NAME¶
perldiag - various Perl diagnostics
DESCRIPTION¶
These messages are classified as follows (listed in increasing order of
desperation):
(W) A warning (optional).
(D) A deprecation (enabled by default).
(S) A severe warning (enabled by 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 classifications above (W, D &
S) can be controlled using the "warnings" 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 setting
$SIG{__WARN__} to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning
instead of printing it. See perlvar.
Severe warnings are always enabled, unless they are explicitly disabled with the
"warnings" pragma or the
-X switch.
Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See "eval" in
perlfunc. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively disabled or
promoted to fatal errors using the "warnings" pragma. See warnings.
The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or lower-case.
Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are denoted with a %s or
other printf-style escape. These escapes are ignored by the alphabetical
order, as are all characters other than letters. To look up your message, just
ignore anything that is not a letter.
- accept() on closed socket %s
- (W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket.
Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
"accept" in perlfunc.
- Allocation too large: %x
- (X) You can't allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS
machine.
- '%c' allowed only after types %s
- (F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in
pack() or unpack() only after certain types. See
"pack" in perlfunc.
- Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or
use &
- (W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same
name as a Perl keyword, and you have used the name without qualification
for calling one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the
subroutine is not imported.
To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand before
the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package. Alternatively,
you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's imported with the
"use subs" pragma).
To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the "CORE::"
prefix on the operator (e.g. "CORE::log($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.
- Ambiguous use of %c resolved as operator %c
- (W ambiguous) "%", "&", and
"*" are both infix operators (modulus, bitwise and, and
multiplication) and initial special characters (denoting hashes,
subroutines and typeglobs), and you said something like "*foo *
foo" that might be interpreted as either of them. We assumed you
meant the infix operator, but please try to make it more clear -- in the
example given, you might write "*foo * foo()" if you really
meant to multiply a glob by the result of calling a function.
- Ambiguous use of %c{%s} resolved to %c%s
- (W ambiguous) You wrote something like "@{foo}",
which might be asking for the variable @foo, or it might be calling a
function named foo, and dereferencing it as an array reference. If you
wanted the varable, you can just write @foo. If you wanted to call the
function, write "@{foo()}" ... or you could just not have a
variable and a function with the same name, and save yourself a lot of
trouble.
- Ambiguous use of %c{%s[...]} resolved to %c%s[...]
- Ambiguous use of %c{%s{...}} resolved to %c%s{...}
- (W ambiguous) You wrote something like
"${foo[2]}" (where foo represents the name of a Perl keyword),
which might be looking for element number 2 of the array named @foo, in
which case please write $foo[2], or you might have meant to pass an
anonymous arrayref to the function named foo, and then do a scalar deref
on the value it returns. If you meant that, write "${foo([2])}".
In regular expressions, the "${foo[2]}" syntax is sometimes
necessary to disambiguate between array subscripts and character classes.
"/$length[2345]/", for instance, will be interpreted as $length
followed by the character class "[2345]". If an array subscript
is what you want, you can avoid the warning by changing
"/${length[2345]}/" to the unsightly
"/${\$length[2345]}/", by renaming your array to something that
does not coincide with a built-in keyword, or by simply turning off
warnings with "no warnings 'ambiguous';".
- Ambiguous use of -%s resolved as -&%s()
- (W ambiguous) You wrote something like "-foo",
which might be the string "-foo", or a call to the function
"foo", negated. If you meant the string, just write
"-foo". If you meant the function call, write
"-foo()".
- Ambiguous use of 's//le...' resolved as 's// le...';
Rewrite as 's//el' if you meant 'use locale rules and evaluate rhs as an
expression'. In Perl 5.16, it will be resolved the other way
- (W deprecated, ambiguous) You wrote a pattern match with
substitution immediately followed by "le". In Perl 5.14 and
earlier, this is resolved as meaning to take the result of the
substitution, and see if it is stringwise less-than-or-equal-to what
follows in the expression. Having the "le" immediately following
a pattern is deprecated behavior, so in Perl 5.16, this expression will be
resolved as meaning to do the pattern match using the rules of the current
locale, and evaluate the rhs as an expression when doing the substitution.
In 5.14, if you want the latter interpretation, you can simply write
"el" instead.
- '|' and '<' may not both be specified on command
line
- (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command
line redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried
to redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a customer,
please.
- '|' and '>' may not both be specified on command
line
- (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command
line redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file
and into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the other,
though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script
which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
open(OUT,">$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.
- 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 or a
subroutine
- (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array
element or a subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
$foo{$bar}
$ref->{"susie"}[12]
&do_something
- %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.
- 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 argument 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 deprecated.
- 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 supply 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 first to collect the return values of
the created threads by joining them, and only then to 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 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 version 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 restricted
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%x
- (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 something else is
freeing the SV before the free_tmps() routine 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 symbol
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, 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 reload %s aborted.
