (P) Devel::DProf called a subroutine that exited using goto(LABEL),
3401 last(LABEL) or next(LABEL). Leaving that way a subroutine called from
3402 an XSUB will lead very probably to a crash of the interpreter. This is
3403 a bug that will hopefully one day get fixed.
3407 (P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and then discovered
3408 it wasn't an eval context.
3410 =item panic: do_subst
3412 (P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid operational
3415 =item panic: do_trans_%s
3417 (P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid operational
3420 =item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
3422 (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C<eval>
3427 (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible.
3431 (P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified label,
3432 and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a goto in.
3434 =item panic: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
3436 (P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries tried
3437 repeatedly, but each time something re-created entries in the glob. Most
3438 likely the glob contains an object with a reference back to the glob and a
3439 destructor that adds a new object to the glob.
3441 =item panic: hfreeentries failed to free hash
3443 (P) The internal routine used to clear a hash's entries tried repeatedly,
3444 but each time something added more entries to the hash. Most likely the hash
3445 contains an object with a reference back to the hash and a destructor that
3446 adds a new object to the hash.
3448 =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD
3450 (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
3452 =item panic: INTERPCONCAT
3454 (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
3456 =item panic: kid popen errno read
3458 (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno.
3462 (P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then discovered
3463 it wasn't a block context.
3465 =item panic: leave_scope clearsv
3467 (P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
3470 =item panic: leave_scope inconsistency
3472 (P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
3473 invalid enum on the top of it.
3475 =item panic: magic_killbackrefs
3477 (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak
3478 references to an object.
3482 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
3484 =item panic: memory wrap
3486 (P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
3488 =item panic: pad_alloc
3490 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3491 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3493 =item panic: pad_free curpad
3495 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3496 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3498 =item panic: pad_free po
3500 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3502 =item panic: pad_reset curpad
3504 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3505 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3507 =item panic: pad_sv po
3509 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3511 =item panic: pad_swipe curpad
3513 (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating
3514 and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
3516 =item panic: pad_swipe po
3518 (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
3520 =item panic: pp_iter
3522 (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
3524 =item panic: pp_match%s
3526 (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational
3529 =item panic: pp_split
3531 (P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the split.
3533 =item panic: realloc
3535 (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
3537 =item panic: restartop
3539 (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and
3540 didn't supply the destination.
3544 (P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
3545 then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
3547 =item panic: scan_num
3549 (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
3551 =item panic: sv_chop %s
3553 (P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the
3554 scalar's string buffer.
3556 =item panic: sv_insert
3558 (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there
3561 =item panic: top_env
3563 (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that.
3565 =item panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
3567 (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't permitted
3570 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
3572 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
3573 to even) byte length.
3575 =item panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
3577 (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an odd (as opposed
3578 to even) byte length.
3582 (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
3584 =item Parsing code internal error (%s)
3586 (F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API in
3589 =item Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3591 (F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls without
3592 consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before the
3593 nesting limit is exceeded.
3595 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3598 =item Parentheses missing around "%s" list
3600 (W parenthesis) You said something like
3606 my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
3608 Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than comma.
3610 =item C<-p> destination: %s
3612 (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p>
3613 command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
3614 redirected it with select().)
3616 =item (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
3618 (F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
3619 "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
3620 that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
3622 =item Perl_my_%s() not available
3624 (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size,
3625 so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
3626 conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
3627 '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
3629 =item Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
3631 (F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
3632 recent than the currently running version. How long has it been since
3633 you upgraded, anyway? See L<perlfunc/require>.
3635 =item PERL_SH_DIR too long
3637 (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the
3638 C<sh>-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L<perlos2>.
3640 =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
3642 See L<perlrun/PERL_SIGNALS> for legal values.
3644 =item perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3646 (S) The whole warning message will look something like:
3648 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
3649 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
3652 are supported and installed on your system.
3653 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
3655 Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the
3656 settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value.
3657 This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your operating
3658 system supplier and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
3659 locale system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not
3660 dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
3661 Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before you really fix
3662 the problem, however, you will get the same error message each time
3663 you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in
3664 L<perllocale> section B<LOCALE PROBLEMS>.
3666 =item pid %x not a child
3668 (W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a
3669 process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is
3670 fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended.
3672 =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
3674 (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
3676 =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3678 (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE
3679 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered.
3680 Note that the POSIX character classes do B<not> have the C<is> prefix
3681 the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>,
3682 not C<isprint>. See L<perlre>.
3684 =item POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
3686 (F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
3687 the BSD version, which takes a pid.
3689 =item POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3691 (W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go
3692 I<inside> character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example:
3693 /[012[:alpha:]345]/. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently
3694 implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will
3695 cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3696 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3698 =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3700 (F regexp) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
3701 beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions.
3702 If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular
3703 expression character class, just quote the square brackets with the
3704 backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
3705 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3707 =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3709 (F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning
3710 with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you
3711 need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression
3712 character class, just quote the square brackets with the backslash: "\[="
3713 and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
3714 problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3716 =item Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
3718 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with literal
3719 strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead treated as
3720 literal data. (You may have used different delimiters than the
3721 parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
3723 You probably wrote something like this:
3730 when you should have written this:
3737 If you really want comments, build your list the
3738 old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
3742 'b', # another comment
3745 =item Possible attempt to separate words with commas
3747 (W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
3748 commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
3749 different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are also
3752 You probably wrote something like this:
3756 which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it without
3757 commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
3761 =item Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
3763 (F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining for.
