PERLDIAG(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLDIAG(1)
perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
These messages are classified as follows (listed in increas-
ing order of desperation):
(W) A warning (optional).
(D) A deprecation (optional).
(S) A severe warning (default).
(F) A fatal error (trappable).
(P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
(X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
(A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
The majority of messages from the first three classifica-
tions above (W, D & S) can be controlled using the "warn-
ings" pragma.
If a message can be controlled by the "warnings" pragma, its
warning category is included with the classification letter
in the description below.
Optional warnings are enabled by using the "warnings" pragma
or the -w and -W switches. Warnings may be captured by set-
ting $SIG{__WARN__} to a reference to a routine that will be
called on each warning instead of printing it. See perlvar.
Default warnings are always enabled unless they are expli-
citly disabled with the "warnings" pragma or the -X switch.
Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator.
See "eval" in perlfunc. In almost all cases, warnings may
be selectively disabled or promoted to fatal errors using
the "warnings" pragma. See warnings.
The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to
upper or lower-case. Some of these messages are generic.
Spots that vary are denoted with a %s or other printf-style
escape. These escapes are ignored by the alphabetical
order, as are all characters other than letters. To look up
your message, just ignore anything that is not a letter.
accept() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket.
Did you forget to check the return value of your
socket() call? See "accept" in perlfunc.
Allocation too large: %lx
(X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS
machine.
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'!' allowed only after types %s
(F) The '!' is allowed in pack() or unpack() only after
certain types. See "pack" in perlfunc.
Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
(W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the
same name as a Perl keyword, and you have used the name
without qualification for calling one or the other.
Perl decided to call the builtin because the subroutine
is not imported.
To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put
an ampersand before the subroutine name, or qualify the
name with its package. Alternatively, you can import the
subroutine (or pretend that it's imported with the "use
subs" pragma).
To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the
"CORE::" prefix on the operator (e.g. "CORE::log($x)")
or declare the subroutine to be an object method (see
"Subroutine Attributes" in perlsub or attributes).
Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
(F) You wrote something like "tr/a-z-0//" which doesn't
mean anything at all. To include a "-" character in a
transliteration, put it either first or last. (In the
past, "tr/a-z-0//" was synonymous with "tr/a-y//", which
was probably not what you would have expected.)
Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
(W ambiguous)(S) You said something that may not be
interpreted the way you thought. Normally it's pretty
easy to disambiguate it by supplying a missing quote,
operator, parenthesis pair or declaration.
'|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command
line redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and
that you also tried to redirect STDIN using '<'. Only
one STDIN stream to a customer, please.
'|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command
line redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect
stdout both to a file and into a pipe to another com-
mand. You need to choose one or the other, though
nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or
Perl script which 'splits' output into two streams, such
as
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open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
while (<STDIN>) {
print;
print OUT;
}
close OUT;
Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
(W misc) The pattern match ("//"), substitution
("s///"), and transliteration ("tr///") operators work
on scalar values. If you apply one of them to an array
or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to a scalar
value -- the length of an array, or the population info
of a hash -- and then work on that scalar value. This
is probably not what you meant to do. See "grep" in
perlfunc and "map" in perlfunc for alternatives.
Args must match #! line
(F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl
was invoked with match the arguments specified on the #!
line. Since some systems impose a one-argument limit on
the #! line, try combining switches; for example, turn
"-w -U" into "-wU".
Arg too short for msgsnd
(F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as
sizeof(long).
%s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element
(F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array
element, such as:
$foo{$bar}
$ref->{"susie"}[12]
%s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
(F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or
array element, such as:
$foo{$bar}
$ref->{"susie"}[12]
or a hash or array slice, such as:
@foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
@{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}
%s argument is not a subroutine name
(F) The argument to exists() for "exists &sub" must be a
subroutine name, and not a subroutine call. "exists
&sub()" will generate this error.
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Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
(W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument
to an operator that expected a numeric value instead.
If you're fortunate the message will identify which
operator was so unfortunate.
Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
(W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the
Perl I/O system you forgot the ) that closes the argu-
ment list. (Layers take care of transforming data
between external and internal representations.) Perl
stopped parsing the layer list at this point and did not
attempt to push this layer. If your program didn't
explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the
result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
Array @%s missing the @ in argument %d of %s()
(D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the @ on
array names in some spots. This is now heavily depre-
cated.
assertion botched: %s
(P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an
internal failure.
Assertion failed: file "%s"
(P) A general assertion failed. The file in question
must be examined.
Assignment to both a list and a scalar
(F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and
3rd arguments must either both be scalars or both be
lists. Otherwise Perl won't know which context to sup-
ply to the right side.
A thread exited while %d threads were running
(W threads)(S) When using threaded Perl, a thread (not
necessarily the main thread) exited while there were
still other threads running. Usually it's a good idea to
first collect the return values of the created threads
by joining them, and only then exit from the main
thread. See threads.
Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
(F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key
which is not in the current set of allowed keys of a
restricted hash.
Attempt to bless into a reference
(F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is
expected to be the name of the package to bless the
resulting object into. You've supplied instead a
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reference to something: perhaps you wrote
bless $self, $proto;
when you intended
bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
If you actually want to bless into the stringified ver-
sion of the reference supplied, you need to stringify it
yourself, for example by:
bless $self, "$proto";
Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
(F) The failing code attempted to delete from a res-
tricted hash a key which is not in its key set.
Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
(F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose
value has been declared readonly from a restricted hash.
Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%lx
(P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated
from arenas that will be garbage collected on exit. An
SV was discovered to be outside any of those arenas.
Attempt to free nonexistent shared string
(P internal) Perl maintains a reference counted internal
table of strings to optimize the storage and access of
hash keys and other strings. This indicates someone
tried to decrement the reference count of a string that
can no longer be found in the table.
Attempt to free temp prematurely
(W debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed
by the free_tmps() routine. This indicates that some-
thing else is freeing the SV before the free_tmps() rou-
tine gets a chance, which means that the free_tmps()
routine will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it
does try to free it.
Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
(P internal) The reference counts got screwed up on sym-
bol aliases.
Attempt to free unreferenced scalar
(W internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count
of a scalar to see if it would go to 0, and discovered
that it had already gone to 0 earlier, and should have
been freed, and in fact, probably was freed. This could
indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times,
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or that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that
the SV was mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or
that memory has been corrupted.
Attempt to join self
(F) You tried to join a thread from within itself, which
is an impossible task. You may be joining the wrong
thread, or you may need to move the join() to some other
thread.
Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
(W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the
result of a function, or a computed expression) to the
"p" pack() template. This means the result contains a
pointer to a location that could become invalid anytime,
even before the end of the current statement. Use
literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack()
template to avoid this warning.
Attempt to set length of freed array
(W) You tried to set the length of an array which has
been freed. You can do this by storing a reference to
the scalar representing the last index of an array and
later assigning through that reference. For example
$r = do {my @a; \$#a};
$$r = 503
Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
(W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argu-
ment to substr() used as an lvalue, which is pretty
strange. Perhaps you forgot to dereference it first.
See "substr" in perlfunc.
Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %s
(F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of
msgctl(), semctl() or shmctl(). In C parlance, the
correct sizes are, respectively,
sizeof(struct msqid_ds *), sizeof(struct semid_ds *),
and sizeof(struct shmid_ds *).
Bad evalled substitution pattern
(F) You've used the "/e" switch to evaluate the replace-
ment for a substitution, but perl found a syntax error
in the code to evaluate, most likely an unexpected right
brace '}'.
Bad filehandle: %s
(F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehan-
dle, but the symbol has no filehandle associated with
it. Perhaps you didn't do an open(), or did it in
another package.
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Bad free() ignored
(S malloc) An internal routine called free() on some-
thing that had never been malloc()ed in the first place.
Mandatory, but can be disabled by setting environment
variable "PERL_BADFREE" to 0.
This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on
systems with "hard" dynamic linking, like "AIX" and
"OS/2". It is a bug of "Berkeley DB" which is left unno-
ticed if "DB" uses forgiving system malloc().
Bad hash
(P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null
HV pointer.
Bad index while coercing array into hash
(F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th
element of a pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values
must be at 1 or greater. See perlref.
Badly placed ()'s
(A) You've accidentally run your script through csh
instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed
your script into Perl yourself.
Bad name after %s::
(F) You started to name a symbol by using a package pre-
fix, and then didn't finish the symbol. In particular,
you can't interpolate outside of quotes, so
$var = 'myvar';
$sym = mypack::$var;
is not the same as
$var = 'myvar';
$sym = "mypack::$var";
Bad realloc() ignored
(S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on some-
thing that had never been malloc()ed in the first place.
Mandatory, but can be disabled by setting environment
variable "PERL_BADFREE" to 1.
Bad symbol for array
(P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to
something that wasn't a symbol table entry.
Bad symbol for filehandle
(P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry
to something that wasn't a symbol table entry.
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Bad symbol for hash
(P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to
something that wasn't a symbol table entry.
Bareword found in conditional
(W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it
expected a conditional, which often indicates that an ||
or && was parsed as part of the last argument of the
previous construct, for example:
open FOO || die;
It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been
interpreted as a bareword:
use constant TYPO => 1;
if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
The "strict" pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
(F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only
allowed as a subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or
to the left of the "=>" symbol. Perhaps you need to
predeclare a subroutine?
Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
(W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form
"Foo::", but the compiler saw no other uses of that
namespace before that point. Perhaps you need to prede-
clare a package?
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
(F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a
BEGIN subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the
interpreter is exited.
BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
(F) Perl found a "BEGIN {}" subroutine (or a "use"
directive, which implies a "BEGIN {}") after one or more
compilation errors had already occurred. Since the
intended environment for the "BEGIN {}" could not be
guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent
code likely depends on its correct operation, Perl just
gave up.
\1 better written as $1
(W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on
as variables. The use of backslashes is grandfathered on
the right-hand side of a substitution, but stylistically
it's better to use the variable form because other Perl
programmers will expect it, and it works better if there
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are more than 9 backreferences.
Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-
portable
(W portable) The binary number you specified is larger
than 2**32-1 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable
between systems. See perlport for more on portability
concerns.
bind() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket.
Did you forget to check the return value of your
socket() call? See "bind" in perlfunc.
binmode() on closed filehandle %s
(W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that
was never opened. Check you control flow and number of
arguments.
Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
(W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is
non-portable.
Bizarre copy of %s in %s
(P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value
that is not copyable.
Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
(W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was
preparing to iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical
name or symbol definition which was too long, so it was
truncated to the string shown.
Callback called exit
(F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via
call_sv() exited by calling exit.
%s() called too early to check prototype
(W prototype) You've called a function that has a proto-
type before the parser saw a definition or declaration
for it, and Perl could not check that the call conforms
to the prototype. You need to either add an early pro-
totype declaration for the subroutine in question, or
move the subroutine definition ahead of the call to get
proper prototype checking. Alternatively, if you are
certain that you're calling the function correctly, you
may put an ampersand before the name to avoid the warn-
ing. See perlsub.
Cannot compress integer in pack
(F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to
compress. The BER compressed integer format can only be
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used with positive integers, and you attempted to
compress Infinity or a very large number (> 1e308). See
"pack" in perlfunc.
Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
(F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER
compressed integer format can only be used with positive
integers. See "pack" in perlfunc.
Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
(F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer.
The BER compressed integer format can only be used with
positive integers, and you attempted to compress some-
thing else. See "pack" in perlfunc.
Can't bless non-reference value
(F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how
Perl "enforces" encapsulation of objects. See perlobj.
Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
(F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly
indicated a package functioning as a class, but that
package doesn't have ANYTHING defined in it, let alone
methods. See perlobj.
Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
(F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot
filled by the object reference or package name contains
an undefined value. Something like this will reproduce
the error:
$BADREF = undef;
process $BADREF 1,2,3;
$BADREF->process(1,2,3);
Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
(F) A method call must know in what package it's sup-
posed to run. It ordinarily finds this out from the
object reference you supply, but you didn't supply an
object reference in this case. A reference isn't an
object reference until it has been blessed. See per-
lobj.
Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
(F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot
filled by the object reference or package name contains
an expression that returns a defined value which is nei-
ther an object reference nor a package name. Something
like this will reproduce the error:
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$BADREF = 42;
process $BADREF 1,2,3;
$BADREF->process(1,2,3);
Can't chdir to %s
(F) You called "perl -x/foo/bar", but "/foo/bar" is not
a directory that you can chdir to, possibly because it
doesn't exist.
Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
(P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of
the script for nosuid.
Can't coerce array into hash
(F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the
array has no information on how to map from keys to
array indices. You can do that only with arrays that
have a hash reference at index 0.
Can't coerce %s to integer in %s
(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol
table entries (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being
what they are. So you can't say things like:
*foo += 1;
You CAN say
$foo = *foo;
$foo += 1;
but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
Can't coerce %s to number in %s
(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol
table entries (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being
what they are.
Can't coerce %s to string in %s
(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol
table entries (typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being
what they are.