- (F) You tried to load a file with "use" or
"require" that failed to compile once already. Perl will not try
to compile this file again unless you delete its entry from %INC. See
"require" in perlfunc and "%INC" in perlvar.
- 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 argument
to substr() used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you
forgot to dereference it first. See "substr" in perlfunc.
- Attribute "locked" is deprecated
- (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to
modify the "locked" attribute on a code reference. The :locked
attribute is obsolete, has had no effect since 5005 threads were removed,
and will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
- Attribute "unique" is deprecated
- (D deprecated) You have used the attributes pragma to
modify the "unique" attribute on an array, hash or scalar
reference. The :unique attribute has had no effect since Perl 5.8.8, and
will be removed in a future release of Perl 5.
- Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
- (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
replacement 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 filehandle,
but the symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do
an open(), or did it in another package.
- Bad free() ignored
- (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on
something 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
unnoticed if "DB" uses forgiving system
malloc().
- Bad hash
- (P) One of the internal hash routines was passed a null HV
pointer.
- 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 prefix,
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 plugin affecting keyword '%s'
- (F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism
violated the plugin API.
- Bad realloc() ignored
- (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on
something that had never been malloc()ed in the first place.
Mandatory, but can be disabled by setting the 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 dirhandle
- (P) An internal request asked to add a dirhandle 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.
- 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 predeclare 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 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 your control flow and number of
arguments.
- "\b{" is deprecated; use "\b\{"
instead
- "\B{" is deprecated; use "\B\{"
instead
- (W deprecated, regexp) Use of an unescaped "{"
immediately following a "\b" or "\B" is now deprecated
so as to reserve its use for Perl itself in a future release.
- 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 copiable.
- 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 prototype
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 prototype 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 warning.
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 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.
- Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
- (F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a
reference in it, then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl
syntax. The access triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but it there
is no legal conversion from that type of reference to a typeglob.
- Cannot copy to %s in %s
- (P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal
type that cannot be directly assigned to.
- Cannot find encoding "%s"
- (S io) You tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to
a filehandle, either with open() or binmode().
- 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 something 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 "break" in a loop topicalizer
- (F) You called "break", but you're in a
"foreach" block rather than a "given" block. You
probably meant to use "next" or "last".
- Can't "break" outside a given block
- (F) You called "break", but you're not inside a
"given" block.
- 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 supposed
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 perlobj.
- 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 neither an object reference nor a package
name. Something like this will reproduce the error:
$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 %s to %s 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 "continue" outside a when block
- (F) You called "continue", but you're not inside
a "when" or "default" block.
- 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 %s in "%s"
- (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared
as "my", "our" or "state" 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 waitpid with flags
- (F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or
wait4(), so only waitpid() without flags is emulated.
- 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 %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
- (F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor
little-endian, or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and
unpacking big- or little-endian floating point values and pointers may not
be possible. See "pack" in perlfunc.
- 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 executable in question was compiled for another
architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an interpreter 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 permissions.
- Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
- (F) A string of a form "CORE::word" was given to
prototype(), 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? See "Properties accessible through \p{} and
\P{}" in perluniprops for a complete list of available
properties.
- Can't find label %s
- (F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere
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.
- 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 following 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 or there may not be a
linebreak after it. A good programmer's editor will have a way to help you
find these characters (or lack of characters). See perlop for the full
details on here-documents.
- Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
- (F) You may have tried to use "\p" which means a
Unicode property (for example "\p{Lu}" matches all uppercase
letters). If you did mean to use a Unicode property, see "Properties
accessible through \p{} and \P{}" in perluniprops for a complete list
of available 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, or until
"\E").
- Can't fork: %s
- (F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while
opening a pipeline.
- Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
- (W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will
be retried after five seconds.
- 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-checking 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.
- 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 a sort sub (or similar
callback)
- (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to
jump out of the comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar
callback (such as the reduce() function in List::Util).
- 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 situation
typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl may be
running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
- Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
- (F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a
fatal error to attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or
otherwise non-numeric process identifier.
- 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 problem 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 considered a block that loops once. See
"last" in perlfunc.
- Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
- (F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order
(MRO) of a package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
- 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 upgraded your version of perl to
one that is incompatible 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 previously
declared as a lexical variable using "my" or "state".
This is not allowed. If you want to localize a package variable of the
same name, qualify it with the package name.
- 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 perlfunc 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"
- (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
"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 considered a
block that loops once. See "next" in perlfunc.
- 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.
- 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.
Alternately, 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.
- 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
"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 considered a
block that loops once. See "redo" in perlfunc.
- Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
- (S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating
a backup file. Perl was unable to remove the original 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 permission 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 the method name is "???", this is an internal
error.
- 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 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 take log of %g
- (F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm
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 running.