3764 Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel byte at the
3765 end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and
3766 Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See L<perlfunc/ioctl>.
3768 =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
3770 (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction
3771 with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
3773 if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
3775 This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the
3776 higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you
3777 really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
3778 parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>).
3780 =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
3782 (W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a double-quoted string
3783 but there was no array C<@foo> in scope at the time. If you wanted a
3784 literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened
3785 to the array you apparently lost track of.
3787 =item Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
3789 (W ambiguous) You said something like C<m/$\/> in a regex.
3790 The regex C<m/foo$\s+bar/m> translates to: match the word 'foo', the output
3791 record separator (see L<perlvar/$\>) and the letter 's' (one time or more)
3792 followed by the word 'bar'.
3794 If this is what you intended then you can silence the warning by using
3795 C<m/${\}/> (for example: C<m/foo${\}s+bar/>).
3797 If instead you intended to match the word 'foo' at the end of the line
3798 followed by whitespace and the word 'bar' on the next line then you can use
3799 C<m/$(?)\/> (for example: C<m/foo$(?)\s+bar/>).
3801 =item Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
3803 (S precedence) The old irregular construct
3807 is now misinterpreted as
3811 because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and
3812 list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must put
3813 parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead
3816 =item Premature end of script headers
3820 =item printf() on closed filehandle %s
3822 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
3823 before now. Check your control flow.
3825 =item print() on closed filehandle %s
3827 (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime
3828 before now. Check your control flow.
3830 =item Process terminated by SIG%s
3832 (W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix
3833 applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the OS/2
3834 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see
3835 L<perlipc/"Signals">. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT"
3838 =item Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
3840 (W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is useless,
3841 since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments.
3843 =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
3845 (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been
3846 declared or defined with a different function prototype.
3848 =item Prototype not terminated
3850 (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
3853 =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3855 (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you
3856 meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
3857 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3859 =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3861 (F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the
3862 {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
3863 the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
3865 =item Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3867 (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place where
3868 it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the
3869 quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match
3870 "abc" provided that it is followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is
3871 C</abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/>, not C</abc(?=xyz){3}/>.
3873 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3876 =item Range iterator outside integer range
3878 (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".."
3879 are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally.
3880 One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment
3881 by prepending "0" to your numbers.
3883 =item readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
3885 (W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not really
3886 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
3888 =item readline() on closed filehandle %s
3890 (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime
3891 before now. Check your control flow.
3893 =item read() on closed filehandle %s
3895 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
3897 =item read() on unopened filehandle %s
3899 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
3901 =item Reallocation too large: %x
3903 (F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
3905 =item realloc() of freed memory ignored
3907 (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had
3910 =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch
3912 (F debugging) You can't use the B<-D> option unless the code to produce
3913 the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some overhead,
3914 which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
3916 =item Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
3918 (F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, Perl
3919 believes it found an infinite loop in the C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a
3920 crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth.
3922 =item Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
3924 (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking
3925 a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance
3928 =item Reference found where even-sized list expected
3930 (W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
3931 with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually
3932 means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant to use
3933 parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value B<pairs>.
3935 %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
3936 %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
3937 %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
3938 %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
3940 =item Reference is already weak
3942 (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak.
3943 Doing so has no effect.
3945 =item Reference miscount in sv_replace()
3947 (W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with
3948 a reference count of other than 1.
3950 =item Reference to invalid group 0
3952 (F) You used C<\g0> or similar in a regular expression. You may refer to
3953 capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers (normal
3954 backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
3955 backreferences), but using 0 does not make sense.
3957 =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3959 (F) You used something like C<\7> in your regular expression, but there are
3960 not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. If you
3961 wanted to have the character with ordinal 7 inserted into the regular expression,
3962 prepend zeroes to make it three digits long: C<\007>
3964 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3967 =item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3969 (F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there are
3970 not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the expression before
3971 where the C<\g{-7}> was located.
3973 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3976 =item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3978 (F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k<NAME> >> in your regular
3979 expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses such
3980 as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<(?<NAME>...). Check if the name has been spelled
3981 correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
3983 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3986 =item (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
3988 (F) You used something like C<(?(DEFINE)...|..)> which is illegal. The
3989 most likely cause of this error is that you left out a parenthesis inside
3990 of the C<....> part.
3992 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
3995 =item regexp memory corruption
3997 (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
3998 expression compiler gave it.
4000 =item Regexp out of space
4002 (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it
4005 =item Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompatible)
4007 (F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
4008 numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
4009 terminates. You might use ^# instead. See L<perlform>.
4011 =item Replacement list is longer than search list
4013 (W misc) You have used a replacement list that is longer than the
4014 search list. So the additional elements in the replacement list
4017 =item Reversed %s= operator
4019 (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
4020 always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators.
4022 =item rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4024 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either closed or not
4025 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4027 =item Scalars leaked: %d
4029 (P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of scalars:
4030 not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl exited.
4031 What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of course bad,
4032 especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-running.
4034 =item Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
4036 (W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
4037 single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
4038 value (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always
4039 behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4040 argument, while C<@foo[&bar]> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4041 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4042 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4044 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
4045 element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because
4046 Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4049 =item Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
4051 (W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a single
4052 element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar value
4053 (indicated by $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves
4054 like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its
4055 argument, while C<@foo{&bar}> behaves like a list when you assign to it,
4056 and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things
4057 if you're expecting only one subscript.