Can't create pipe mailbox
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering
from exhausted quotas or other plumbing problems.
Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
(F) Currently, only scalar variables can be declared
with a specific class qualifier in a "my" or "our"
declaration. The semantics may be extended for other
types of variables in future.
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Can't declare %s in "%s"
(F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be
declared as "my" or "our" variables. They must have
ordinary identifiers as names.
Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
(S inplace) You tried to use the -i switch on a special
file, such as a file in /dev, or a FIFO. The file was
ignored.
Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
(S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the
indicated reason.
Can't do inplace edit without backup
(F) You're on a system such as MS-DOS that gets confused
if you try reading from a deleted (but still opened)
file. You have to say "-i.bak", or some such.
Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
(S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames
longer than 14 characters and Perl was unable to create
a unique filename during inplace editing with the -i
switch. The file was ignored.
Can't do {n,m} with n > m in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) Minima must be less than or equal to maxima. If you
really want your regexp to match something 0 times, just
put {0}. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
about where the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Can't do setegid!
(P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the
setuid emulator of suidperl.
Can't do seteuid!
(P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some rea-
son.
Can't do setuid
(F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to
exec suidperl to do setuid emulation, but couldn't exec
it. It looks for a name of the form sperl5.000 in the
same directory that the perl executable resides under
the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin on Unix
machines. If the file is there, check the execute per-
missions. If it isn't, ask your sysadmin why he and/or
she removed it.
Can't do waitpid with flags
(F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or
wait4(), so only waitpid() without flags is emulated.
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Can't emulate -%s on #! line
(F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make
sense at this point. For example, it'd be kind of silly
to put a -x on the #! line.
Can't exec "%s": %s
(W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could
not execute the named program for the indicated reason.
Typical reasons include: the permissions were wrong on
the file, the file wasn't found in $ENV{PATH}, the exe-
cutable in question was compiled for another architec-
ture, or the #! line in a script points to an inter-
preter that can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe
your system doesn't support #! at all.)
Can't exec %s
(F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for
you because that's what the #! line said. If that's not
what you wanted, you may need to mention "perl" on the
#! line somewhere.
Can't execute %s
(F) You used the -S switch, but the copies of the script
to execute found in the PATH did not have correct per-
missions.
Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
(F) A string of a form "CORE::word" was given to proto-
type(), but there is no builtin with the name "word".
Can't find %s character property "%s"
(F) You used "\p{}" or "\P{}" but the character property
by that name could not be found. Maybe you misspelled
the name of the property (remember that the names of
character properties consist only of alphanumeric char-
acters), or maybe you forgot the "Is" or "In" prefix?
Can't find label %s
(F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned any-
where that it's possible for us to go to. See "goto" in
perlfunc.
Can't find %s on PATH
(F) You used the -S switch, but the script to execute
could not be found in the PATH.
Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
(F) You used the -S switch, but the script to execute
could not be found in the PATH, or at least not with the
correct permissions. The script exists in the current
directory, but PATH prohibits running it.
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Can't find %s property definition %s
(F) You may have tried to use "\p" which means a Unicode
property (for example "\p{Lu}" is all uppercase
letters). If you did mean to use a Unicode property,
see perlunicode for the list of known properties. If you
didn't mean to use a Unicode property, escape the "\p",
either by "\\p" (just the "\p") or by "\Q\p" (the rest
of the string, until possible "\E").
Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
(F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This
message means that the closing delimiter was omitted.
Because bracketed quotes count nesting levels, the fol-
lowing is missing its final parenthesis:
print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
If you're getting this error from a here-document, you
may have included unseen whitespace before or after your
closing tag. A good programmer's editor will have a way
to help you find these characters.
Can't fork
(F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while
opening a pipeline.
Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of
the difference between access checks under VMS and under
the Unix model Perl assumes. Under VMS, access checks
are done by filename, rather than by bits in the stat
buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken
into account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat
buffer contains all the necessary information, and
passes it, instead of the filespec, to the access check-
ing routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using
the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but
this works only if you haven't made a subsequent call to
the CRTL stat() routine, because the device name is
overwritten with each call. If this warning appears,
the name lookup failed, and the access checking routine
gave up and returned FALSE, just to be conservative.
(Note: The access checking routine knows about the Perl
"stat" operator and file tests, so you shouldn't ever
see this warning in response to a Perl command; it
arises only if some internal code takes stat buffers
lightly.)
Can't get pipe mailbox device name
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox
to act as a pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later
use.
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Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how
big you want your mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get
an answer.
Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the
middle of a foreach loop. You can't get there from
here. See "goto" in perlfunc.
Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what
might look like a block, except that it isn't a proper
block. This usually occurs if you tried to jump out of
a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no. See
"goto" in perlfunc.
Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
(F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out
of an eval "string" or block.
Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
(F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only
replace one subroutine call for another. It can't
manufacture one out of whole cloth. In general you
should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD routine
anyway. See "goto" in perlfunc.
Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
(W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with
the SIGCHLD signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled.
Since disabling this signal will interfere with proper
determination of exit status of child processes, Perl
has reset the signal to its default value. This situa-
tion typically indicates that the parent program under
which Perl may be running (e.g. cron) is being very
careless.
Can't "last" outside a loop block
(F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the
current block, except that there's this itty bitty prob-
lem called there isn't a current block. Note that an
"if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish" block,
as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or grep().
You can usually double the curlies to get the same
effect though, because the inner curlies will be con-
sidered a block that loops once. See "last" in perl-
func.
Can't load '%s' for module %s
(F) The module you tried to load failed to load a
dynamic extension. This may either mean that you
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upgraded your version of perl to one that is incompati-
ble with your old dynamic extensions (which is known to
happen between major versions of perl), or (more likely)
that your dynamic extension was built against an older
version of the library that is installed on your system.
You may need to rebuild your old dynamic extensions.
Can't localize lexical variable %s
(F) You used local on a variable name that was previ-
ously declared as a lexical variable using "my". This
is not allowed. If you want to localize a package vari-
able of the same name, qualify it with the package name.
Can't localize pseudo-hash element
(F) You said something like "local $ar->{'key'}", where
$ar is a reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been
implemented yet, but you can get a similar effect by
localizing the corresponding array element directly --
"local $ar->[$ar->[0]{'key'}]".
Can't localize through a reference
(F) You said something like "local $$ref", which Perl
can't currently handle, because when it goes to restore
the old value of whatever $ref pointed to after the
scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure that
$ref will still be a reference.
Can't locate %s
(F) You said to "do" (or "require", or "use") a file
that couldn't be found. Perl looks for the file in all
the locations mentioned in @INC, unless the file name
included the full path to the file. Perhaps you need to
set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment variable to say
where the extra library is, or maybe the script needs to
add the library name to @INC. Or maybe you just
misspelled the name of the file. See "require" in perl-
func and lib.
Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
(F) A function (or method) was called in a package which
allows autoload, but there is no function to autoload.
Most probable causes are a misprint in a function/method
name or a failure to "AutoSplit" the file, say, by doing
"make install".
Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
(F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external
library, like for example, "foo.so" or "bar.dll", but
the DynaLoader module was unable to locate this library.
See DynaLoader.
Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
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(F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly
indicated a package functioning as a class, but that
package doesn't define that particular method, nor does
any of its base classes. See perlobj.
Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
(W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another
package that doesn't seem to exist.
Can't locate PerlIO%s
(F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does
not exist, e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
Can't make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
(F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some
systems, notably VMS.
Can't modify %s in %s
(F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated,
or otherwise try to change it, such as with an
auto-increment.
Can't modify nonexistent substring
(P) The internal routine that does assignment to a
substr() was handed a NULL.
Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
(F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context
should be declared as such, see "Lvalue subroutines" in
perlsub.
Can't msgrcv to read-only var
(F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used
as a receive buffer.
Can't "next" outside a loop block
(F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the
current block, but there isn't a current block. Note
that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loop-
ish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the
same effect though, because the inner curlies will be
considered a block that loops once. See "next" in perl-
func.
Can't open %s: %s
(S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use
of the "<>" filehandle, either implicitly under the "-n"
or "-p" command-line switches, or explicitly, failed for
the indicated reason. Usually this is because you don't
have read permission for a file which you named on the
command line.
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Can't open a reference
(W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading
or writing, using the 3-arg open() syntax :
open FH, '>', $ref;
but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and
this form of open is not supported.
Can't open bidirectional pipe
(W pipe) You tried to say "open(CMD, "|cmd|")", which is
not supported. You can try any of several modules in the
Perl library to do this, such as IPC::Open2. Alter-
nately, direct the pipe's output to a file using ">",
and then read it in under a different file handle.
Can't open error file %s as stderr
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command
line redirection, and couldn't open the file specified
after '2>' or '2>>' on the command line for writing.
Can't open input file %s as stdin
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command
line redirection, and couldn't open the file specified
after '<' on the command line for reading.
Can't open output file %s as stdout
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command
line redirection, and couldn't open the file specified
after '>' or '>>' on the command line for writing.
Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command
line redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which
to send data destined for stdout.
Can't open perl script%s
(F) The script you specified can't be opened for the
indicated reason.
If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally
relies on the shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes
perl to do that search, so you don't have to type the
path or `which $scriptname`.
Can't read CRTL environ
(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an
element of %ENV from the CRTL's internal environment
array and discovered the array was missing. You need to
figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ or
define PERL_ENV_TABLES (see perlvms) so that environ is
not searched.
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Can't redefine active sort subroutine %s
(F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subrou-
tines and keeps pointers into them. You tried to rede-
fine one such sort subroutine when it was currently
active, which is not allowed. If you really want to do
this, you should write "sort { &func } @x" instead of
"sort func @x".
Can't "redo" outside a loop block
(F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the
current block, but there isn't a current block. Note
that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loop-
ish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(), map() or
grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the
same effect though, because the inner curlies will be
considered a block that loops once. See "redo" in perl-
func.
Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
(S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creat-
ing a backup file. Perl was unable to remove the origi-
nal file to replace it with the modified file. The file
was left unmodified.
Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
(S inplace) The rename done by the -i switch failed for
some reason, probably because you don't have write per-
mission to the directory.
Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a
pipe, and tried to reopen it to accept binary data.
Alas, it failed.
Can't resolve method `%s' overloading `%s' in package `%s'
(F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method
name (as opposed to a subroutine reference): no such
method callable via the package. If method name is
"???", this is an internal error.
Can't reswap uid and euid
(P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the
setuid emulator of suidperl.
Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
(F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues
(such as temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine
used as an lvalue. This is not allowed.
Can't return outside a subroutine
(F) The return statement was executed in mainline code,
that is, where there was no subroutine call to return
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out of. See perlsub.
Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
(F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an
lvalue subroutine, but you called the subroutine in a
way that made Perl think you meant to return only one
value. You probably meant to write parentheses around
the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl that the
call should be in list context.
Can't stat script "%s"
(P) For some reason you can't fstat() the script even
though you have it open already. Bizarre.
Can't swap uid and euid
(P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the
setuid emulator of suidperl.
Can't take log of %g
(F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the loga-
rithm of a negative number or zero. There's a
Math::Complex package that comes standard with Perl,
though, if you really want to do that for the negative
numbers.
Can't take sqrt of %g
(F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square
root of a negative number. There's a Math::Complex
package that comes standard with Perl, though, if you
really want to do that.
Can't undef active subroutine
(F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently run-
ning. You can, however, redefine it while it's running,
and you can even undef the redefined subroutine while
the old routine is running. Go figure.
Can't unshift
(F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that can't be
unshifted, such as the main Perl stack.
Can't upgrade that kind of scalar
(P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an
SV, making it into a more specialized kind of SV. The
top several SV types are so specialized, however, that
they cannot be interconverted. This message indicates
that such a conversion was attempted.
Can't upgrade to undef
(P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in
the scheme of upgradability. Upgrading to undef indi-
cates an error in the code calling sv_upgrade.
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Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
(F) The internal routine that does method lookup was
handed a symbol table that doesn't have a name. Symbol
tables can become anonymous for example by undefining
stashes: "undef %Some::Package::".
Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
(F) A value used as either a hard reference or a sym-
bolic reference must be a defined value. This helps to
delurk some insidious errors.
Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
(F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs".
Symbolic references are disallowed. See perlref.
Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
(F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automati-
cally loads the Errno.pm module. The Errno module is
expected to tie the %! hash to provide symbolic names
for $! errno values.
Can't use %s for loop variable
(F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop
variable on a foreach.
Can't use global %s in "my"
(F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical
variable. This is not allowed, because the magic can be
tied to only one location (namely the global variable)
and it would be incredibly confusing to have variables
in your program that looked like magical variables but
weren't.
Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
(F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort
comparisons. You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as
the <=> or cmp operator, and the variable had earlier
been declared as a lexical variable. Either qualify the
sort variable with the package name, or rename the lexi-
cal variable.
Can't use %s ref as %s ref
(F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to
dereference a reference of the type needed. You can use
the ref() function to test the type of the reference, if
need be.
Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
(F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs".
Symbolic references are disallowed. See perlref.
Can't use subscript on %s
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(F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expres-
sion as a subscript. But to the left of the brackets
was an expression that didn't look like a hash or array
reference, or anything else subscriptable.
Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
(W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a
unary operator that creates a reference to its argument.
The use of backslash to indicate a backreference to a
matched substring is valid only as part of a regular
expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl
code produces a value that prints out looking like
SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form instead.
Can't weaken a nonreference
(F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a
reference. Only references can be weakened.
Can't x= to read-only value
(F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the
undefined value) with an assignment operator, which
implies modifying the value itself. Perhaps you need to
copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that.
Character in "C" format wrapped in pack
(W pack) You said
pack("C", $x)
where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the "C"
format is only for encoding native operating system
characters (ASCII, EBCDIC, and so on) and not for
Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
pack("C", $x & 255)
If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the
"U" format instead.
Character in "c" format wrapped in pack
(W pack) You said
pack("c", $x)
where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the
"c" format is only for encoding native operating system
characters (ASCII, EBCDIC, and so on) and not for
Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
pack("c", $x & 255);
If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the
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"U" format instead.
close() on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was
never opened.
Code missing after '/'
(F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There
must be another template code following the slash. See
"pack" in perlfunc.
%s: Command not found
(A) You've accidentally run your script through csh
instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed
your script into Perl yourself.
Compilation failed in require
(F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a
"require" statement. Perl uses this generic message when
none of the errors that it encountered were severe
enough to halt compilation immediately.
Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded
(W regexp) The regular expression engine uses recursion
in complex situations where back-tracking is required.
Recursion depth is limited to 32766, or perhaps less in
architectures where the stack cannot grow arbitrarily.
("Simple" and "medium" situations are handled without
recursion and are not subject to a limit.) Try shorten-
ing the string under examination; looping in Perl code
(e.g. with "while") rather than in the regular expres-
sion engine; or rewriting the regular expression so that
it is simpler or backtracks less. (See perlfaq2 for
information on Mastering Regular Expressions.)
cond_broadcast() called on unlocked variable
(W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried
to call cond_broadcast() on a variable which wasn't
locked. The cond_broadcast() function is used to wake
up another thread that is waiting in a cond_wait(). To
ensure that the signal isn't sent before the other
thread has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for
the signaling thread to first wait for a lock on vari-
able. This lock attempt will only succeed after the
other thread has entered cond_wait() and thus relin-
quished the lock.
cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
(W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried
to call cond_signal() on a variable which wasn't locked.
The cond_signal() function is used to wake up another
thread that is waiting in a cond_wait(). To ensure that
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the signal isn't sent before the other thread has a
chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signaling
thread to first wait for a lock on variable. This lock
attempt will only succeed after the other thread has
entered cond_wait() and thus relinquished the lock.
connect() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket.
Did you forget to check the return value of your
socket() call? See "connect" in perlfunc.
Constant(%s)%s: %s
(F) The parser found inconsistencies either while
attempting to define an overloaded constant, or when
trying to find the character name specified in the
"\N{...}" escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the
corresponding "overload" or "charnames" pragma? See
charnames and overload.
Constant is not %s reference
(F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the "use
constant" pragma) is being dereferenced, but it amounts
to the wrong type of reference. The message indicates
the type of reference that was expected. This usually
indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant
value. See "Constant Functions" in perlsub and constant.
Constant subroutine %s redefined
(S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
eligible for inlining. See "Constant Functions" in
perlsub for commentary and workarounds.
Constant subroutine %s undefined
(W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously
been eligible for inlining. See "Constant Functions" in
perlsub for commentary and workarounds.
Copy method did not return a reference
(F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See "Copy
Constructor" in overload.
CORE::%s is not a keyword
(F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
corrupted regexp pointers
(P) The regular expression engine got confused by what
the regular expression compiler gave it.
corrupted regexp program
(P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp
program without a valid magic number.
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Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
(P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an
internal failure.
Count after length/code in unpack
(F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-
length string, but you have also specified an explicit
size for the string. See "pack" in perlfunc.
Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
(W recursion) This subroutine has called itself
(directly or indirectly) 100 times more than it has
returned. This probably indicates an infinite recur-
sion, unless you're writing strange benchmark programs,
in which case it indicates something else.
defined(@array) is deprecated
(D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays
because it checks for an undefined scalar value. If you
want to see if the array is empty, just use "if (@array)
{ # not empty }" for example.
defined(%hash) is deprecated
(D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes
because it checks for an undefined scalar value. If you
want to see if the hash is empty, just use "if (%hash) {
# not empty }" for example.
%s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
(F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the
Module file there are neither package declarations nor a
$VERSION.
Delimiter for here document is too long
(F) In a here document construct like "<<FOO", the label
"FOO" is too long for Perl to handle. You have to be
seriously twisted to write code that triggers this
error.
DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
(F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the
object which is just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused,
and prefers to abort rather than to create a dangling
reference.
Did not produce a valid header
See Server error.
%s did not return a true value
(F) A required (or used) file must return a true value
to indicate that it compiled correctly and ran its ini-
tialization code correctly. It's traditional to end
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such a file with a "1;", though any true value would do.
See "require" in perlfunc.
(Did you mean &%s instead?)
(W) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO
as $FOO or some such.
(Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
(W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the
declared global variable. You have declared it again in
the same lexical scope, which seems superfluous.
(Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
(W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant
$hash{$key} or @hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe
you just meant %hash and got carried away.
Died
(F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of
"die """) or you called it with no args and both $@ and
$_ were empty.
Document contains no data
See Server error.
%s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
(F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the
Module did not define a "$VERSION."
'/' does not take a repeat count
(F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right
after the '/' code. See "pack" in perlfunc.
Don't know how to handle magic of type '%s'
(P) The internal handling of magical variables has been
cursed.
do_study: out of memory
(P) This should have been caught by safemalloc()
instead.
(Do you need to predeclare %s?)
(S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction
with the message "%s found where operator expected". It
often means a subroutine or module name is being refer-
enced that hasn't been declared yet. This may be
because of ordering problems in your file, or because of
a missing "sub", "package", "require", or "use" state-
ment. If you're referencing something that isn't
defined yet, you don't actually have to define the sub-
routine or package before the current location. You can
use an empty "sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a
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"forward" declaration.
dump() better written as CORE::dump()
(W misc) You used the obsolescent "dump()" built-in
function, without fully qualifying it as "CORE::dump()".
Maybe it's a typo. See "dump" in perlfunc.
Duplicate free() ignored
(S malloc) An internal routine called free() on some-
thing that had already been freed.
Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
(W) You have applied the same modifier more than once
after a type in a pack template. See "pack" in perl-
func.
elseif should be elsif
(S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because
Larry thinks it's ugly. Your code will be interpreted as
an attempt to call a method named "elseif" for the class
returned by the following block. This is unlikely to be
what you want.
Empty %s
(F) "\p" and "\P" are used to introduce a named Unicode
property, as described in perlunicode and perlre. You
used "\p" or "\P" in a regular expression without speci-
fying the property name.
entering effective %s failed
(F) While under the "use filetest" pragma, switching the
real and effective uids or gids failed.
%ENV is aliased to %s
(F) You're running under taint mode, and the %ENV vari-
able has been aliased to another hash, so it doesn't
reflect anymore the state of the program's environment.
This is potentially insecure.
Error converting file specification %s
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to
deal with file specifications in either VMS or Unix syn-
tax, it converts them to a single form when it must
operate on them directly. Either you've passed an
invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a
case the conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
%s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
(F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a
regular expression that contains the "(?{ ... })" zero-
width assertion, which is unsafe. See "(?{ code })" in
perlre, and perlsec.
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%s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
(F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression contain-
ing the "(?{ ... })" zero-width assertion at run time,
as it would when the pattern contains interpolated
values. Since that is a security risk, it is not
allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by expli-
citly building the pattern from an interpolated string
at run time and using that in an eval(). See "(?{ code
})" in perlre.
%s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
(F) A regular expression contained the "(?{ ... })"
zero-width assertion, but that construct is only allowed
when the "use re 'eval'" pragma is in effect. See "(?{
code })" in perlre.
Excessively long <> operator
(F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the
maximum size of a Perl identifier. If you're just try-
ing to glob a long list of filenames, try using the
glob() operator, or put the filenames into a variable
and glob that.
exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
(F) The "exec" function is not implemented in MacPerl.
See perlport.
Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
(F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation
fails.
Exiting eval via %s
(W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional
means, such as a goto, or a loop control statement.
Exiting format via %s
(W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional
means, such as a goto, or a loop control statement.
Exiting pseudo-block via %s
(W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block con-
struct (like a sort block or subroutine) by unconven-
tional means, such as a goto, or a loop control state-
ment. See "sort" in perlfunc.
Exiting subroutine via %s
(W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconven-
tional means, such as a goto, or a loop control state-
ment.
Exiting substitution via %s
(W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by
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unconventional means, such as a return, a goto, or a
loop control statement.
Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
(W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length
string. This has the effect of blessing the reference
into the package main. This is usually not what you
want. Consider providing a default target package, e.g.
bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
%s: Expression syntax
(A) You've accidentally run your script through csh
instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed
your script into Perl yourself.
%s failed--call queue aborted
(F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a
CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the
remainder of the queue of such routines has been prema-
turely ended.
False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) A character class range must start and end at
a literal character, not another character class like
"\d" or "[:alpha:]". The "-" in your false range is
interpreted as a literal "-". Consider quoting the "-",
"\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
about where the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward hap-
pened in a VMS system service or RTL routine; Perl's
exit status should provide more details. The filename
in "at %s" and the line number in "line %d" tell you
which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
fcntl is not implemented
(F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl().
What is this, a PDP-11 or something?
Filehandle %s opened only for input
(W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If
you intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you
needed to open it with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of
with "<" or nothing. If you intended only to write the
file, use ">" or ">>". See "open" in perlfunc.
Filehandle %s opened only for output
(W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only
for writing, If you intended it to be a read/write
filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or "+>" or
"+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you intended
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only to read from the file, use "<". See "open" in
perlfunc. Another possibility is that you attempted to
open filedescriptor 0 (also known as STDIN) for output
(maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
(W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the
same filehandle id as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred
because you closed STDOUT or STDERR previously.
Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
(W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the
same filehandle id as STDIN. This occurred because you
closed STDIN previously.
Final $ should be \$ or $name
(F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string
was meant to be a literal dollar sign, or was meant to
introduce a variable name that happens to be missing.
So you have to put either the backslash or the name.
flock() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock()
got itself closed some time before now. Check your con-
trol flow. flock() operates on filehandles. Are you
attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the same
name?
Format not terminated
(F) A format must be terminated by a line with a soli-
tary dot. Perl got to the end of your file without
finding such a line.
Format %s redefined
(W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this
warning, say
{
no warnings 'redefine';
eval "format NAME =...";
}
Found = in conditional, should be ==
(W syntax) You said
if ($foo = 123)
when you meant
if ($foo == 123)
(or something like that).
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%s found where operator expected
(S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term
or an operator. If it sees what it knows to be a term
when it was expecting to see an operator, it gives you
this warning. Usually it indicates that an operator or
delimiter was omitted, such as a semicolon.
gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
(S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store
failed.
gethostent not implemented
(F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethos-
tent(), probably because if it did, it'd feel morally
obligated to return every hostname on the Internet.
get%sname() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name
on a closed socket. Did you forget to check the return
value of your socket() call?
getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to "sys$getuai"
underlying the "getpwnam" operator returned an invalid
UIC.
getsockopt() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed
socket. Did you forget to check the return value of
your socket() call? See "getsockopt" in perlfunc.
Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
(F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates that
all variables must either be lexically scoped (using
"my"), declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly
qualified to say which package the global variable is in
(using "::").
glob failed (%s)
(W glob) Something went wrong with the external
program(s) used for "glob" and "<*.c>". Usually, this
means that you supplied a "glob" pattern that caused the
external program to fail and exit with a nonzero status.
If the message indicates that the abnormal exit resulted
in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C
shell) is broken. If so, you should change all of the
csh-related variables in config.sh: If you have tcsh,
make the variables refer to it as if it were csh (e.g.
"full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'"); otherwise, make them all
empty (except that "d_csh" should be 'undef') so that
Perl will think csh is missing. In either case, after
editing config.sh, run "./Configure -S" and rebuild
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Perl.
Glob not terminated
(F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where
it was expecting a term, so it's looking for the
corresponding right angle bracket, and not finding it.
Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier
in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
Got an error from DosAllocMem
(P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're
using an obsolete version of Perl, and this should not
happen anyway.
goto must have label
(F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to
goto an unspecified destination. See "goto" in perl-
func.
()-group starts with a count
(F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is sup-
posed to follow something: a template character or a
()-group.
See "pack" in perlfunc.
%s had compilation errors
(F) The final summary message when a "perl -c" fails.