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 upgrade %s (%d) to %d
- (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 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 symbolic
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 automatically
loads the Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash
to provide symbolic names for $! errno values.
- Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
- (F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and
little-endian byte-order at the same time, so this combination of
modifiers is not allowed. See "pack" in perlfunc.
- 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 "%s"
- (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 '%c' in a group with different byte-order in
%s
- (F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type
that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier. For example you
cannot force little-endianness on a type that is inside a big-endian
group.
- 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 lexical 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
- (F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression
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 use "when" outside a topicalizer
- (F) You have used a when() block that is neither
inside a "foreach" loop nor a "given" block. (Note
that this error is issued on exit from the "when" block, so you
won't get the error if the match fails, or if you use an explicit
"continue".)
- 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 following "\c" must be ASCII
- (F|W deprecated, syntax) In "\cX",
X must be an ASCII character. It is planned to make this fatal in
all instances in Perl 5.16. In the cases where it isn't fatal, the
character this evaluates to is derived by exclusive or'ing the code point
of this character with 0x40.
Note that non-alphabetic ASCII characters are discouraged here as well.
- 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 'W' format wrapped in pack
- (W pack) You said
pack("U0W", $x)
where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However,
"U0"-mode expects all values to fall in the interval [0, 255],
so Perl behaved as if you meant:
pack("U0W", $x & 255)
- 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 "U"
format instead.
- Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
- (W unpack) You tried something like
unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value below
256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the value modulus
256 instead, as if you had provided:
unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
- Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
- (W pack) You tried something like
pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl uses
the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
- Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
- (W unpack) You tried something like
unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a
value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl uses
the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
- "\c{" is deprecated and is more clearly written
as ";"
- (D deprecated, syntax) The "\cX" construct
is intended to be a way to specify non-printable characters. You used it
with a "{" which evaluates to ";", which is printable.
It is planned to remove the ability to specify a semi-colon this way in
Perl 5.16. Just use a semi-colon or a backslash-semi-colon without the
"\c".
- "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as
"%s"
- (W syntax) The "\cX" construct is intended
to be a way to specify non-printable characters. You used it for a
printable one, which is better written as simply itself, perhaps preceded
by a backslash for non-word characters.
- close() on unopened filehandle %s
- (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never
opened.
- closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
- (W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or
not really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
- Closure prototype called
- (F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to
an attribute handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure is
created. This subroutine cannot be called.
- 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.
- Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
- Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, no properties match it; all
inverse properties do
- (W utf8, non_unicode) You had a code point above the
Unicode maximum of U+10FFFF.
Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code points, up to the
limit of what is storable in an unsigned integer on your system, but these
may not be accepted by other languages/systems. At one time, it was legal
in some standards to have code points up to 0x7FFF_FFFF, but not higher.
Code points above 0xFFFF_FFFF require larger than a 32 bit word.
None of the Unicode or Perl-defined properties will match a non-Unicode code
point. For example,
chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\p{Any}/
will not match, because the code point is not in Unicode. But
chr(0x7FF_FFFF) =~ /\P{Any}/
will match.
- %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
shortening the string under examination; looping in Perl code (e.g. with
"while") rather than in the regular expression 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 first to 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.
- 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 the signal isn't sent
before the other thread has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for
the signaling thread first to 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(%s)%s: %s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
- (F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to
find the character name specified in the "\N{...}" escape.
Perhaps you forgot to load the corresponding "charnames" pragma?
See charnames.
- 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.
- Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
- (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 recursion, unless you're writing strange benchmark
programs, in which case it indicates something else.
This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the perl
binary, setting the C pre-processor macro "PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN"
to the desired value.
- 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.
- (?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by
<-- HERE in m/%s/
- (F) You used something like "(?(DEFINE)...|..)"
which is illegal. The most likely cause of this error is that you left out
a parenthesis inside of the "...." part.
The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
discovered.
- %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.
- Deprecated character in \N{...}; marked by <-- HERE in
\N{%s<-- HERE %s
- (D deprecated) Just about anything is legal for the
"..." in "\N{...}". But starting in 5.12,
non-reasonable ones that don't look like names are deprecated. A
reasonable name begins with an alphabetic character and continues with any
combination of alphanumerics, dashes, spaces, parentheses or colons.
- Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
- (D deprecated) You used a declaration similar to "my
$x if 0". There has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a
lexical variable not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration
includes a false conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to
achieve a kind of static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we
don't want people relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar
static effect by declaring the variable in a separate block outside the
function, eg
sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
becomes
{ my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
Beginning with perl 5.9.4, you can also use "state" variables to
have lexicals that are initialized only once (see feature):
sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
- 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 initialization code
correctly. It's traditional to end such a file with a "1;",
though any true value would do. See "require" in perlfunc.