4059 On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element
4060 as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will
4061 not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See
4064 =item Search pattern not terminated
4066 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
4067 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4068 Missing the leading C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error.
4070 Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the I<defined-or>
4071 construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written
4072 in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the // as the I<defined-or> can be
4073 misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern.
4075 =item Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
4077 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a C<?PATTERN?>
4080 The question mark is also used as part of the ternary operator (as in
4081 C<foo ? 0 : 1>) leading to some ambiguous constructions being wrongly
4082 parsed. One way to disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses around
4083 the conditional expression, i.e. C<(foo) ? 0 : 1>.
4085 =item %sseek() on unopened filehandle
4087 (W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
4088 filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
4090 =item seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4092 (W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed or not
4093 really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4095 =item select not implemented
4097 (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
4099 =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
4101 (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in
4102 the current implementation.
4104 =item Semicolon seems to be missing
4106 (W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
4107 semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
4109 =item semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
4111 (S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate a
4112 scalar that had previously been marked as free.
4114 =item sem%s not implemented
4116 (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
4118 =item send() on closed socket %s
4120 (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
4121 before now. Check your control flow.
4123 =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4125 (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The <-- HERE
4126 shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4129 =item Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4131 (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but
4132 has not yet been written. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4133 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4135 =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4137 (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The
4138 <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4139 discovered. This happens when using the C<(?^...)> construct to tell
4140 Perl to use the default regular expression modifiers, and you
4141 redundantly specify a default modifier; or having a modifier that can't
4142 be turned off (such as C<"p"> or C<"l">) after a minus; or specifying
4143 more than one of the C<"d">, C<"l">, or C<"u"> modifiers. For other
4144 causes, see L<perlre>.
4146 =item Sequence \%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4148 (F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument following the escape
4149 sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly written.
4151 =item Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4153 (F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
4154 parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. The <-- HERE shows in
4155 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4158 =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4160 (F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains braces, they must balance
4161 for Perl to properly detect the end of the clause. The <-- HERE shows in
4162 the regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
4165 =item "500 Server error"
4171 (A) This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when trying
4172 to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The actual error text
4173 varies widely from server to server. The most frequently-seen variants
4174 are "500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted", "Document
4175 contains no data", "Premature end of script headers", and "Did not
4176 produce a valid header".
4178 B<This is a CGI error, not a Perl error>.
4180 You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the
4181 user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user
4182 account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment variables
4183 (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a
4184 location where the CGI server can't find it, basically, more or less.
4185 Please see the following for more information:
4187 http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
4188 http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
4189 http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
4191 You should also look at L<perlfaq9>.
4193 =item setegid() not implemented
4195 (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't
4196 support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4199 =item seteuid() not implemented
4201 (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't
4202 support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4205 =item setpgrp can't take arguments
4207 (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
4208 arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process
4211 =item setrgid() not implemented
4213 (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't
4214 support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4217 =item setruid() not implemented
4219 (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't
4220 support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure
4223 =item setsockopt() on closed socket %s
4225 (W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did you
4226 forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
4227 L<perlfunc/setsockopt>.
4229 =item Setuid/gid script is writable by world
4231 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writable by the
4232 world, because the world might have written on it already.
4234 =item Setuid script not plain file
4236 (F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that isn't read from a file,
4237 but from a socket, a pipe or another device.
4239 =item shm%s not implemented
4241 (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
4243 =item !=~ should be !~
4245 (W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
4246 interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
4247 operators: probably not what you intended.
4249 =item <> should be quotes
4251 (F) You wrote C<< require <file> >> when you should have written
4254 =item /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
4256 (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string,
4257 as in the first argument to C<join>. Perl will treat the true or false
4258 result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
4259 probably not what you had in mind.
4261 =item shutdown() on closed socket %s
4263 (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit
4266 =item SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
4268 (W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
4269 Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
4271 =item Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks encapsulation
4273 (F) You should not use the C<~~> operator on an object that does not
4274 overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's underlying structure for
4277 =item sort is now a reserved word
4279 (F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into anymore.
4280 But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a filehandle.
4282 =item Sort subroutine didn't return single value
4284 (F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list value with more
4285 or less than one element. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4287 =item splice() offset past end of array
4289 (W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
4290 the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the end
4291 of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want, try
4292 explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset. See
4297 (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
4298 iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
4299 happened.) See L<perlfunc/split>.
4301 =item Statement unlikely to be reached
4303 (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
4304 die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
4305 unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
4306 instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in
4309 =item "state" variable %s can't be in a package
4311 (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make
4312 sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use
4313 local() if you want to localize a package variable.
4315 =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s
4317 (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that
4318 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4320 =item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
4322 (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation
4323 stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to
4324 C<can> may break this.
4326 =item Subroutine %s redefined
4328 (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say
4331 no warnings 'redefine';
4332 eval "sub name { ... }";
4335 =item Substitution loop
4337 (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substitution
4338 shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which
4339 is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
4340 L<perlop/"Regexp Quote-Like Operators">.
4342 =item Substitution pattern not terminated
4344 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4345 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4346 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4348 =item Substitution replacement not terminated
4350 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
4351 construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
4352 Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error.