Had to create %s unexpectedly
(S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol
table that ought to have existed already, but for some
reason it didn't, and had to be created on an emergency
basis to prevent a core dump.
Hash %%s missing the % in argument %d of %s()
(D deprecated) Really old Perl let you omit the % on
hash names in some spots. This is now heavily depre-
cated.
%s has too many errors
(F) The parser has given up trying to parse the program
after 10 errors. Further error messages would likely be
uninformative.
Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
(W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is
larger than 2**32-1 (4294967295) and therefore non-
portable between systems. See perlport for more on por-
tability concerns.
Identifier too long
(F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables,
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functions, etc.) to about 250 characters for simple
names, and somewhat more for compound names (like
$A::B). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future versions
of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limita-
tions.
Illegal binary digit %s
(F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary
number.
Illegal binary digit %s ignored
(W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0
or 1 in a binary number. Interpretation of the binary
number stopped before the offending digit.
Illegal character %s (carriage return)
(F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program
text as it would any other whitespace, which means you
should never see this error when Perl was built using
standard options. For some reason, your version of Perl
appears to have been built without this support. Talk
to your Perl administrator.
Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
(W syntax) An illegal character was found in a prototype
declaration. Legal characters in prototypes are $, @,
%, *, ;, [, ], &, and \.
Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
(F) When using the "sub" keyword to construct an
anonymous subroutine, you must always specify a block of
code. See perlsub.
Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
(F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See perl-
sub.
Illegal division by zero
(F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something
was wrong in your logic, or you need to put a condi-
tional in to guard against meaningless input.
Illegal hexadecimal digit %s ignored
(W digit) You may have tried to use a character other
than 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
Interpretation of the hexadecimal number stopped before
the illegal character.
Illegal modulus zero
(F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the
remainder. Most numbers don't take to this kindly.
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Illegal number of bits in vec
(F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument)
must be a power of two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your
platform supports that).
Illegal octal digit %s
(F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
Illegal octal digit %s ignored
(W digit) You may have tried to use an 8 or 9 in an
octal number. Interpretation of the octal number stopped
before the 8 or 9.
Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: %s
(X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used
to set the following switches: -[DIMUdmtw].
Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
(W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to
read the CRTL's internal environ array, and encountered
an element without the "=" delimiter used to separate
keys from values. The element is ignored.
Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
(W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to
read a logical name or CLI symbol definition when
preparing to iterate over %ENV, and didn't see the
expected delimiter between key and value, so the line
was ignored.
(in cleanup) %s
(W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY()
method raised the indicated exception. Since destruc-
tors are usually called by the system at arbitrary
points during execution, and often a vast number of
times, the warning is issued only once for any number of
failures that would otherwise result in the same message
being repeated.
Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the
"G_KEEPERR" flag could also result in this warning. See
"G_KEEPERR" in perlcall.
In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
(F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings
are stored as Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC
as UTF-EBCDIC. The UTF-EBCDIC encoding is limited to
code points no larger than 2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
Insecure dependency in %s
(F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechan-
ism didn't like. The tainting mechanism is turned on
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when you're running setuid or setgid, or when you
specify -T to turn it on explicitly. The tainting
mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or
indirectly from the user, who is considered to be
unworthy of your trust. If any such data is used in a
"dangerous" operation, you get this error. See perlsec
for more information.
Insecure directory in %s
(F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a
setuid or setgid script if $ENV{PATH} contains a direc-
tory that is writable by the world. Also, the PATH must
not contain any relative directory. See perlsec.
Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
(F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a
setuid or setgid script if any of $ENV{PATH}, $ENV{IFS},
$ENV{CDPATH}, $ENV{ENV}, $ENV{BASH_ENV} or $ENV{TERM}
are derived from data supplied (or potentially supplied)
by the user. The script must set the path to a known
value, using trustworthy data. See perlsec.
Integer overflow in %s number
(W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you
have specified either as a literal or as an argument to
hex() or oct() is too big for your architecture, and has
been converted to a floating point number. On a 32-bit
architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary
number representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF,
037777777777, or 0b11111111111111111111111111111111
respectively. Note that Perl transparently promotes all
numbers to a floating point representation internally--
subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent opera-
tions.
Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression
parser. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
about where the problem was discovered.
Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the
number of times you've called "fork" and "exec", to
determine whether the current call to "exec" should
affect the current script or a subprocess (see "exec
LIST" in perlvms). Somehow, this count has become
scrambled, so Perl is making a guess and treating this
"exec" as a request to terminate the Perl script and
execute the specified command.
Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression
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parser. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
about where the problem was discovered.
%s (...) interpreted as function
(W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that
any list operator followed by parentheses turns into a
function, with all the list operators arguments found
inside the parentheses. See "Terms and List Operators
(Leftward)" in perlop.
Invalid %s attribute: %s
The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was
not recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler.
See attributes.
Invalid %s attributes: %s
The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable
were not recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied
handler. See attributes.
Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
(W printf) Perl does not understand the given format
conversion. See "sprintf" in perlfunc.
Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The range specified in a character class had a
minimum character greater than the maximum character.
One possibility is that you forgot the "{}" from your
ending "\x{}" - "\x" without the curly braces can go
only up to "ff". The <-- HERE shows in the regular
expression about where the problem was discovered. See
perlre.
Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
(F) The range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator
had a minimum character greater than the maximum charac-
ter. See perlop.
Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
(F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen
between the elements of an attribute list. If the pre-
vious attribute had a parenthesised parameter list,
perhaps that list was terminated too soon. See attri-
butes.
Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
(W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system,
something other than a colon or whitespace was seen
between the elements of a layer list. If the previous
attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, perhaps
that list was terminated too soon.
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Invalid type '%s' in %s
(F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack
type. See "pack" in perlfunc. (W) The given character is
not a valid pack or unpack type but used to be silently
ignored.
ioctl is not implemented
(F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(),
which is pretty strange for a machine that supports C.
ioctl() on unopened %s
(W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was
never opened. Check you control flow and number of argu-
ments.
IO layers (like "%s") unavailable
(F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO,
and therefore you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO
Perl must be configured with 'useperlio'.
IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
(F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark()
functionality, neither as a system call or an ioctl call
(SIOCATMARK).
`%s' is not a code reference
(W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of
overload::constant needs to be a code reference. Either
an anonymous subroutine, or a reference to a subroutine.
`%s' is not an overloadable type
(W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the
overload package is unaware of.
junk on end of regexp
(P) The regular expression parser is confused.
Label not found for "last %s"
(F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not
currently in a loop of that name, not even if you count
where you were called from. See "last" in perlfunc.
Label not found for "next %s"
(F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not
currently in a loop of that name, not even if you count
where you were called from. See "last" in perlfunc.
Label not found for "redo %s"
(F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not
currently in a loop of that name, not even if you count
where you were called from. See "last" in perlfunc.
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leaving effective %s failed
(F) While under the "use filetest" pragma, switching the
real and effective uids or gids failed.
length/code after end of string in unpack
(F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used
up when an unpack length/code combination tried to
obtain more data. This results in an undefined value for
the length. See "pack" in perlfunc.
listen() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket.
Did you forget to check the return value of your
socket() call? See "listen" in perlfunc.
Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex; marked by <--
HERE in m/%s/
(F) There is currently a limit on the length of string
which lookbehind can handle. This restriction may be
eased in a future release. The <-- HERE shows in the
regular expression about where the problem was
discovered.
lstat() on filehandle %s
(W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What
did you mean by that? lstat() makes sense only on
filenames. (Perl did a fstat() instead on the filehan-
dle.)
Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
(F) Due to limitations in the current implementation,
array and hash values cannot be returned in subroutines
used in lvalue context. See "Lvalue subroutines" in
perlsub.
Malformed integer in [] in pack
(F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat
count only digits are permitted. See "pack" in perl-
func.
Malformed integer in [] in unpack
(F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat
count only digits are permitted. See "pack" in perl-
func.
Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
(F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be
of the form
prefix1;prefix2
or
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prefix1 prefix2
with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If "prefix1" is
indeed a prefix of a builtin library search path, pre-
fix2 is substituted. The error may appear if components
are not found, or are too long. See "PERLLIB_PREFIX" in
perlos2.
Malformed prototype for %s: %s
(F) You tried to use a function with a malformed proto-
type. The syntax of function prototypes is given a
brief compile-time check for obvious errors like invalid
characters. A more rigorous check is run when the func-
tion is called.
Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
(S utf8) (F) Perl detected something that didn't comply
with UTF-8 encoding rules.
One possible cause is that you read in data that you
thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example
legacy 8-bit data). Another possibility is careless use
of utf8::upgrade().
Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character
data but while doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode
surrogate.
%s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an
infinite loop if the regular expression engine didn't
specifically check for that. The <-- HERE shows in the
regular expression about where the problem was
discovered. See perlre.
"%s" may clash with future reserved word
(W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script
through a perl4 interpreter, especially if the word that
is being warned about is "use" or "my".
% may not be used in pack
(F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum,
because the checksumming process loses information, and
you can't go the other way. See "unpack" in perlfunc.
Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
(F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an over-
loading table that doesn't resolve to a valid subrou-
tine. See overload.
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Method %s not permitted
See Server error.
Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d
(S) An advisory indicating that the previous error may
have been caused by a missing delimiter on a string or
pattern, because it eventually ended earlier on the
current line.
Misplaced _ in number
(W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric con-
stant did not separate two digits.
Missing argument to -%c
(F) The argument to the indicated command line switch
must follow immediately after the switch, without inter-
vening spaces.
Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
(F) Wrong syntax of character name literal
"\N{charname}" within double-quotish context.
Missing comma after first argument to %s function
(F) While certain functions allow you to specify a
filehandle or an "indirect object" before the argument
list, this ain't one of them.
Missing command in piped open
(W pipe) You used the "open(FH, "| command")" or
"open(FH, "command |")" construction, but the command
was missing or blank.
Missing control char name in \c
(F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the
required control character name.
Missing name in "my sub"
(F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped subroutines
requires that they have a name with which they can be
found.
Missing $ on loop variable
(F) Apparently you've been programming in csh too much.
Variables are always mentioned with the $ in Perl,
unlike in the shells, where it can vary from one line to
the next.
(Missing operator before %s?)
(S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction
with the message "%s found where operator expected".
Often the missing operator is a comma.
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Missing right brace on %s
(F) Missing right brace in "\p{...}" or "\P{...}".
Missing right curly or square bracket
(F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square
brackets than closing ones. As a general rule, you'll
find it's missing near the place you were last editing.
(Missing semicolon on previous line?)
(S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction
with the message "%s found where operator expected".
Don't automatically put a semicolon on the previous line
just because you saw this message.
Modification of a read-only value attempted
(F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the
value of a constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 =
1", because the compiler catches that. But an easy way
to do the same thing is:
sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
mod(2);
Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the
end of the string.
Yet another way is to assign to a "foreach" loop VAR
when VAR is aliased to a constant in the look LIST:
$x = 1;
foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
$n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to modify the 2
}
Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
(F) You tried to make an array value spring into
existence, and the subscript was probably negative, even
counting from end of the array backwards.
Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
(P) You tried to make a hash value spring into
existence, and it couldn't be created for some peculiar
reason.
Module name must be constant
(F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first
argument to a "use".
Module name required with -%c option
(F) The "-M" or "-m" options say that Perl should load
some module, but you omitted the name of the module.
Consult perlrun for full details about "-M" and "-m".
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More than one argument to open
(F) The "open" function has been asked to open multiple
files. This can happen if you are trying to open a pipe
to a command that takes a list of arguments, but have
forgotten to specify a piped open mode. See "open" in
perlfunc for details.
msg%s not implemented
(F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
(W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like
$foo[1,2,3]. They're written like $foo[1][2][3], as in
C.
'/' must be followed by 'a*', 'A*' or 'Z*'
(F) You had a pack template indicating a counted-length
string, Currently the only things that can have their
length counted are a*, A* or Z*. See "pack" in perl-
func.
'/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
(F) You had an unpack template that contained a '/', but
this did not follow some unpack specification producing
a numeric value. See "pack" in perlfunc.
"my sub" not yet implemented
(F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet imple-
mented. Don't try that yet.
"my" variable %s can't be in a package
(F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so
it doesn't make sense to try to declare one with a pack-
age qualifier on the front. Use local() if you want to
localize a package variable.
Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
(W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique
variable names. If you had a good reason for having a
unique name, then just mention it again somehow to
suppress the message. The "our" declaration is provided
for this purpose.
NOTE: This warning detects symbols that have been used
only once so $c, @c, %c, *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c
(the filehandle or format) are considered the same; if a
program uses $c only once but also uses any of the oth-
ers it will not trigger this warning.
Negative '/' count in unpack
(F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack
operation was negative. See "pack" in perlfunc.
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Negative length
(F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation
with a buffer length that is less than 0. This is dif-
ficult to imagine.
Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
(F) When "vec" is called in an lvalue context, the
second argument must be greater than or equal to zero.
Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening
parentheses. So things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal.