- (Did you mean &%s instead?)
- (W misc) 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 $@ was
empty.
- Document contains no data
- See Server error.
- %s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
- (F) You said something like "use Module 42" but
the Module did not define a "$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 referenced 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" statement. If you're referencing
something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the
subroutine or package before the current location. You can use an empty
"sub foo;" or "package FOO;" to enter a
"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.
- dump is not supported
- (F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
- Duplicate free() ignored
- (S malloc) An internal routine called free() on
something 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 perlfunc.
- 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
specifying 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 variable
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 syntax, 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.
- %s: Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval'
- (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing
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 using the
"re 'eval'" pragma or by explicitly 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.
- EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by
<-- HERE in m/%s/
- (F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls
without consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is
consumed.
The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
discovered.
- Excessively long <> operator
- (F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the
maximum size of a Perl identifier. If you're just trying 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 on
some systems, e.g., Symbian OS. 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
construct (like a sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such
as a goto, or a loop control statement. See "sort" in
perlfunc.
- Exiting subroutine via %s
- (W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional
means, such as a goto, or a loop control statement.
- Exiting substitution via %s
- (W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by
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
UNITCHECK, CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of
the queue of such routines has been prematurely 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 (status=%d) at %s, line %d
- (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened
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?
- FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
- (F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of
elements, which is not possible.
- Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
- (W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string start with a
length indicator which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point
in asking for a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as if you
specified "u63" as the format.
- 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 ">". If you intended
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 control
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 solitary
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).
- %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
gethostent(), 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" or "use strict
vars", which indicates that all variables must either be lexically
scoped (using "my" or "state"), 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 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".
- gmtime(%f) too large
- (W overflow) You called "gmtime" with a number
that was larger than it can reliably handle and "gmtime"
probably returned the wrong date. This warning is also triggered with nan
(the special not-a-number value).
- gmtime(%f) too small
- (W overflow) You called "gmtime" with a number
that was smaller than it can reliably handle and "gmtime"
probably returned the wrong date. This warning is also triggered with nan
(the special not-a-number value).
- 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 perlfunc.
- ()-group starts with a count
- (F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is supposed 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 deprecated.
- %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.
- Having no space between pattern and following word is
deprecated
- (D syntax)
You had a word that isn't a regex modifier immediately following a pattern
without an intervening space. If you are trying to use the "/le"
flags on a substitution, use "/el" instead. Otherwise, add white
space between the pattern and following word to eliminate the warning. As
an example of the latter, the two constructs:
$a =~ m/$foo/sand $bar
$a =~ m/$foo/s and $bar
both currently mean the same thing, but it is planned to disallow the first
form in Perl 5.16. And,
$a =~ m/$foo/and $bar
will be disallowed too.
- 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 portability concerns.
- Identifier too long
- (F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables,
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
limitations.
- Ignoring zero length \N{} in character class
- (W) Named Unicode character escapes (\N{...}) may return a
zero length sequence. When such an escape is used in a character class its
behaviour is not well defined. Check that the correct escape has been
used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
- 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 \%o (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 illegalproto) 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
perlsub.
- 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 conditional 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.
- 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: -%c
- (X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to
set the following switches: -[CDIMUdmtw].
- 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 destructors
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.
- Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s':
merging failed on parent '%s'
- (F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is
not C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See the
C3 documentation in mro for more information.
- 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).
- Infinite recursion in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
- (F) You used a pattern that references itself without
consuming any input text. You should check the pattern to ensure that
recursive patterns either consume text or fail.
The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
discovered.
- Initialization of state variables in list context currently
forbidden
- (F) Currently the implementation of "state" only
permits the initialization of scalar variables in scalar context. Re-write
"state ($a) = 42" as "state $a = 42" to change from
list to scalar context. Constructions such as "state (@a) =
foo()" will be supported in a future perl release.
- Insecure dependency in %s
- (F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism
didn't like. The tainting mechanism is turned on 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 directory
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.
- Insecure user-defined property %s
- (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a
regular expression that contains a call to a user-defined character
property function, i.e. "\p{IsFoo}" or "\p{InFoo}".
See "User-Defined Character Properties" in perlunicode and
perlsec.
- Integer overflow in format string for %s
- (F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string
of "printf()" or "sprintf()" are too large. The
numbers must not overflow the size of integers for your architecture.
- 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 operations.
- Integer overflow in version
- (F) Some portion of a version initialization is too large
for the size of integers for your architecture. This is not a warning
because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use a element
larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by trying to use some
odd mathematical operation as a version, like 100/9.
- 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
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
- (F) 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
- (F) 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 escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked
by <-- HERE in m/%s/
- (W regexp) The numeric escape (for example
"\xHH") of value < 256 didn't correspond to a single
character through the conversion from the encoding specified by the
encoding pragma. The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER
(U+FFFD) instead. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
where the escape was discovered.
- Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
- (F) The character constant represented by "..."
is not a valid hexadecimal number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use
a character other than 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
- Invalid mro name: '%s'
- (F) You tried to "mro::set_mro("classname",
"foo")" or "use mro 'foo'", where "foo"
is not a valid method resolution order (MRO). Currently, the only valid
ones supported are "dfs" and "c3", unless you have
loaded a module that is a MRO plugin. See mro and perlmroapi.
- 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 character. 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 previous attribute had a
parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
See attributes.
- 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.
- Invalid strict version format (%s)
- (F) A version number did not meet the "strict"
criteria for versions. A "strict" version number is a positive
decimal number (integer or decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or
else a dotted-decimal v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least
three components. The parenthesized text indicates which criteria were not
met. See the version module for more details on allowed version
formats.
- 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.
- Invalid version format (%s)
- (F) A version number did not meet the "lax"
criteria for versions. A "lax" version number is a positive
decimal number (integer or decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or
else a dotted-decimal v-string. If the v-string has fewer than three
components, it must have a leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading
'v' is optional. Both decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a
trailing "alpha" component separated by an underscore character
after a fractional or dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized text
indicates which criteria were not met. See the version module for more
details on allowed version formats.
- Invalid version object
- (F) The internal structure of the version object was
invalid. Perhaps the internals were modified directly in some way or an
arbitrary reference was blessed into the "version" class.
- 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 your control flow and number of arguments.
- 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 nor an ioctl call
(SIOCATMARK).
- $* is no longer supported
- (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable $*, deprecated
in older perls, has been removed as of 5.9.0 and is no longer supported.
In previous versions of perl the use of $* enabled or disabled multi-line
matching within a string.
Instead of using $* you should use the "/m" (and maybe
"/s") regexp modifiers. You can enable "/m" for a
lexical scope (even a whole file) with "use re '/m'". (In older
versions: when $* was set to a true value then all regular expressions
behaved as if they were written using "/m".)
- $# is no longer supported
- (D deprecated, syntax) The special variable $#, deprecated
in older perls, has been removed as of 5.9.3 and is no longer supported.
You should use the printf/sprintf functions instead.
- `%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.
- 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.
- Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into
Latin-1 input
- (F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the
current parse (using lex_stuff_pvn or similar), but tried to insert a
character that couldn't be part of the current input. This is an inherent
pitfall of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the reasons to avoid it.
Where it is necessary to stuff, stuffing only plain ASCII is
recommended.
- Lexing code internal error (%s)
- (F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the
lexer's API in a detectable way.
- 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.
- localtime(%f) too large
- (W overflow) You called "localtime" with a number
that was larger than it can reliably handle and "localtime"
probably returned the wrong date. This warning is also triggered with nan
(the special not-a-number value).
- localtime(%f) too small
- (W overflow) You called "localtime" with a number
that was smaller than it can reliably handle and "localtime"
probably returned the wrong date. This warning is also triggered with nan
(the special not-a-number value).
- Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex
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.
- Lost precision when %s %f by 1
- (W) The value you attempted to increment or decrement by
one is too large for the underlying floating point representation to store
accurately, hence the target of "++" or "--" is
unchanged. Perl issues this warning because it has already switched from
integers to floating point when values are too large for integers, and now
even floating point is insufficient. You may wish to switch to using
Math::BigInt explicitly.
- 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 filehandle.)
- lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been
defined
- (W misc) Making a subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it
has been defined by declaring the subroutine with an lvalue attribute is
not possible. To make the subroutine an lvalue subroutine add the lvalue
attribute to the definition, or put the declaration before the
definition.
- 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 perlfunc.
- Malformed integer in [] in unpack
- (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count
only digits are permitted. See "pack" in perlfunc.
- Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX
- (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERLLIB_PREFIX should be of
the form
prefix1;prefix2
or
prefix1 prefix2
with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If "prefix1" is indeed a prefix
of a builtin library search path, prefix2 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 prototype.
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 function is called.
- Malformed UTF-8 character (%s)
- (S utf8) (F) Perl detected a string that didn't comply with
UTF-8 encoding rules, even though it had the UTF8 flag on.
One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that you
thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example legacy 8-bit
data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode_utf8.
If you use the ":encoding(UTF-8)" PerlIO layer for input, invalid
byte sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use ":utf8",
the flag is set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this
error message.
See also "Handling Malformed Data" in Encode.
- Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N
- (F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
- Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
- (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with
UTF-8 encoding rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more
progress.
- Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
- (F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with
UTF-8 encoding rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more
progress.
- Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
- (F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with
UTF-8 encoding rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more
progress.
- Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
- (F) 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.
- Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded
- (F) Perl aborted due to too high a number of signals
pending. This usually indicates that your operating system tried to
deliver signals too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl
process from resources it would need to reach a point where it can process
signals safely. (See "Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)" in
perlipc.)
- "%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
overloading table that doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See
overload.
- 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 constant
did not separate two digits.
- Missing argument in %s
- (W uninitialized) A printf-type format required more
arguments than were supplied.
- Missing argument to -%c
- (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must
follow immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
- Missing braces on \N{}
- (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal
"\N{charname}" within double-quotish context. This can also
happen when there is a space (or comment) between the "\N" and
the "{" in a regex with the "/x" modifier. This
modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately follow
the "\N".
- Missing braces on \o{}
- (F) A "\o" must be followed immediately by a
"{" in 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.
- Missing right brace on %s
- (F) Missing right brace in "\x{...}",
"\p{...}", "\P{...}", or "\N{...}".
- Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after
\N
- (F) "\N" has two meanings.
The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed in braces, meaning
the character (or sequence of characters) given by that name. Thus
"\N{ASTERISK}" is another way of writing "*", valid in
both double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns,
it doesn't have the meaning an unescaped "*" does.
Starting in Perl 5.12.0, "\N" also can have an additional meaning
(only) in patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is
short for "[^\n]", and like "." but is not affected by
the "/s" regex modifier.)
This can lead to some ambiguities. When "\N" is not followed
immediately by a left brace, Perl assumes the "[^\n]" meaning.
Also, if the braces form a valid quantifier such as "\N{3}" or
"\N{5,}", Perl assumes that this means to match the given
quantity of non-newlines (in these examples, 3; and 5 or more,
respectively). In all other case, where there is a "\N{" and a
matching "}", Perl assumes that a character name is desired.
However, if there is no matching "}", Perl doesn't know if it was
mistakenly omitted, or if "[^\n]{" was desired, and raises this
error. If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant the
latter, escape the brace with a backslash, like so: "\N\{"
- 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".
- More than one argument to '%s' 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 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 implemented.
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 package 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 others it will not trigger this warning.
- \N in a character class must be a named character:
\N{...}
- (F) The new (5.12) meaning of "\N" as
"[^\n]" is not valid in a bracketed character class, for the
same reason that "." in a character class loses its specialness:
it matches almost everything, which is probably not what you want.
- \N{NAME} must be resolved by the lexer
- (F) When compiling a regex pattern, an unresolved named
character or sequence was encountered. This can happen in any of several
ways that bypass the lexer, such as using single-quotish context, or an
extra backslash in double-quotish:
$re = '\N{SPACE}'; # Wrong!
$re = "\\N{SPACE}"; # Wrong!
/$re/;
Instead, use double-quotes with a single backslash:
$re = "\N{SPACE}"; # ok
/$re/;
The lexer can be bypassed as well by creating the pattern from smaller
components:
$re = '\N';
/${re}{SPACE}/; # Wrong!
It's not a good idea to split a construct in the middle like this, and it
doesn't work here. Instead use the solution above.
Finally, the message also can happen under the "/x" regex modifier
when the "\N" is separated by spaces from the "{", in
which case, remove the spaces.
/\N {SPACE}/x; # Wrong!
/\N{SPACE}/x; # ok
- Negative '/' count in unpack
- (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack
operation was negative. See "pack" in perlfunc.
- Negative length
- (F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a
buffer length that is less than 0. This is difficult 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.
- next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find
enclosing method
- (F) "next::method" needs to be called within the
context of a real method in a real package, and it could not find such a
context. See mro.
- 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 see; please see
"use" in perlfunc and "import" in perlfunc. 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 support that constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the
symbol import list of use or import or in the constant name
at the line where this error was triggered?
- No command into which to pipe on command line
- (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command
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 error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
- (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command
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 perlfunc.
- No input file after < on command line
- (F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command
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.
- No next::method '%s' found for %s
- (F) "next::method" found no further instances of
this method name in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If
you don't want it throwing an exception, use
"maybe::next::method" or "next::can". See mro.
- "no" not allowed in expression
- (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed
at compile 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 command
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 command
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
setregid() 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 field "%s" in variable %s of type
%s
- (F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the
indicated typed variable but that key is not allowed by the package of the
same type. The indicated package has restricted the set of allowed keys
using the fields pragma.
- No such class %s
- (F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my",
"our" or "state" declaration, but this class doesn't
exist at this point in your program.
- No such hook: %s
- (F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by
Perl. Currently, Perl accepts "__DIE__" and "__WARN__"
as valid signal hooks.
- 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 attempt to close an unopened
filehandle.
- 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 an unblessed ARRAY reference
- (F) You passed a reference to a blessed array to
"push", "shift" or another array function. These only
accept unblessed array references or arrays beginning explicitly with
"@".
- 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
overloading table that doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See
overload.