4354 =item substr outside of string
4356 (W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of
4357 a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger than the
4358 length of the string. See L<perlfunc/substr>. This warning is fatal if
4359 substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an
4360 assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
4362 =item sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
4364 (P) Perl tried to force the upgrade an SV to a type which was actually
4365 inferior to its current type.
4367 =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4369 (F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two
4370 branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both to
4371 contain alternation, such as using C<this|that|other>, enclose it in
4372 clustering parentheses:
4374 (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
4376 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4377 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4379 =item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4381 (F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct is a
4382 number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
4383 about where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4385 =item switching effective %s is not implemented
4387 (F) While under the C<use filetest> pragma, we cannot switch the real
4388 and effective uids or gids.
4392 (F) The final summary message when a C<perl -c> succeeds.
4396 (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
4398 A keyword is misspelled.
4399 A semicolon is missing.
4401 An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
4402 An opening or closing brace is missing.
4403 A closing quote is missing.
4405 Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
4406 error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on B<-w>.)
4407 The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line when
4408 it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens
4409 before this, because Perl is good at understanding random input.
4410 Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon
4411 the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call
4412 C<perl -c> repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see
4413 if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20
4416 =item syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
4418 (A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead
4419 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
4422 =item syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
4424 (F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
4425 a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use strict"
4426 or "my $var" or "our $var".
4428 =item sysread() on closed filehandle %s
4430 (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
4432 =item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
4434 (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
4436 =item System V %s is not implemented on this machine
4438 (F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
4439 "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
4440 machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
4441 unconfigured. Consult your system support.
4443 =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
4445 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
4446 before now. Check your control flow.
4448 =item C<-T> and C<-B> not implemented on filehandles
4450 (F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't
4451 know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a filename instead.
4453 =item Target of goto is too deeply nested
4455 (F) You tried to use C<goto> to reach a label that was too deeply nested
4456 for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
4458 =item tell() on unopened filehandle
4460 (W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle that
4461 was either never opened or has since been closed.
4463 =item telldir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
4465 (W io) The dirhandle you tried to telldir() is either closed or not really
4466 a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
4468 =item That use of $[ is unsupported
4470 (F) Assignment to C<$[> is now strictly circumscribed, and interpreted
4471 as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
4480 This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
4481 from under another module inadvertently. See L<perlvar/$[>.
4483 =item The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
4485 (F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
4486 probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
4487 think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they
4488 will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I
4491 =item The %s function is unimplemented
4493 (F) The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according
4494 to the probings of Configure.
4496 =item The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
4498 (F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
4499 linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
4500 past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
4503 =item The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
4505 (F) This attribute was never supported on C<my> or C<sub> declarations.
4507 =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
4509 =item This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
4511 (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or delete an
4512 element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl
4513 wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll
4514 need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
4515 F<PERL_ENV_TABLES> (see L<perlvms>) so that the environ array isn't the
4516 target of the change to
4517 %ENV which produced the warning.
4519 =item thread failed to start: %s
4521 (W threads)(S) The entry point function of threads->create() failed for some reason.
4523 =item times not implemented
4525 (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
4526 suspect you're not running on Unix.
4528 =item "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
4530 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4531 B<-T> option (or the B<-t> option), but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line.
4532 This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-T> in a
4533 script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment.
4536 If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
4537 mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by
4538 editing the #! line so that the B<-%c> option is a part of Perl's first
4539 argument: e.g. change C<perl -n -%c> to C<perl -%c -n>.
4541 If the Perl script is being executed as C<perl scriptname>, then the
4542 B<-%c> option must appear on the command line: C<perl -%c scriptname>.
4544 =item To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
4546 (F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
4547 uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
4548 specified an illegal mapping.
4549 See L<perlunicode/"User-Defined Character Properties">.
4551 =item Too deeply nested ()-groups
4553 (F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level.
4555 =item Too few args to syscall
4557 (F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the
4558 system call to call, silly dilly.
4560 =item Too late for "-%s" option
4562 (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
4563 B<-M>, B<-m> or B<-C> option.
4565 In the case of B<-M> and B<-m>, this is an error because those options are
4566 not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C<use> pragma instead.
4568 The B<-C> option only works if it is specified on the command line as well
4569 (with the same sequence of letters or numbers following). Either specify
4570 this option on the command line, or, if your system supports it, make your
4571 script executable and run it directly instead of passing it to perl.
4573 =item Too late to run %s block
4575 (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper,
4576 when the opportunity to run them has already passed. Perhaps you are
4577 loading a file with C<require> or C<do> when you should be using C<use>
4578 instead. Or perhaps you should put the C<require> or C<do> inside a
4581 =item Too many args to syscall
4583 (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
4585 =item Too many arguments for %s
4587 (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
4591 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4592 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4596 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4597 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4599 =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
4601 (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
4602 Backslash it. See L<perlre>.
4604 =item Transliteration pattern not terminated
4606 (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][]
4607 or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables
4608 C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error.
4610 =item Transliteration replacement not terminated
4612 (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][],
4613 y/// or y[][] construct.
4615 =item '%s' trapped by operation mask
4617 (F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's
4618 disallowed. See L<Safe>.
4620 =item truncate not implemented
4622 (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
4623 Configure knows about.
4625 =item Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
4627 (F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
4628 certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be
4629 %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
4630 {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L<perlref>.
4632 =item Type of argument to %s must be hashref or arrayref
4634 (F) You called C<keys>, C<values> or C<each> with an argument that was
4635 expected to be a reference to a hash or a reference to an array.