The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
the problem was discovered.
Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, "*?", "+?",
and "??" appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't.
See perlre.
%s never introduced
(S internal) The symbol in question was declared but
somehow went out of scope before it could possibly have
been used.
Newline in left-justified string for %s
(W printf) There is a newline in a string to be left
justified by "printf" or "sprintf".
The padding spaces will appear after the newline, which
is probably not what you wanted. Usually you should
remove the newline from the string and put formatting
characters in the "sprintf" format.
No %s allowed while running setuid
(F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for
a setuid or setgid script to even be allowed to attempt.
Generally speaking there will be another way to do what
you want that is, if not secure, at least securable.
See perlsec.
No comma allowed after %s
(F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect
object" is not allowed to have a comma between that and
the following arguments. Otherwise it'd be just another
one of the arguments.
One possible cause for this is that you expected to have
imported a constant to your name space with use or
import while no such importing took place, it may for
example be that your operating system does not support
that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an
explicit import list for the constants you expect to
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see, please see "use" in perlfunc and "import" in perl-
func. While an explicit import list would probably have
caught this error earlier it naturally does not remedy
the fact that your operating system still does not sup-
port that constant. Maybe you have a typo in the con-
stants of the symbol import list of use or import or in
the constant name at the line where this error was trig-
gered?
No command into which to pipe on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own com-
mand line redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the
command line, so it doesn't know where you want to pipe
the output from this command.
No DB::DB routine defined
(F) The currently executing code was compiled with the
-d switch, but for some reason the current debugger
(e.g. perl5db.pl or a "Devel::" module) didn't define a
routine to be called at the beginning of each statement.
No dbm on this machine
(P) This is counted as an internal error, because every
machine should supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes
with SDBM. See SDBM_File.
No DB::sub routine defined
(F) The currently executing code was compiled with the
-d switch, but for some reason the current debugger
(e.g. perl5db.pl or a "Devel::" module) didn't define a
"DB::sub" routine to be called at the beginning of each
ordinary subroutine call.
No -e allowed in setuid scripts
(F) A setuid script can't be specified by the user.
No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own com-
mand line redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on
the command line, but can't find the name of the file to
which to write data destined for stderr.
No group ending character '%c' found in template
(F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '['
without its matching counterpart. See "pack" in perl-
func.
No input file after < on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own com-
mand line redirection, and found a '<' on the command
line, but can't find the name of the file from which to
read data for stdin.
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No #! line
(F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a
well-formed #! line even on machines that don't support
the #! construct.
"no" not allowed in expression
(F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at com-
pile time, and returns no useful value. See perlmod.
No output file after > on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own com-
mand line redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end
of the command line, so it doesn't know where you wanted
to redirect stdout.
No output file after > or >> on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own com-
mand line redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the
command line, but can't find the name of the file to
which to write data destined for stdout.
No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
(F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in
"our" declarations, because that doesn't make much sense
under existing semantics. Such syntax is reserved for
future extensions.
No Perl script found in input
(F) You called "perl -x", but no line was found in the
file beginning with #! and containing the word "perl".
No setregid available
(F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setre-
gid() call for your system.
No setreuid available
(F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the
setreuid() call for your system.
No %s specified for -%c
(F) The indicated command line switch needs a mandatory
argument, but you haven't specified one.
No such class %s
(F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my" or "our"
declaration, but this class doesn't exist at this point
in your program.
No such pipe open
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine
my_pclose() tried to close a pipe which hadn't been
opened. This should have been caught earlier as an
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attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
No such pseudo-hash field "%s"
(F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the
field name used is not defined. The hash at index 0
should map all valid field names to array indices for
that to work.
No such pseudo-hash field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
(F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable
where the type does not know about the field name. The
field names are looked up in the %FIELDS hash in the
type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash is %usu-
ally set up with the 'fields' pragma.
No such signal: SIG%s
(W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to
%SIG that was not recognized. Say "kill -l" in your
shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
Not a CODE reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code
value (that is, a subroutine), but found a reference to
something else instead. You can use the ref() function
to find out what kind of ref it really was. See also
perlref.
Not a format reference
(F) I'm not sure how you managed to generate a reference
to an anonymous format, but this indicates you did, and
that it didn't exist.
Not a GLOB reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a
"typeglob" (that is, a symbol table entry that looks
like *foo), but found a reference to something else
instead. You can use the ref() function to find out
what kind of ref it really was. See perlref.
Not a HASH reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash
value, but found a reference to something else instead.
You can use the ref() function to find out what kind of
ref it really was. See perlref.
Not an ARRAY reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array
value, but found a reference to something else instead.
You can use the ref() function to find out what kind of
ref it really was. See perlref.
Not a perl script
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(F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a
well-formed #! line even on machines that don't support
the #! construct. The line must mention perl.
Not a SCALAR reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar
value, but found a reference to something else instead.
You can use the ref() function to find out what kind of
ref it really was. See perlref.
Not a subroutine reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code
value (that is, a subroutine), but found a reference to
something else instead. You can use the ref() function
to find out what kind of ref it really was. See also
perlref.
Not a subroutine reference in overload table
(F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an over-
loading table that doesn't somehow point to a valid sub-
routine. See overload.
Not enough arguments for %s
(F) The function requires more arguments than you speci-
fied.
Not enough format arguments
(W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than
the next line supplied. See perlform.
%s: not found
(A) You've accidentally run your script through the
Bourne shell instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or
manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find
the local timezone offset, so it's assuming that local
system time is equivalent to UTC. If it's not, define
the logical name SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL to translate
to the number of seconds which need to be added to UTC
to get local time.
Non-string passed as bitmask
(W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument
to select(). Use the vec() function to construct the
file descriptor bitmasks for select. See "select" in
perlfunc
Null filename used
(F) You can't require the null filename, especially
because on many machines that means the current
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directory! See "require" in perlfunc.
NULL OP IN RUN
(P debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a
null opcode pointer.
Null picture in formline
(F) The first argument to formline must be a valid for-
mat picture specification. It was found to be empty,
which probably means you supplied it an uninitialized
value. See perlform.
Null realloc
(P) An attempt was made to realloc NULL.
NULL regexp argument
(P) The internal pattern matching routines blew it big
time.
NULL regexp parameter
(P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of
their gourd.
Number too long
(F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in
programs to about 250 characters. You've exceeded that
length. Future versions of Perl are likely to eliminate
this arbitrary limitation. In the meantime, try using
scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of "1_000_000").
Octal number in vector unsupported
(F) Numbers with a leading 0 are not currently allowed
in vectors. The octal number interpretation of such
numbers may be supported in a future version.
Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
(W portable) The octal number you specified is larger
than 2**32-1 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable
between systems. See perlport for more on portability
concerns.
See also perlport for writing portable code.
Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
(W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an
odd number of arguments. The arguments should come in
pairs.
Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
(W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to ini-
tialize a hash, which is odd, because hashes come in
key/value pairs.
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Odd number of elements in hash assignment
(W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to ini-
tialize a hash, which is odd, because hashes come in
key/value pairs.
Offset outside string
(F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation
with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is
difficult to imagine. The sole exception to this is
that "sysread()"ing past the buffer will extend the
buffer and zero pad the new area.
%s() on unopened %s
(W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a
filehandle that was never initialized. You need to do
an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket() call, or call a
constructor from the FileHandle package.
-%s on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on
a filehandle that isn't open. Check your control flow.
See also "-X" in perlfunc.
oops: oopsAV
(S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is
screwed up.
oops: oopsHV
(S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is
screwed up.
Operation "%s": no method found, %s
(F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded opera-
tion for which no handler was defined. While some
handlers can be autogenerated in terms of other
handlers, there is no default handler for any operation,
unless "fallback" overloading key is specified to be
true. See overload.
Operator or semicolon missing before %s
(S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call
where the parser was expecting an operator. The parser
has assumed you really meant to use an operator, but
this is highly likely to be incorrect. For example, if
you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you
said "*foo * 'foo'".
"our" variable %s redeclared
(W misc) You seem to have already declared the same glo-
bal once before in the current lexical scope.
Out of memory!
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(X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there
was insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to
satisfy the request. Perl has no option but to exit
immediately.
At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by
increasing your process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use
"limit" and "limit datasize n" (where "n" is the number
of kilobytes) to check the current limits and change
them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use "ulimit -a" and "ulimit -d
n", respectively.
Out of memory during %s extend
(X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a
string beyond the largest possible memory allocation.
Out of memory during "large" request for %s
(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there
was insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to
satisfy the request. However, the request was judged
large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a possi-
bility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
Out of memory during request for %s
(X|F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there
was insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to
satisfy the request.
The request was judged to be small, so the possibility
to trap it depends on the way perl was compiled. By
default it is not trappable. However, if compiled for
this, Perl may use the contents of $^M as an emergency
pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the
error is trappable once, and the error message will
include the line and file where the failed request hap-
pened.
Out of memory during ridiculously large request
(F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount"
bytes. This error is most likely to be caused by a typo
in the Perl program. e.g., $arr[time] instead of
$arr[$time].
Out of memory for yacc stack
(F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could
continue parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more
memory, virtual or otherwise.
'@' outside of string in unpack
(F) You had a template that specified an absolute posi-
tion outside the string being unpacked. See "pack" in
perlfunc.
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%s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
(W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that
had a package-specific handler. That name might have a
meaning to Perl itself some day, even though it doesn't
yet. Perhaps you should use a mixed-case attribute
name, instead. See attributes.
pack/unpack repeat count overflow
(F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it
overflows your signed integers. See "pack" in perlfunc.
page overflow
(W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than
can fit on a page. See perlform.
panic: %s
(P) An internal error.
panic: ck_grep
(P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to com-
pile a grep.
panic: ck_split
(P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to com-
pile a split.
panic: corrupt saved stack index
(P) The savestack was requested to restore more local-
ized values than there are in the savestack.
panic: del_backref
(P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to
reset a weak reference.
panic: Devel::DProf inconsistent subroutine return
(P) Devel::DProf called a subroutine that exited using
goto(LABEL), last(LABEL) or next(LABEL). Leaving that
way a subroutine called from an XSUB will lead very
probably to a crash of the interpreter. This is a bug
that will hopefully one day get fixed.
panic: die %s
(P) We popped the context stack to an eval context, and
then discovered it wasn't an eval context.
panic: do_subst
(P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with
invalid operational data.
panic: do_trans_%s
(P) The internal do_trans routines were called with
invalid operational data.
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panic: frexp
(P) The library function frexp() failed, making
printf("%f") impossible.
panic: goto
(P) We popped the context stack to a context with the
specified label, and then discovered it wasn't a context
we know how to do a goto in.
panic: INTERPCASEMOD
(P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
panic: INTERPCONCAT
(P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with
brackets.
panic: kid popen errno read
(F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message
about its errno.
panic: last
(P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and
then discovered it wasn't a block context.
panic: leave_scope clearsv
(P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow
within the scope.
panic: leave_scope inconsistency
(P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least,
there was an invalid enum on the top of it.
panic: magic_killbackrefs
(P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to
reset all weak references to an object.
panic: malloc
(P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of
malloc.
panic: mapstart
(P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map()
function.
panic: memory wrap
(P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possi-
ble.
panic: null array
(P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null
AV pointer.
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panic: pad_alloc
(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it
was allocating and freeing temporaries and lexicals
from.
panic: pad_free curpad
(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it
was allocating and freeing temporaries and lexicals
from.
panic: pad_free po
(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected inter-
nally.
panic: pad_reset curpad
(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it
was allocating and freeing temporaries and lexicals
from.
panic: pad_sv po
(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected inter-
nally.
panic: pad_swipe curpad
(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it
was allocating and freeing temporaries and lexicals
from.
panic: pad_swipe po
(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected inter-
nally.
panic: pp_iter
(P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop con-
text frame.
panic: pp_match%s
(P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with
invalid operational data.
panic: pp_split
(P) Something terrible went wrong in setting up for the
split.
panic: realloc
(P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of
realloc.
panic: restartop
(P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something
like it), and didn't supply the destination.
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panic: return
(P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval
context, and then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or
eval context.
panic: scan_num
(P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a
number.
panic: sv_insert
(P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more
string than there was string.
panic: top_env
(P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something
weird like that.
panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
(P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd
(as opposed to even) byte length.
panic: yylex
(P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a
case modifier.
Parentheses missing around "%s" list
(W parenthesis) You said something like
my $foo, $bar = @_;
when you meant
my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
Remember that "my", "our", and "local" bind tighter than
comma.
"-p" destination: %s
(F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked
by the "-p" command-line switch. (This output goes to
STDOUT unless you've redirected it with select().)
(perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
(F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with
the message "Can't locate object method \"%s\" via pack-
age \"%s\"". It often means that a method requires a
package that has not been loaded.
Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
(F) The module in question uses features of a version of
Perl more recent than the currently running version.
How long has it been since you upgraded, anyway? See
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"require" in perlfunc.