- Not enough arguments for %s
- (F) The function requires more arguments than you
specified.
- 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-octal character '%c'. Resolved as "%s"
- (W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character
was unexpectedly encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value is as
indicated.
- 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 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 format
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").
- Number with no digits
- (F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that
looked like a number. This happens, for example with "\o{}",
with no number between the braces.
- 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.
- 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
initialize a hash, which is odd, because hashes come in key/value
pairs.
- Odd number of elements in hash assignment
- (W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to
initialize a hash, which is odd, because hashes come in key/value
pairs.
- Offset outside string
- (F|W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek
operation with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will take place
when going past the end of the string when either "sysread()"ing
a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened for I/O (in
anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behaviour with real
files).
- %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.
- Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
- (W io, deprecated) You used open() to associate a
filehandle to a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle.
Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing and is
deprecated.
- Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
- (W io, deprecated) You used opendir() to associate a
dirhandle to a symbol (glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle.
Although legal, this idiom might render your code confusing and is
deprecated.
- Operation "%s": no method found, %s
- (F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation
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 the "fallback" overloading key is specified to be true.
See overload.
- Operation "%s" returns its argument for
non-Unicode code point 0x%X
- (W utf8, non_unicode) You performed an operation requiring
Unicode semantics on a code point that is not in Unicode, so what it
should do is not defined. Perl has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn
you.
If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by "no
warnings 'non_unicode';".
- Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16
surrogate U+%X
- (W utf8, surrogate) You performed an operation requiring
Unicode semantics on a Unicode surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use of
surrogates for anything but storing strings in UTF-16, but semantics are
(reluctantly) defined for the surrogates, and they are to do nothing for
this operation. Because the use of surrogates can be dangerous, Perl
warns.
If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by "no
warnings 'surrogate';".
- 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 global
once before in the current lexical scope.
- Out of memory!
- (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 possibility 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 happened.
- 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 pack
- (F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move
the working position to before the start of the packed string being
built.
- '@' outside of string in unpack
- (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position
outside the string being unpacked. See "pack" in perlfunc.
- '@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
- (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position
outside the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also
invalid UTF-8. See "pack" in perlfunc.
- Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
- (F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was
dereferenced, but the overloaded operation did not return a reference. See
overload.
- Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
- (F) An object with a "qr" overload was used as
part of a match, but the overloaded operation didn't return a compiled
regexp. See overload.
- %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: attempt to call %s in %s
- (P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch
that calls an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on
this platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to enter
this branch on this platform.
- panic: ck_grep
- (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile
a grep.
- panic: ck_split
- (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile
a split.
- panic: corrupt saved stack index
- (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized
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.
- panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
- (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other
than an "eval" failure was caught.
- 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: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
- (P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries
tried repeatedly, but each time something re-created entries in the glob.
Most likely the glob contains an object with a reference back to the glob
and a destructor that adds a new object to the glob.
- panic: hfreeentries failed to free hash
- (P) The internal routine used to clear a hash's entries
tried repeatedly, but each time something added more entries to the hash.
Most likely the hash contains an object with a reference back to the hash
and a destructor that adds a new object to the hash.
- 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: memory wrap
- (P) Something tried to allocate more memory than
possible.
- 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
internally.
- 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
internally.
- 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
internally.
- panic: pp_iter
- (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context
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.
- 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_chop %s
- (P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that
is not within the scalar's string buffer.
- 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: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
- (P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op
that isn't permitted at run time.
- panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
- (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as
opposed to even) byte length.
- panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
- (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an
odd (as opposed to even) byte length.
- panic: yylex
- (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case
modifier.
- Parsing code internal error (%s)
- (F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the
parser's API in a detectable way.
- Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded
limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
- (F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern
calls without consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is
consumed before the nesting limit is exceeded.
The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
discovered.
- Parentheses missing around "%s" list
- (W parenthesis) You said something like
my $foo, $bar = @_;
when you meant
my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
Remember that "my", "our", "local" and
"state" 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 package
\"%s\"". It often means that a method requires a package
that has not been loaded.
- Perl folding rules are not up-to-date for 0x%x; please use
the perlbug utility to report
- (W regex, deprecated) You used a regular expression with
case-insensitive matching, and there is a bug in Perl in which the
built-in regular expression folding rules are not accurate. This may lead
to incorrect results. Please report this as a bug using the
"perlbug" utility. (This message is marked deprecated, so that
it by default will be turned-on.)
- Perl_my_%s() not available
- (F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer
size, so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the '<'
or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See "pack" in
perlfunc.
- 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 "require" in perlfunc.
- PERL_SH_DIR too long
- (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory
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, and the script will be run.
Before you really fix the problem, 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.
- 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' perspective, 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
"*".
- 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
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 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 brackets 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 brackets 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.)