4637 =item umask not implemented
4639 (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried to
4640 use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
4642 =item Unable to create sub named "%s"
4644 (F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with an illegal name.
4646 =item Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
4648 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4649 many execution contexts were entered and left.
4651 =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
4653 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4654 many values were temporarily localized.
4656 =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
4658 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4659 many blocks were entered and left.
4661 =item Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
4663 (W internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
4664 many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
4666 =item Undefined format "%s" called
4668 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4669 another package? See L<perlform>.
4671 =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
4673 (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
4674 Perhaps it's in a different package? See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4676 =item Undefined subroutine &%s called
4678 (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has
4679 since been undefined.
4681 =item Undefined subroutine called
4683 (F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been defined,
4684 or if it was, it has since been undefined.
4686 =item Undefined subroutine in sort
4688 (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem
4689 to have been defined yet. See L<perlfunc/sort>.
4691 =item Undefined top format "%s" called
4693 (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in
4694 another package? See L<perlform>.
4696 =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob
4698 (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
4699 C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
4702 =item %s: Undefined variable
4704 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead of Perl.
4705 Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
4707 =item unexec of %s into %s failed!
4709 (F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local FSF
4710 representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
4712 =item Unicode non-character U+%X is illegal for open interchange
4714 (W utf8) Certain codepoints, such as U+FFFE and U+FFFF, are defined by the
4715 Unicode standard to be non-characters. Those are legal codepoints, but are
4716 reserved for internal use; so, applications shouldn't attempt to exchange
4717 them. If you know what you are doing you can turn
4718 off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
4720 =item Unknown BYTEORDER
4722 (F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this byte
4725 =item Unknown open() mode '%s'
4727 (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
4728 of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>,
4729 C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->, C<< <& >>, C<< >& >>.
4731 =item Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
4733 (W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O
4734 system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and
4735 internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C<mmap>,
4736 are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't
4737 explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the
4738 value of the environment variable PERLIO.
4740 =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
4742 (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before
4743 iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of
4744 data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to
4745 subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
4747 =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
4749 (W) You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
4751 =item Unknown switch condition (?(%s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4753 (F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct
4754 is not known. The condition may be lookahead or lookbehind (the condition
4755 is true if the lookahead or lookbehind is true), a (?{...}) construct (the
4756 condition is true if the code evaluates to a true value), or a number (the
4757 condition is true if the set of capturing parentheses named by the number
4760 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
4761 discovered. See L<perlre>.
4763 =item Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
4765 (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4766 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4768 =item Unknown Unicode option value %x
4770 (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See L<perlrun> documentation
4771 of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options.
4773 =item Unknown warnings category '%s'
4775 (F) An error issued by the C<warnings> pragma. You specified a warnings
4776 category that is unknown to perl at this point.
4778 Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a module
4779 (e.g. C<use warnings 'File::Find'>), you must have imported this module
4781 =item Unknown verb pattern '%s' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4783 (F) You either made a typo or have incorrectly put a C<*> quantifier
4784 after an open brace in your pattern. Check the pattern and review
4785 L<perlre> for details on legal verb patterns.
4789 =item unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4791 (F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish to
4792 include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it
4793 first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem
4794 was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4796 =item unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4798 (F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
4799 expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the
4800 matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4801 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4803 =item Unmatched right %s bracket
4805 (F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening
4806 ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a
4807 general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place
4808 you were last editing.
4810 =item Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
4812 (W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
4813 reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it
4814 somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a
4817 =item Unrecognized character %s; marked by <-- HERE after %s near column %d
4819 (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character
4820 in your Perl script (or eval) near the specified column. Perhaps you tried
4821 to run a compressed script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program.
4823 =item Unrecognized escape \%c in character class passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4825 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4826 recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
4827 understood literally, but this may change in a future version of Perl.
4828 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4829 escape was discovered.
4831 =item Unrecognized escape \%c passed through
4833 (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4834 recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally, but this may
4835 change in a future version of Perl.
4837 =item Unrecognized escape \%s passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4839 (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
4840 recognized by Perl. The character(s) were understood literally, but this may
4841 change in a future version of Perl.
4842 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
4843 escape was discovered.
4845 =item Unrecognized signal name "%s"
4847 (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
4848 recognized. Say C<kill -l> in your shell to see the valid signal names
4851 =item Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
4853 (F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If you
4854 think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's supplying the
4855 bad switch on your behalf.)
4857 =item Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
4859 (W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
4860 operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
4861 PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See L<perlfunc/chomp>.
4863 =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called
4865 (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
4867 =item Unsupported function %s
4869 (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently.
4870 At least, Configure doesn't think so.
4872 =item Unsupported function fork
4874 (F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
4876 Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors
4877 of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some not. Try
4878 changing the name you call Perl by to C<perl_>, C<perl__>, and so on.
4880 =item Unsupported script encoding %s
4882 (F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which
4883 declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot read.
4885 =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called
4887 (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at
4888 least that's what Configure thought.
4890 =item Unterminated attribute list
4892 (F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
4893 start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
4894 block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
4895 attribute too soon. See L<attributes>.
4897 =item Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
4899 (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while parsing
4900 an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis
4901 character was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
4902 character to get your parentheses to balance. See L<attributes>.