PERL_SH_DIR too long
(F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the direc-
tory to find the "sh"-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in
perlos2.
PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
See "PERL_SIGNALS" in perlrun for legal values.
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
(S) The whole warning message will look something like:
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LC_ALL = "En_US",
LANG = (unset)
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In
the above the settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US"
and the LANG had no value. This error means that Perl
detected that you and/or your operating system supplier
and/or system administrator have set up the so-called
locale system but Perl could not use those settings.
This was not dead serious, fortunately: there is a
"default locale" called "C" that Perl can and will use,
the script will be run. Before you really fix the prob-
lem, however, you will get the same error message each
time you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be
found in perllocale section LOCALE PROBLEMS.
Permission denied
(F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up
to no good.
pid %x not a child
(W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked
to wait for a process which isn't a subprocess of the
current process. While this is fine from VMS' perspec-
tive, it's probably not what you intended.
'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
(F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not
"*".
-P not allowed for setuid/setgid script
(F) The script would have to be opened by the C prepro-
cessor by name, which provides a race condition that
breaks security.
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POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is
unknown. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
about where the problem was discovered. Note that the
POSIX character classes do not have the "is" prefix the
corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's
"[[:print:]]", not "isprint". See perlre.
POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
(F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no
argument, unlike the BSD version, which takes a pid.
POSIX syntax [%s] belongs inside character classes in regex;
marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) The character class constructs [: :], [= =],
and [. .] go inside character classes, the [] are part
of the construct, for example: /[012[:alpha:]345]/.
Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently implemented;
they are simply placeholders for future extensions and
will cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows in the reg-
ular expression about where the problem was discovered.
See perlre.
POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex;
marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F regexp) Within regular expression character classes
([]) the syntax beginning with "[." and ending with ".]"
is reserved for future extensions. If you need to
represent those character sequences inside a regular
expression character class, just quote the square brack-
ets with the backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE
shows in the regular expression about where the problem
was discovered. See perlre.
POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex;
marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the
syntax beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is
reserved for future extensions. If you need to
represent those character sequences inside a regular
expression character class, just quote the square brack-
ets with the backslash: "\[=" and "=\]". The <-- HERE
shows in the regular expression about where the problem
was discovered. See perlre.
Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
(W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace;
as with literal strings, comment characters are not
ignored, but are instead treated as literal data. (You
may have used different delimiters than the parentheses
shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
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You probably wrote something like this:
@list = qw(
a # a comment
b # another comment
);
when you should have written this:
@list = qw(
a
b
);
If you really want comments, build your list the old-
fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
@list = (
'a', # a comment
'b', # another comment
);
Possible attempt to separate words with commas
(W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace;
therefore commas aren't needed to separate the items.
(You may have used different delimiters than the
parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently
used.)
You probably wrote something like this:
qw! a, b, c !;
which puts literal commas into some of the list items.
Write it without commas if you don't want them to appear
in your data:
qw! a b c !;
Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
(F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was
bargaining for. Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size,
but puts a sentinel byte at the end of the buffer just
in case. This sentinel byte got clobbered, and Perl
assumes that memory is now corrupted. See "ioctl" in
perlfunc.
Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator
(W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical
operator in conjunction with a numeric comparison opera-
tor, like this :
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if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
This expression is actually equivalent to "$x & ($y ==
0)", due to the higher precedence of "==". This is prob-
ably not what you want. (If you really meant to write
this, disable the warning, or, better, put the
parentheses explicitly and write "$x & ($y == 0)").
Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
(W ambiguous) You said something like `@foo' in a
double-quoted string but there was no array @foo in
scope at the time. If you wanted a literal @foo, then
write it as \@foo; otherwise find out what happened to
the array you apparently lost track of.
Possible Y2K bug: %s
(W y2k) You are concatenating the number 19 with another
number, which could be a potential Year 2000 problem.
pragma "attrs" is deprecated, use "sub NAME : ATTRS" instead
(D deprecated) You have written something like this:
sub doit
{
use attrs qw(locked);
}
You should use the new declaration syntax instead.
sub doit : locked
{
...
The "use attrs" pragma is now obsolete, and is only pro-
vided for backward-compatibility. See "Subroutine Attri-
butes" in perlsub.
Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
(S precedence) The old irregular construct
open FOO || die;
is now misinterpreted as
open(FOO || die);
because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar
into unary and list operators. (The old open was a lit-
tle of both.) You must put parentheses around the
filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead of
"||".
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Premature end of script headers
See Server error.
printf() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself
closed sometime before now. Check your control flow.
print() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself
closed sometime before now. Check your control flow.
Process terminated by SIG%s
(W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applica-
tions, while *nix applications die in silence. It is
considered a feature of the OS/2 port. One can easily
disable this by appropriate sighandlers, see "Signals"
in perlipc. See also "Process terminated by
SIGTERM/SIGINT" in perlos2.
Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
(S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined
had previously been declared or defined with a different
function prototype.
Prototype not terminated
(F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function
prototype definition.
Pseudo-hashes are deprecated
(D deprecated) Pseudo-hashes were deprecated in Perl
5.8.0 and they will be removed in Perl 5.10.0, see
perl58delta for more details. You can continue to use
the "fields" pragma.
Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier.
Backslash it if you meant it literally. The <-- HERE
shows in the regular expression about where the problem
was discovered. See perlre.
Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min
and max values of the {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE
shows in the regular expression about where the problem
was discovered. See perlre.
Quantifier unexpected on zero-
length expression; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier
in a place where it makes no sense, such as on a zero-
width assertion. Try putting the quantifier inside the
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assertion instead. For example, the way to match "abc"
provided that it is followed by three repetitions of
"xyz" is "/abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/", not "/abc(?=xyz){3}/".
The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
the problem was discovered.
Range iterator outside integer range
(F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range
operator ".." are outside the range which can be
represented by integers internally. One possible wor-
karound is to force Perl to use magical string increment
by prepending "0" to your numbers.
readline() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself
closed sometime before now. Check your control flow.
read() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
read() on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that
was never opened.
Reallocation too large: %lx
(F) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS
machine.
realloc() of freed memory ignored
(S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on some-
thing that had already been freed.
Recompile perl with -DDEBUGGING to use -D switch
(F debugging) You can't use the -D option unless the
code to produce the desired output is compiled into
Perl, which entails some overhead, which is why it's
currently left out of your copy.
Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
(F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used.
Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheri-
tance hierarchy.
Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
(F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered
while invoking a method. Probably indicates an unin-
tended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
Reference found where even-sized list expected
(W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was
expecting a list with an even number of elements (for
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assignment to a hash). This usually means that you used
the anon hash constructor when you meant to use parens.
In any case, a hash requires key/value pairs.
%hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
%hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
%hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
%hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
Reference is already weak
(W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that
is already weak. Doing so has no effect.
Reference miscount in sv_replace()
(W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was
handed a new SV with a reference count of other than 1.
Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(F) You used something like "\7" in your regular expres-
sion, but there are not at least seven sets of capturing
parentheses in the expression. If you wanted to have the
character with value 7 inserted into the regular expres-
sion, prepend a zero to make the number at least two
digits: "\07"
The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
the problem was discovered.
regexp memory corruption
(P) The regular expression engine got confused by what
the regular expression compiler gave it.
Regexp out of space
(P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should
have caught it earlier.
Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @# incompati-
ble)
(F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank
sequence and a numeric field that will never go blank so
that the repetition never terminates. You might use ^#
instead. See perlform.
Reversed %s= operator
(W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards.
The = must always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with
subsequent unary operators.
Runaway format
(F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank
sequence, but it produced 200 lines at once, and the
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200th line looked exactly like the 199th line.
Apparently you didn't arrange for the arguments to
exhaust themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for
scalar variables), or by shifting or popping (for array
variables). See perlform.
Scalars leaked: %d
(P) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping
of scalars: not all scalar variables were deallocated by
the time Perl exited. What this usually indicates is a
memory leak, which is of course bad, especially if the
Perl program is intended to be long-running.
Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
(W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @)
to select a single element of an array. Generally it's
better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $). The
difference is that $foo[&bar] always behaves like a
scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating
its argument, while @foo[&bar] behaves like a list when
you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting
only one subscript.
On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat
the array element as a list, you need to look into how
references work, because Perl will not magically convert
between scalars and lists for you. See perlref.
Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
(W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to
select a single element of a hash. Generally it's
better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $). The
difference is that $foo{&bar} always behaves like a
scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating
its argument, while @foo{&bar} behaves like a list when
you assign to it, and provides a list context to its
subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting
only one subscript.
On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat
the hash element as a list, you need to look into how
references work, because Perl will not magically convert
between scalars and lists for you. See perlref.
Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
(F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script
without a setuid or setgid bit set. This doesn't make
much sense.
Search pattern not terminated
(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a //
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or m{} construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters
count nesting level. Missing the leading "$" from a
variable $m may cause this error.
Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the defined-
or construct, not just the empty search pattern. There-
fore code written in Perl 5.9.0 or later that uses the
// as the defined-or can be misparsed by pre-5.9.0 Perls
as a non-terminated search pattern.
Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as
search pattern
(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a
"?PATTERN?" construct.
The question mark is also used as part of the ternary
operator (as in "foo ? 0 : 1") leading to some ambiguous
constructions being wrongly parsed. One way to disambi-
guate the parsing is to put parentheses around the con-
ditional expression, i.e. "(foo) ? 0 : 1".
%sseek() on unopened filehandle
(W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek()
function on a filehandle that was either never opened or
has since been closed.
select not implemented
(F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system
call.
Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
(F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported
in the current implementation.
Semicolon seems to be missing
(W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused
by a missing semicolon, or possibly some other missing
operator, such as a comma.
semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
(S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called
to duplicate a scalar that had previously been marked as
free.
sem%s not implemented
(F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your sys-
tem.
send() on closed socket %s
(W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself
closed sometime before now. Check your control flow.
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Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete exten-
sion (?. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
about where the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Sequence (?%s...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(F) A proposed regular expression extension has the
character reserved but has not yet been written. The <--
HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
problem was discovered. See perlre.
Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't
make sense. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expres-
sion about where the problem was discovered. See
perlre.
Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a
closing parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't
allowed. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
about where the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex;
marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains
braces, they must balance for Perl to properly detect
the end of the clause. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
expression about where the problem was discovered. See
perlre.
500 Server error
See Server error.
Server error
This is the error message generally seen in a browser
window when trying to run a CGI program (including SSI)
over the web. The actual error text varies widely from
server to server. The most frequently-seen variants are
"500 Server error", "Method (something) not permitted",
"Document contains no data", "Premature end of script
headers", and "Did not produce a valid header".
This is a CGI error, not a Perl error.
You need to make sure your script is executable, is
accessible by the user CGI is running the script under
(which is probably not the user account you tested it
under), does not rely on any environment variables (like
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PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in
a location where the CGI server can't find it, basi-
cally, more or less. Please see the following for more
information:
http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
You should also look at perlfaq9.
setegid() not implemented
(F) You tried to assign to $), and your operating system
doesn't support the setegid() system call (or
equivalent), or at least Configure didn't think so.
seteuid() not implemented
(F) You tried to assign to $>, and your operating system
doesn't support the seteuid() system call (or
equivalent), or at least Configure didn't think so.
setpgrp can't take arguments
(F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which
takes no arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes
a process ID and process group ID.
setrgid() not implemented
(F) You tried to assign to $(, and your operating system
doesn't support the setrgid() system call (or
equivalent), or at least Configure didn't think so.
setruid() not implemented
(F) You tried to assign to $<, and your operating system
doesn't support the setruid() system call (or
equivalent), or at least Configure didn't think so.
setsockopt() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed
socket. Did you forget to check the return value of
your socket() call? See "setsockopt" in perlfunc.
Setuid/gid script is writable by world
(F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that is writ-
able by the world, because the world might have written
on it already.
Setuid script not plain file
(F) The setuid emulator won't run a script that isn't
read from a file, but from a socket, a pipe or another
device.
shm%s not implemented
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(F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your
system.
<> should be quotes
(F) You wrote "require <file>" when you should have
written "require 'file'".
/%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
(W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected
to find a string, as in the first argument to "join".
Perl will treat the true or false result of matching the
pattern against $_ as the string, which is probably not
what you had in mind.
shutdown() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed
socket. Seems a bit superfluous.
SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
(W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in
fact, exist. Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
sort is now a reserved word
(F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever
runs into anymore. But before sort was a keyword, people
sometimes used it as a filehandle.
Sort subroutine didn't return a numeric value
(F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You
probably blew it by not using "<=>" or "cmp", or by not
using them correctly. See "sort" in perlfunc.
Sort subroutine didn't return single value
(F) A sort comparison subroutine may not return a list
value with more or less than one element. See "sort" in
perlfunc.
splice() offset past end of array
(W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was
past the end of the array passed to splice(). Splicing
will instead commence at the end of the array, rather
than past it. If this isn't what you want, try expli-
citly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array =
$offset. See "splice" in perlfunc.