4904 =item Unterminated compressed integer
4906 (F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
4907 compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
4908 See L<perlfunc/pack>.
4910 =item Unterminated verb pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4912 (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB)> but did not terminate
4913 the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
4915 =item Unterminated verb pattern argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4917 (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB:ARG)> but did not terminate
4918 the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry.
4920 =item Unterminated \g{...} pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4922 (F) You missed a close brace on a \g{..} pattern (group reference) in
4923 a regular expression. Fix the pattern and retry.
4925 =item Unterminated <> operator
4927 (F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting
4928 a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and
4929 not finding it. Chances are you left some needed parentheses out
4930 earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
4932 =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
4934 (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C<tie> (or C<tied>) was
4935 still valid when C<untie> was called.
4937 =item Usage: POSIX::%s(%s)
4939 (F) You called a POSIX function with incorrect arguments.
4940 See L<POSIX/FUNCTIONS> for more information.
4942 =item Usage: Win32::%s(%s)
4944 (F) You called a Win32 function with incorrect arguments.
4945 See L<Win32> for more information.
4947 =item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4949 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no
4950 meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
4952 if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
4956 if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
4958 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4959 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4961 =item Useless localization of %s
4963 (W syntax) The localization of lvalues such as C<local($x=10)> is
4964 legal, but in fact the local() currently has no effect. This may change at
4965 some point in the future, but in the meantime such code is discouraged.
4967 =item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
4969 (W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no
4970 meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
4972 if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
4976 if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
4978 The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
4979 where the problem was discovered. See L<perlre>.
4981 =item Useless use of /d modifier in transliteration operator
4983 (W misc) You have used the /d modifier where the searchlist has the
4984 same length as the replacelist. See L<perlop> for more information
4985 about the /d modifier.
4987 =item Useless use of %s in void context
4989 (W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that does
4990 nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't return a
4991 value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very
4992 often this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure of Perl
4993 to parse your program the way you thought it would. For example, you'd
4994 get this if you mixed up your C precedence with Python precedence and
4999 when you meant to say
5001 ($one, $two) = (1, 2);
5003 Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a list
5004 reference when you should be using square or curly brackets, for
5009 when you should have said
5013 The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value,
5014 while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is evaluated in
5015 a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma operator, which
5016 throws away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
5017 L<perlref> for more on this.
5019 This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1
5020 since they are often used in statements like
5022 1 while sub_with_side_effects();
5024 String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
5027 =item Useless use of "re" pragma
5029 (W) You did C<use re;> without any arguments. That isn't very useful.
5031 =item Useless use of sort in scalar context
5033 (W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
5037 This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
5039 =item Useless use of %s with no values
5041 (W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments
5042 apart from the array, like C<push(@x)> or C<unshift(@foo)>. That won't
5043 usually have any effect on the array, so is completely useless. It's
5044 possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
5045 if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so,
5046 you can write it as C<push(@tied_array,())> to avoid this warning.
5048 =item "use" not allowed in expression
5050 (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
5051 returns no useful value. See L<perlmod>.
5053 =item Use of assignment to $[ is deprecated
5055 (D deprecated) The C<$[> variable (index of the first element in an array)
5056 is deprecated. See L<perlvar/"$[">.
5058 =item Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
5060 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly quoted
5061 form if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
5063 =item Use of comma-less variable list is deprecated
5065 (D deprecated) The values you give to a format should be
5066 separated by commas, not just aligned on a line.
5068 =item Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
5070 (D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented to change to
5071 $ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef) and chdir('') share this
5072 behavior, but that has been deprecated. In future versions they
5075 Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is defined and not
5076 blank, else you might find yourself in your home directory.
5078 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
5080 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution. The /c
5081 modifier is not presently meaningful in substitutions.
5083 =item Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
5085 (W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't
5086 use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is
5087 used. (This may change in the future.)
5089 =item Use of := for an empty attribute list is not allowed
5091 (F) The construction C<my $x := 42> used to parse as equivalent to
5092 C<my $x : = 42> (applying an empty attribute list to C<$x>).
5093 This construct was deprecated in 5.12.0, and has now been made a syntax
5094 error, so C<:=> can be reclaimed as a new operator in the future.
5096 If you need an empty attribute list, for example in a code generator, add
5097 a space before the C<=>.
5099 =item Use of ?PATTERN? without explicit operator is deprecated
5101 (D deprecated) You have written something like C<?\w?>, for a regular
5102 expression that matches only once. Starting this term directly with
5103 the question mark delimiter is now deprecated, so that the question mark
5104 will be available for use in new operators in the future. Write C<m?\w?>
5105 instead, explicitly using the C<m> operator: the question mark delimiter
5106 still invokes match-once behaviour.
5108 =item Use of freed value in iteration
5110 (F) Perhaps you modified the iterated array within the loop?
5111 This error is typically caused by code like the following:
5114 @a = () for (1,2,@a);
5116 You are not supposed to modify arrays while they are being iterated over.
5117 For speed and efficiency reasons, Perl internally does not do full
5118 reference-counting of iterated items, hence deleting such an item in the
5119 middle of an iteration causes Perl to see a freed value.
5121 =item Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
5123 (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter *glob{IO} form
5124 to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
5126 =item Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
5128 (W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a C<split>
5129 operator. Since C<split> always tries to match the pattern
5130 repeatedly, the C</g> has no effect.
5132 =item Use of "goto" to jump into a construct is deprecated
5134 (D deprecated) Using C<goto> to jump from an outer scope into an inner
5135 scope is deprecated and should be avoided.
5137 =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
5139 (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, C<AUTOLOAD> subroutines
5140 are looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy) even when the
5141 subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g.
5142 C<Foo::bar()>), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<<
5145 This bug will be rectified in future by using method lookup only for
5146 methods' C<AUTOLOAD>s. However, there is a significant base of existing
5147 code that may be using the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
5148 currently issues an optional warning when non-methods use inherited
5151 The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when autoloading
5152 non-methods. The simple fix for old code is: In any module that used
5153 to depend on inheriting C<AUTOLOAD> for non-methods from a base class
5154 named C<BaseClass>, execute C<*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD> during
5157 In code that currently says C<use AutoLoader; @ISA = qw(AutoLoader);>
5158 you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA and change C<use AutoLoader;> to
5159 C<use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';>.
5161 =item Use of %s in printf format not supported
5163 (F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
5164 only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
5166 =item Use of %s is deprecated
5168 (D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for use,
5169 generally because there's a better way to do it, and also because the
5170 old way has bad side effects.
5172 =item Use of %s on a handle without * is deprecated
5174 (D deprecated) You used C<tie>, C<tied> or C<untie> on a scalar but that
5175 scalar happens to hold a typeglob, which means its filehandle will
5176 be tied. If you mean to tie a handle, use an explicit * as in
5179 This is a long-standing bug that will be removed in Perl 5.16, as
5180 there is currently no way to tie the scalar itself when it holds
5181 a typeglob, and no way to untie a scalar that has had a typeglob
5184 =item Use of -l on filehandle %s
5186 (W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file
5187 it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for.
5188 The operation returned C<undef>. Use a filename instead.
5190 =item Use of "package" with no arguments is deprecated
5192 (D deprecated) You used the C<package> keyword without specifying a package
5193 name. So no namespace is current at all. Using this can cause many
5194 otherwise reasonable constructs to fail in baffling ways. C<use strict;>
5197 =item Use of qw(...) as parentheses is deprecated
5199 (D deprecated) You have something like C<foreach $x qw(a b c) {...}>,
5200 using a C<qw(...)> list literal where a parenthesised expression is
5201 expected. Historically the parser fooled itself into thinking that
5202 C<qw(...)> literals were always enclosed in parentheses, and as a result
5203 you could sometimes omit parentheses around them. (You could never do
5204 the C<foreach qw(a b c) {...}> that you might have expected, though.)
5205 The parser no longer lies to itself in this way. Wrap the list literal
5206 in parentheses, like C<foreach $x (qw(a b c)) {...}>.
5208 =item Use of reference "%s" as array index
5210 (W misc) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably
5211 isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend
5212 to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error.
5214 If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
5215 C<$array[0+$ref]>. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
5216 either, because you can overload the numification and stringification
5217 operators and then you presumably know what you are doing.
5219 =item Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
5221 (D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
5222 versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
5223 explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context of
5224 use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
5225 suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a C<&> prefix, or using
5226 a package qualifier, e.g. C<&our()>, or C<Foo::our()>.
5228 =item Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
5230 (W taint, deprecated) You have supplied C<system()> or C<exec()> with multiple
5231 arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used to be allowed
5232 but will become a fatal error in a future version of perl. Untaint your
5233 arguments. See L<perlsec>.
5235 =item Use of uninitialized value%s
5237 (W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
5238 defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a mistake.
5239 To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your variables.
5241 To help you figure out what was undefined, perl will try to tell you the
5242 name of the variable (if any) that was undefined. In some cases it cannot
5243 do this, so it also tells you what operation you used the undefined value
5244 in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your program and the operation
5245 displayed in the warning may not necessarily appear literally in your
5246 program. For example, C<"that $foo"> is usually optimized into C<"that "
5247 . $foo>, and the warning will refer to the C<concatenation (.)> operator,
5248 even though there is no C<.> in your program.
5250 =item Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
5252 (D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in
5253 C<< %foo->{"bar"} >> or C<< %$ref->{"hello"} >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1
5254 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will
5255 be removed in a future version.
5257 =item Using an array as a reference is deprecated
5259 (D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in
5260 C<< @foo->[23] >> or C<< @$ref->[99] >>. Versions of perl <= 5.6.1 used to
5261 allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will be
5262 removed in a future version.
5264 =item Using !~ with %s doesn't make sense
5266 (F) Using the C<!~> operator with C<s///r>, C<tr///r> or C<y///r> is
5267 currently reserved for future use, as the exact behaviour has not
5268 been decided. (Simply returning the boolean opposite of the
5269 modified string is usually not particularly useful.)
5271 =item Using just the first character returned by \N{} in character class
5273 (W) A charnames handler may return a sequence of more than one character.
5274 Currently all but the first one are discarded when used in a regular
5275 expression pattern bracketed character class.
5277 =item Using just the first characters returned by \N{}
5279 (W) A charnames handler may return a sequence of characters. There is a finite
5280 limit as to the number of characters that can be used, which this sequence
5281 exceeded. In the message, the characters in the sequence are separated by
5282 dots, and each is shown by its ordinal in hex. Anything to the left of the
5283 C<HERE> was retained; anything to the right was discarded.
5285 =item Unicode surrogate U+%X is illegal in UTF-8
5287 =item UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
5289 (W utf8) You had a UTF-16 surrogate in a context where they are
5290 not considered acceptable. These code points, between U+D800 and
5291 U+DFFF (inclusive), are used by Unicode only for UTF-16. However, Perl
5292 internally allows all unsigned integer code points (up to the size limit
5293 available on your platform), including surrogates. But these can cause
5294 problems when being input or output, which is likely where this message
5295 came from. If you really really know what you are doing you can turn
5296 off this warning by C<no warnings 'utf8';>.