Split loop
(P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a
split shouldn't iterate more times than there are char-
acters of input, which is what happened.) See "split" in
perlfunc.
Statement unlikely to be reached
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(W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it
other than a die(). This is almost always an error,
because exec() never returns unless there was a failure.
You probably wanted to use system() instead, which does
return. To suppress this warning, put the exec() in a
block by itself.
stat() on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a
filehandle that was either never opened or has since
been closed.
Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s"
(P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken
by importation stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly
created, but explicit calls to "can" may break this.
Subroutine %s redefined
(W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress
this warning, say
{
no warnings 'redefine';
eval "sub name { ... }";
}
Substitution loop
(P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obvi-
ously, a substitution shouldn't iterate more times than
there are characters of input, which is what happened.)
See the discussion of substitution in "Quote and Quote-
like Operators" in perlop.
Substitution pattern not terminated
(F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an
s/// or s{}{} construct. Remember that bracketing del-
imiters count nesting level. Missing the leading "$"
from variable $s may cause this error.
Substitution replacement not terminated
(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an
s/// or s{}{} construct. Remember that bracketing del-
imiters count nesting level. Missing the leading "$"
from variable $s may cause this error.
substr outside of string
(W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that
pointed outside of a string. That is, the absolute
value of the offset was larger than the length of the
string. See "substr" in perlfunc. This warning is
fatal if substr is used in an lvalue context (as the
left hand side of an assignment or as a subroutine
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argument for example).
suidperl is no longer needed since %s
(F) Your Perl was compiled with
-DSETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW, but a version of the
setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex;
marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can
have at most two branches (the if-clause and the
else-clause). If you want one or both to contain alter-
nation, such as using "this|that|other", enclose it in
clustering parentheses:
(?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause)
construct is a number, it can be only a number. The <--
HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
problem was discovered. See perlre.
switching effective %s is not implemented
(F) While under the "use filetest" pragma, we cannot
switch the real and effective uids or gids.
%s syntax
(F) The final summary message when a "perl -c" succeeds.
syntax error
(F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common rea-
sons include:
A keyword is misspelled.
A semicolon is missing.
A comma is missing.
An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
An opening or closing brace is missing.
A closing quote is missing.
Often there will be another error message associated
with the syntax error giving more information. (Some-
times it helps to turn on -w.) The error message itself
often tells you where it was in the line when it decided
to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several
tokens before this, because Perl is good at understand-
ing random input. Occasionally the line number may be
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misleading, and once in a blue moon the only way to fig-
ure out what's triggering the error is to call "perl -c"
repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to
see if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic ver-
sion of 20 questions.
syntax error at line %d: `%s' unexpected
(A) You've accidentally run your script through the
Bourne shell instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or
manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
(F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5
script through a perl4 interpreter, especially if the
next 2 tokens are "use strict" or "my $var" or "our
$var".
sysread() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that
was never opened.
System V %s is not implemented on this machine
(F) You tried to do something with a function beginning
with "sem", "shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not
implemented in your machine. In some machines the func-
tionality can exist but be unconfigured. Consult your
system support.
syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself
closed sometime before now. Check your control flow.
"-T" and "-B" not implemented on filehandles
(F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles
when it doesn't know about your kind of stdio. You'll
have to use a filename instead.
Target of goto is too deeply nested
(F) You tried to use "goto" to reach a label that was
too deeply nested for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you
a favor by refusing.
tell() on unopened filehandle
(W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a
filehandle that was either never opened or has since
been closed.
That use of $[ is unsupported
(F) Assignment to $[ is now strictly circumscribed, and
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interpreted as a compiler directive. You may say only
one of
$[ = 0;
$[ = 1;
...
local $[ = 0;
local $[ = 1;
...
This is to prevent the problem of one module changing
the array base out from under another module inadver-
tently. See "$[" in perlvar.
The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
(F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your
machine, probably because your vendor didn't supply it,
probably because they think the U.S. Government thinks
it's a secret, or at least that they will continue to
pretend that it is. And if you quote me on that, I will
deny it.
The %s function is unimplemented
The function indicated isn't implemented on this archi-
tecture, according to the probings of Configure.
The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
(F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer
for symbolic linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the
stat buffer already went past the symlink to get to the
real file. Use an actual filename instead.
The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
(F) Currently this attribute is not supported on "my" or
"sub" declarations. See "our" in perlfunc.
This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
(W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to
change or delete an element of the CRTL's internal
environ array, but your copy of Perl wasn't built with a
CRTL that contained the setenv() function. You'll need
to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine
PERL_ENV_TABLES (see perlvms) so that the environ array
isn't the target of the change to %ENV which produced
the warning.
thread failed to start: %s
(W threads)(S) The entry point function of
threads->create() failed for some reason.
5.005 threads are deprecated
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(D deprecated) The 5.005-style threads (activated by
"use Thread;") are deprecated and one should use the new
ithreads instead, see perl58delta for more details.
times not implemented
(F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do
times(). I suspect you're not running on Unix.
"-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
(X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script
contains the -T option, but Perl was not invoked with -T
in its command line. This is an error because, by the
time Perl discovers a -T in a script, it's too late to
properly taint everything from the environment. So Perl
gives up.
If the Perl script is being executed as a command using
the #! mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error
can usually be fixed by editing the #! line so that the
-T option is a part of Perl's first argument: e.g.
change "perl -n -T" to "perl -T -n".
If the Perl script is being executed as "perl
scriptname", then the -T option must appear on the com-
mand line: "perl -T scriptname".
To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
(F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for
lc(), lcfirst, uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-
inlined versions), but you specified an illegal mapping.
See "User-Defined Character Properties" in perlunicode.
Too deeply nested ()-groups
(F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously
deep nesting level.
Too few args to syscall
(F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall()
to specify the system call to call, silly dilly.
Too late for "-%s" option
(X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script
contains the -M or -m option. This is an error because
-M and -m options are not intended for use inside
scripts. Use the "use" pragma instead.
Too late to run %s block
(W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during
run time proper, when the opportunity to run them has
already passed. Perhaps you are loading a file with
"require" or "do" when you should be using "use"
instead. Or perhaps you should put the "require" or
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"do" inside a BEGIN block.
Too many args to syscall
(F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to sys-
call().
Too many arguments for %s
(F) The function requires fewer arguments than you
specified.
Too many )'s
(A) You've accidentally run your script through csh
instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed
your script into Perl yourself.
Too many ('s
(A) You've accidentally run your script through csh
instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed
your script into Perl yourself.
Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
(F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed
backslash. Backslash it. See perlre.
Transliteration pattern not terminated
(F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a
tr/// or tr[][] or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the
leading "$" from variables $tr or $y may cause this
error.
Transliteration replacement not terminated
(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a
tr///, tr[][], y/// or y[][] construct.
'%s' trapped by operation mask
(F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment
in which it's disallowed. See Safe.
truncate not implemented
(F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation
mechanism that Configure knows about.
Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
(F) This function requires the argument in that position
to be of a certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or
"@{EXPR}". Hashes must be %NAME or "%{EXPR}". No
implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the {EXPR} forms
as an explicit dereference. See perlref.
umask not implemented
(F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function
and you tried to use it to restrict permissions for
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yourself (EXPR & 0700).
Unable to create sub named "%s"
(F) You attempted to create or access a subroutine with
an illegal name.
Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
(W internal) The exit code detected an internal incon-
sistency in how many execution contexts were entered and
left.
Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
(W internal) The exit code detected an internal incon-
sistency in how many values were temporarily localized.
Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
(W internal) The exit code detected an internal incon-
sistency in how many blocks were entered and left.
Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
(W internal) The exit code detected an internal incon-
sistency in how many mortal scalars were allocated and
freed.
Undefined format "%s" called
(F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps
it's really in another package? See perlform.
Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
(F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem
to exist. Perhaps it's in a different package? See
"sort" in perlfunc.
Undefined subroutine &%s called
(F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if
it was, it has since been undefined.
Undefined subroutine called
(F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call
hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has since been
undefined.
Undefined subroutine in sort
(F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared
but doesn't seem to have been defined yet. See "sort"
in perlfunc.
Undefined top format "%s" called
(F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps
it's really in another package? See perlform.
Undefined value assigned to typeglob
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(W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob,
a la "*foo = undef". This does nothing. It's possible
that you really mean "undef *foo".
%s: Undefined variable
(A) You've accidentally run your script through csh
instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed
your script into Perl yourself.
unexec of %s into %s failed!
(F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See
your local FSF representative, who probably put it there
in the first place.
Unicode character %s is illegal
(W utf8) Certain Unicode characters have been designated
off-limits by the Unicode standard and should not be
generated. If you really know what you are doing you
can turn off this warning by "no warnings 'utf8';".
Unknown BYTEORDER
(F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine
with this byte order.
Unknown open() mode '%s'
(F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not
among the list of valid modes: "<", ">", ">>", "+<",
"+>", "+>>", "-|", "|-", "<&", ">&".
Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
(W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer
onto the Perl I/O system. (Layers take care of
transforming data between external and internal
representations.) Note that some layers, such as
"mmap", are not supported in all environments. If your
program didn't explicitly request the failing operation,
it may be the result of the value of the environment
variable PERLIO.
Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values
for %ENV before iterating over it, and someone else
stuck a message in the stream of data Perl expected.
Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to subvert
Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re"
pragma.
Unknown switch condition (?(%.2s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
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(F) The condition part of a
(?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct is not
known. The condition may be lookahead or lookbehind (the
condition is true if the lookahead or lookbehind is
true), a (?{...}) construct (the condition is true if
the code evaluates to a true value), or a number (the
condition is true if the set of capturing parentheses
named by the number matched).
The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
You specified an unknown Unicode option. See perlrun
documentation of the "-C" switch for the list of known
options.
Unknown Unicode option value %x
You specified an unknown Unicode option. See perlrun
documentation of the "-C" switch for the list of known
options.
Unknown warnings category '%s'
(F) An error issued by the "warnings" pragma. You speci-
fied a warnings category that is unknown to perl at this
point.
Note that if you want to enable a warnings category
registered by a module (e.g. "use warnings
'File::Find'"), you must have imported this module
first.
unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The brackets around a character class must match. If
you wish to include a closing bracket in a character
class, backslash it or put it first. The <-- HERE shows
in the regular expression about where the problem was
discovered. See perlre.
unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in
regular expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is
valuable for finding the matching parenthesis. The <--
HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
problem was discovered. See perlre.
Unmatched right %s bracket
(F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square
brackets than opening ones, so you're probably missing a
matching opening bracket. As a general rule, you'll
find the missing one (so to speak) near the place you
were last editing.
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Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
(W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be
claimed as a reserved word. It's best to put such a
word in quotes, or capitalize it somehow, or insert an
underbar into it. You might also declare it as a sub-
routine.
Unrecognized character %s
(F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the
specified character in your Perl script (or eval).
Perhaps you tried to run a compressed script, a binary
program, or a directory as a Perl program.
/%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through
(W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination
which is not recognized by Perl inside character
classes. The character was understood literally.
Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
(W misc) You used a backslash-character combination
which is not recognized by Perl.
Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through in regex; marked by <--
HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination
which is not recognized by Perl. This combination
appears in an interpolated variable or a "'"-delimited
regular expression. The character was understood
literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
about where the escape was discovered.
Unrecognized signal name "%s"
(F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function
that was not recognized. Say "kill -l" in your shell to
see the valid signal names on your system.
Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
(F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do
that. (If you think you didn't do that, check the #!
line to see if it's supplying the bad switch on your
behalf.)
Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
(W newline) A file operation was attempted on a
filename, and that operation failed, PROBABLY because
the filename contained a newline, PROBABLY because you
forgot to chomp() it off. See "chomp" in perlfunc.
Unsupported directory function "%s" called
(F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and read-
dir().
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Unsupported function %s
(F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated func-
tion, apparently. At least, Configure doesn't think so.
Unsupported function fork
(F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be
different flavors of Perl executables, some of which may
support fork, some not. Try changing the name you call
Perl by to "perl_", "perl__", and so on.
Unsupported script encoding %s
(F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order
Mark (BOM) which declares it to be in a Unicode encoding
that Perl cannot read.
Unsupported socket function "%s" called
(F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket
mechanism, or at least that's what Configure thought.
Unterminated attribute list
(F) The lexer found something other than a simple iden-
tifier at the start of an attribute, and it wasn't a
semicolon or the start of a block. Perhaps you ter-
minated the parameter list of the previous attribute too
soon. See attributes.
Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
(F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis charac-
ter while parsing an attribute list, but the matching
closing (right) parenthesis character was not found.
You may need to add (or remove) a backslash character to
get your parentheses to balance. See attributes.
Unterminated compressed integer
(F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with
the BER compressed integer format and could not be con-
verted to an integer. See "pack" in perlfunc.
Unterminated <> operator
(F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where
it was expecting a term, so it's looking for the
corresponding right angle bracket, and not finding it.
Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier
in the line, and you really meant a "less than".
untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
(W untie) A copy of the object returned from "tie" (or
"tied") was still valid when "untie" was called.
Usage: POSIX::%s(%s)
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(F) You called a POSIX function with incorrect argu-
ments. See "FUNCTIONS" in POSIX for more information.
Usage: Win32::%s(%s)
(F) You called a Win32 function with incorrect argu-
ments. See Win32 for more information.
Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <--
HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as
(?-o) that has no meaning unless removed from the entire
regexp:
if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
must be written as
if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as
(?o) that has no meaning unless applied to the entire
regexp:
if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
must be written as
if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Useless use of %s in void context
(W void) You did something without a side effect in a
context that does nothing with the return value, such as
a statement that doesn't return a value from a block, or
the left side of a scalar comma operator. Very often
this points not to stupidity on your part, but a failure
of Perl to parse your program the way you thought it
would. For example, you'd get this if you mixed up your
C precedence with Python precedence and said
$one, $two = 1, 2;
when you meant to say
($one, $two) = (1, 2);
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Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to
construct a list reference when you should be using
square or curly brackets, for example, if you say
$array = (1,2);
when you should have said
$array = [1,2];
The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a
scalar value, while parentheses do not. So when a
parenthesized list is evaluated in a scalar context, the
comma is treated like C's comma operator, which throws
away the left argument, which is not what you want. See
perlref for more on this.
This warning will not be issued for numerical constants
equal to 0 or 1 since they are often used in statements
like
1 while sub_with_side_effects();
String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1
are warned about.
Useless use of "re" pragma
(W) You did "use re;" without any arguments. That
isn't very useful.
Useless use of sort in scalar context
(W void) You used sort in scalar context, as in :
my $x = sort @y;
This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes
this away.
Useless use of %s with no values
(W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function
with no arguments apart from the array, like "push(@x)"
or "unshift(@foo)". That won't usually have any effect
on the array, so is completely useless. It's possible in
principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect
if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH
method. If so, you can write it as
"push(@tied_array,())" to avoid this warning.
"use" not allowed in expression
(F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at com-
pile time, and returns no useful value. See perlmod.
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Use of bare << to mean <<"" is deprecated
(D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the expli-
citly quoted form if you wish to use an empty line as
the terminator of the here-document.
Use of chdir('') or chdir(undef) as chdir() deprecated
(D deprecated) chdir() with no arguments is documented
to change to $ENV{HOME} or $ENV{LOGDIR}. chdir(undef)
and chdir('') share this behavior, but that has been
deprecated. In future versions they will simply fail.
Be careful to check that what you pass to chdir() is
defined and not blank, else you might find yourself in
your home directory.
Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
(W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution.
The /c modifier is not presently meaningful in substitu-
tions.
Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
(W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex
operand, but didn't use the /g modifier. Currently, /c
is meaningful only when /g is used. (This may change in
the future.)
Use of freed value in iteration
(F) Perhaps you modified the iterated array within the
loop? This error is typically caused by code like the
following:
@a = (3,4);
@a = () for (1,2,@a);
You are not supposed to modify arrays while they are
being iterated over. For speed and efficiency reasons,
Perl internally does not do full reference-counting of
iterated items, hence deleting such an item in the mid-
dle of an iteration causes Perl to see a freed value.
Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
(D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter
*glob{IO} form to access the filehandle slot within a
typeglob.
Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
(W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a
"split" operator. Since "split" always tries to match
the pattern repeatedly, the "/g" has no effect.
Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
(D deprecated) It makes a lot of work for the compiler
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when you clobber a subroutine's argument list, so it's
better if you assign the results of a split() explicitly
to an array (or list).
Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
(D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, "AUTO-
LOAD" subroutines are looked up as methods (using the
@ISA hierarchy) even when the subroutines to be auto-
loaded were called as plain functions (e.g.
"Foo::bar()"), not as methods (e.g. "Foo->bar()" or
"$obj->bar()").
This bug will be rectified in future by using method
lookup only for methods' "AUTOLOAD"s. However, there is
a significant base of existing code that may be using
the old behavior. So, as an interim step, Perl
currently issues an optional warning when non-methods
use inherited "AUTOLOAD"s.
The simple rule is: Inheritance will not work when
autoloading non-methods. The simple fix for old code
is: In any module that used to depend on inheriting
"AUTOLOAD" for non-methods from a base class named
"BaseClass", execute "*AUTOLOAD = \&BaseClass::AUTOLOAD"
during startup.
In code that currently says "use AutoLoader; @ISA =
qw(AutoLoader);" you should remove AutoLoader from @ISA
and change "use AutoLoader;" to "use AutoLoader 'AUTO-
LOAD';".
Use of %s in printf format not supported
(F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is
accessible from only C. This usually means there's a
better way to do it in Perl.
Use of $* is deprecated
(D deprecated) This variable magically turned on multi-
line pattern matching, both for you and for any luckless
subroutine that you happen to call. You should use the
new "//m" and "//s" modifiers now to do that without the
dangerous action-at-a-distance effects of $*.
Use of $# is deprecated
(D deprecated) This was an ill-advised attempt to emu-
late a poorly defined awk feature. Use an explicit
printf() or sprintf() instead.
Use of %s is deprecated
(D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer
recommended for use, generally because there's a better
way to do it, and also because the old way has bad side
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effects.
Use of -l on filehandle %s
(W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when
you opened the file it already went past any symlink you
are presumably trying to look for. The operation
returned "undef". Use a filename instead.
Use of "package" with no arguments is deprecated
(D deprecated) You used the "package" keyword without
specifying a package name. So no namespace is current at
all. Using this can cause many otherwise reasonable con-
structs to fail in baffling ways. "use strict;" instead.
Use of reference "%s" as array index
(W misc) You tried to use a reference as an array index;
this probably isn't what you mean, because references in
numerical context tend to be huge numbers, and so usu-
ally indicates programmer error.
If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your refer-
ence, like so: $array[0+$ref]. This warning is not
given for overloaded objects, either, because you can
overload the numification and stringification operators
and then you assumedly know what you are doing.
Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
(D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved
word. Future versions of perl may use it as a keyword,
so you're better off either explicitly quoting the word
in a manner appropriate for its context of use, or using
a different name altogether. The warning can be
suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a "&"
prefix, or using a package qualifier, e.g. "&our()", or
"Foo::our()".
Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
(W taint, deprecated) You have supplied "system()" or
"exec()" with multiple arguments and at least one of
them is tainted. This used to be allowed but will
become a fatal error in a future version of perl.
Untaint your arguments. See perlsec.
Use of uninitialized value%s
(W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it
were already defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a
0, but maybe it was a mistake. To suppress this warning
assign a defined value to your variables.
To help you figure out what was undefined, perl tells
you what operation you used the undefined value in.
Note, however, that perl optimizes your program and the
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operation displayed in the warning may not necessarily
appear literally in your program. For example, "that
$foo" is usually optimized into ""that " . $foo", and
the warning will refer to the "concatenation (.)" opera-
tor, even though there is no "." in your program.
Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
(D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference,
as in "%foo->{"bar"}" or "%$ref->{"hello"}". Versions
of perl <= 5.6.1 used to allow this syntax, but
shouldn't have. It is now deprecated, and will be
removed in a future version.
Using an array as a reference is deprecated
(D deprecated) You tried to use an array as a reference,
as in "@foo->[23]" or "@$ref->[99]". Versions of perl
<= 5.6.1 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have.
It is now deprecated, and will be removed in a future
version.
UTF-16 surrogate %s
(W utf8) You tried to generate half of an UTF-16 surro-
gate by requesting a Unicode character between the code
points 0xD800 and 0xDFFF (inclusive). That range is
reserved exclusively for the use of UTF-16 encoding (by
having two 16-bit UCS-2 characters); but Perl encodes
its characters in UTF-8, so what you got is a very ille-
gal character. If you really know what you are doing
you can turn off this warning by "no warnings 'utf8';".
Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
(W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>,
<*> (glob), "each()", or "readdir()" as a boolean value.
Each of these constructs can return a value of "0"; that
would make the conditional expression false, which is
probably not what you intended. When using these con-
structs in conditional expressions, test their values
with the "defined" operator.
Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
(W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read
the value of an %ENV element from a CLI symbol table,
and found a resultant string longer than 1024 charac-
ters. The return value has been truncated to 1024 char-
acters.
Variable "%s" is not imported%s
(F) While "use strict" in effect, you referred to a glo-
bal variable that you apparently thought was imported
from another module, because something else of the same
name (usually a subroutine) is exported by that module.
It usually means you put the wrong funny character on
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the front of your variable.
Variable length lookbehind not implemented in regex; marked by
<-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose
length is fixed and known at compile time. The <-- HERE
shows in the regular expression about where the problem
was discovered. See perlre.
"%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
(W misc) A "my" or "our" variable has been redeclared in
the current scope or statement, effectively eliminating
all access to the previous instance. This is almost
always a typographical error. Note that the earlier
variable will still exist until the end of the scope or
until all closure referents to it are destroyed.
Variable "%s" may be unavailable
(W closure) An inner (nested) anonymous subroutine is
inside a named subroutine, and outside that is another
subroutine; and the anonymous (innermost) subroutine is
referencing a lexical variable defined in the outermost
subroutine. For example:
sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced
(directly or indirectly) from the outermost subroutine,
it will share the variable as you would expect. But if
the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced when
the outermost subroutine is not active, it will see the
value of the shared variable as it was before and during
the *first* call to the outermost subroutine, which is
probably not what you want.
In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the
middle subroutine anonymous, using the "sub {}" syntax.
Perl has specific support for shared variables in nested
anonymous subroutines; a named subroutine in between
interferes with this feature.
Variable syntax
(A) You've accidentally run your script through csh
instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed
your script into Perl yourself.
Variable "%s" will not stay shared
(W closure) An inner (nested) named subroutine is
referencing a lexical variable defined in an outer sub-
routine.
When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably
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see the value of the outer subroutine's variable as it
was before and during the *first* call to the outer sub-
routine; in this case, after the first call to the outer
subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines
will no longer share a common value for the variable.
In other words, the variable will no longer be shared.
Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and
references a lexical variable outside itself, then the
outer and inner subroutines will never share the given
variable.
This problem can usually be solved by making the inner
subroutine anonymous, using the "sub {}" syntax. When
inner anonymous subs that reference variables in outer
subroutines are called or referenced, they are automati-
cally rebound to the current values of such variables.
Version number must be a constant number
(P) The attempt to translate a "use Module n.n LIST"
statement into its equivalent "BEGIN" block found an
internal inconsistency with the version number.
Warning: something's wrong
(W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of
"warn """) or you called it with no args and $_ was
empty.
Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
(S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error
indication on the close(). This usually indicates your
filesystem ran out of disk space.
Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
(S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by
something that looks like a binary operator that could
also have been interpreted as a term or unary operator.
For instance, if you know that the rand function has a
default argument of 1.0, and you write
rand + 5;
you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
rand() + 5;
but in actual fact, you got
rand(+5);
So put in parentheses to say what you really mean.
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Wide character in %s
(W utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasn't
expecting one. This warning is by default on for I/O
(like print). The easiest way to quiet this warning is
simply to add the ":utf8" layer to the output, e.g.
"binmode STDOUT, ':utf8'". Another way to turn off the
warning is to add "no warnings 'utf8';" but that is
often closer to cheating. In general, you are supposed
to explicitly mark the filehandle with an encoding, see
open and "binmode" in perlfunc.
Within []-length '%c' not allowed
(F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced
by "[TEMPLATE]" only if "TEMPLATE" always matches the
same amount of packed bytes that can be determined from
the template alone. This is not possible if it contains
an of the codes @, /, U, u, w or a *-length. Redesign
the template.
write() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself
closed sometime before now. Check your control flow.
%s "\x%s" does not map to Unicode
When reading in different encodings Perl tries to map
everything into Unicode characters. The bytes you read
in are not legal in this encoding, for example
utf8 "\xE4" does not map to Unicode
if you try to read in the a-diaereses Latin-1 as UTF-8.
'X' outside of string
(F) You had a (un)pack template that specified a rela-
tive position before the beginning of the string being
(un)packed. See "pack" in perlfunc.
'x' outside of string in unpack
(F) You had a pack template that specified a relative
position after the end of the string being unpacked.
See "pack" in perlfunc.
YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
(F) And you probably never will, because you probably
don't have the sources to your kernel, and your vendor
probably doesn't give a rip about what you want. Your
best bet is to put a setuid C wrapper around your
script.
You need to quote "%s"
(W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler
name. Unfortunately, you already have a subroutine of
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that name declared, which means that Perl 5 will try to
call the subroutine when the assignment is executed,
which is probably not what you want. (If it IS what you
want, put an & in front.)
Your random numbers are not that random
(F) When trying to initialise the random seed for
hashes, Perl could not get any randomness out of your
system. This usually indicates Something Very Wrong.
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