5298 =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
5300 (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
5301 C<each()>, or C<readdir()> as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
5302 can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional expression
5303 false, which is probably not what you intended. When using these
5304 constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the
5305 C<defined> operator.
5307 =item Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
5309 (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an
5310 %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string
5311 longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to
5314 =item Variable "%s" is not available
5316 (W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is
5317 attempting to capture an outer lexical that is not currently available.
5318 This can happen for one of two reasons. First, the outer lexical may be
5319 declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that has not yet been created.
5320 (Remember that named subs are created at compile time, while anonymous
5321 subs are created at run-time.) For example,
5323 sub { my $a; sub f { $a } }
5325 At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current value of $a,
5326 since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely,
5327 the following won't give a warning since the anonymous subroutine has by
5328 now been created and is live:
5330 sub { my $a; eval 'sub f { $a }' }->();
5332 The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a variable that has
5333 gone out of scope, for example,
5341 Here, when the '$a' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not currently being
5342 executed, so its $a is not available for capture.
5344 =item Variable "%s" is not imported%s
5346 (W misc) With "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global variable
5347 that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because
5348 something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by
5349 that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the
5350 front of your variable.
5352 =item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in m/%s/
5354 (F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and
5355 known at compile time. See L<perlre>.
5357 =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
5359 (W misc) A "my", "our" or "state" variable has been redeclared in the current
5360 scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the previous
5361 instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note that the
5362 earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope or until
5363 all closure referents to it are destroyed.
5365 =item Variable syntax
5367 (A) You've accidentally run your script through B<csh> instead
5368 of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into
5371 =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared
5373 (W closure) An inner (nested) I<named> subroutine is referencing a
5374 lexical variable defined in an outer named subroutine.
5376 When the inner subroutine is called, it will see the value of
5377 the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
5378 call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to the
5379 outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no
5380 longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the
5381 variable will no longer be shared.
5383 This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
5384 anonymous, using the C<sub {}> syntax. When inner anonymous subs that
5385 reference variables in outer subroutines are created, they
5386 are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
5388 =item Verb pattern '%s' has a mandatory argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5390 (F) You used a verb pattern that requires an argument. Supply an argument
5391 or check that you are using the right verb.
5393 =item Verb pattern '%s' may not have an argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
5395 (F) You used a verb pattern that is not allowed an argument. Remove the
5396 argument or check that you are using the right verb.
5398 =item Version number must be a constant number
5400 (P) The attempt to translate a C<use Module n.n LIST> statement into
5401 its equivalent C<BEGIN> block found an internal inconsistency with
5404 =item Version string '%s' contains invalid data; ignoring: '%s'
5406 (W misc) The version string contains invalid characters at the end, which
5409 =item Warning: something's wrong
5411 (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C<warn "">) or
5412 you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty.
5414 =item Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
5416 (S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on
5417 the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk
5420 =item Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
5422 (S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that
5423 looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a
5424 term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand
5425 function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
5429 you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
5433 but in actual fact, you got
5437 So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
5439 =item Wide character in %s
5441 (S utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't expecting
5442 one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print). The easiest
5443 way to quiet this warning is simply to add the C<:utf8> layer to the
5444 output, e.g. C<binmode STDOUT, ':utf8'>. Another way to turn off the
5445 warning is to add C<no warnings 'utf8';> but that is often closer to
5446 cheating. In general, you are supposed to explicitly mark the
5447 filehandle with an encoding, see L<open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>.
5449 =item Within []-length '%c' not allowed
5451 (F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by C<[TEMPLATE]> only if
5452 C<TEMPLATE> always matches the same amount of packed bytes that can be
5453 determined from the template alone. This is not possible if it contains an
5454 of the codes @, /, U, u, w or a *-length. Redesign the template.
5456 =item write() on closed filehandle %s
5458 (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime
5459 before now. Check your control flow.
5461 =item %s "\x%X" does not map to Unicode
5463 (F) When reading in different encodings Perl tries to map everything
5464 into Unicode characters. The bytes you read in are not legal in
5465 this encoding, for example
5467 utf8 "\xE4" does not map to Unicode
5469 if you try to read in the a-diaereses Latin-1 as UTF-8.
5471 =item 'X' outside of string
5473 (F) You had a (un)pack template that specified a relative position before
5474 the beginning of the string being (un)packed. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5476 =item 'x' outside of string in unpack
5478 (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after
5479 the end of the string being unpacked. See L<perlfunc/pack>.
5481 =item YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
5483 (F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
5484 sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
5485 about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around
5488 =item You need to quote "%s"
5490 (W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name.
5491 Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of that name declared,
5492 which means that Perl 5 will try to call the subroutine when the
5493 assignment is executed, which is probably not what you want. (If it IS
5494 what you want, put an & in front.)
5496 =item Your random numbers are not that random
5498 (F) When trying to initialise the random seed for hashes, Perl could
5499 not get any randomness out of your system. This usually indicates
5500 Something Very Wrong.
5506 L<warnings>, L<perllexwarn>.