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 operator, like this :
if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
This expression is actually equivalent to "$x & ($y == 0)",
due to the higher precedence of "==". This is probably not what
you want. (If you really meant to write this, disable the warning, or,
better, put the parentheses explicitly and write "$x & ($y ==
0)").
- Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
- (W ambiguous) You said something like "m/$\/" in
a regex. The regex "m/foo$\s+bar/m" translates to: match the
word 'foo', the output record separator (see "$\" in perlvar)
and the letter 's' (one time or more) followed by the word 'bar'.
If this is what you intended then you can silence the warning by using
"m/${\}/" (for example: "m/foo${\}s+bar/").
If instead you intended to match the word 'foo' at the end of the line
followed by whitespace and the word 'bar' on the next line then you can
use "m/$(?)\/" (for example: "m/foo$(?)\s+bar/").
- 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.
- 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 little of both.) You must put parentheses
around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead of
"||".
- 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 applications,
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 after '%c' for %s : %s
- (W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype.
This is useless, since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine
arguments.
- 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.
- \p{} uses Unicode rules, not locale rules
- (W) You compiled a regular expression that contained a
Unicode property match ("\p" or "\P"), but the regular
expression is also being told to use the run-time locale, not Unicode.
Instead, use a POSIX character class, which should know about the locale's
rules. (See "POSIX Character Classes" in perlrecharclass.)
Even if the run-time locale is ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), which is a subset of
Unicode, some properties will give results that are not valid for that
subset.
Here are a couple of examples to help you see what's going on. If the locale
is ISO 8859-7, the character at code point 0xD7 is the "GREEK CAPITAL
LETTER CHI". But in Unicode that code point means the
"MULTIPLICATION SIGN" instead, and "\p" always uses
the Unicode meaning. That means that "\p{Alpha}" won't match,
but "[[:alpha:]]" should. Only in the Latin1 locale are all the
characters in the same positions as they are in Unicode. But, even here,
some properties give incorrect results. An example is
"\p{Changes_When_Uppercased}" which is true for "LATIN
SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS", but since the upper case of that
character is not in Latin1, in that locale it doesn't change when upper
cased.
- 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 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 workaround is to force Perl to use
magical string increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.
- readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
- (W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed
or not really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
- 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: %x
- (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
something 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) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of
a package, Perl believes it found an infinite loop in the @ISA hierarchy.
This is a crude check that bails out after 100 levels of @ISA depth.
- refcnt_dec: fd %d%s
- refcnt: fd %d%s
- refcnt_inc: fd %d%s
- (P) Perl's I/O implementation failed an internal
consistency check. If you see this message, something is very wrong.
- 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 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 other than 1.
- Reference to invalid group 0
- (F) You used "\g0" or similar in a regular
expression. You may refer to capturing parentheses only with strictly
positive integers (normal backreferences) or with strictly negative
integers (relative backreferences). Using 0 does not make sense.
- Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <--
HERE in m/%s/
- (F) You used something like "\7" in your regular
expression, but there are not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses
in the expression. If you wanted to have the character with ordinal 7
inserted into the regular expression, prepend zeroes to make it three
digits long: "\007"
The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
discovered.
- Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by
<-- HERE in m/%s/
- (F) You used something like "\k'NAME'" or
"\k<NAME>" in your regular expression, but there is no
corresponding named capturing parentheses such as "(?'NAME'...)"
or "(?<NAME>...)". Check if the name has been spelled
correctly both in the backreference and the declaration.
The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
discovered.
- Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked
by <-- HERE in m/%s/
- (F) You used something like "\g{-7}" in your
regular expression, but there are not at least seven sets of closed
capturing parentheses in the expression before where the
"\g{-7}" was located.
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 modifier "/%c" may appear a maximum of
twice
- Regexp modifier "/%c" may not appear twice
- (F syntax, regexp) The regular expression pattern had too
many occurrences of the specified modifier. Remove the extraneous
ones.
- Regexp modifier "%c" may not appear after the
"-"
- (F regexp) Turning off the given modifier has the side
effect of turning on another one. Perl currently doesn't allow this.
Reword the regular expression to use the modifier you want to turn on (and
place it before the minus), instead of the one you want to turn off.
- Regexp modifiers "/%c" and "/%c" are
mutually exclusive
- (F syntax, regexp) The regular expression pattern had more
than one of these mutually exclusive modifiers. Retain only the modifier
that is supposed to be there.
- Regexp out of space
- (P) A "can't happen" error, because
safemalloc() should have caught it earlier.
- Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @#
incompatible)
- (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.
- Replacement list is longer than search list
- (W misc) You have used a replacement list that is longer
than the search list. So the additional elements in the replacement list
are meaningless.
- Reversed %s= operator
- (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards.
The = must always come last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary
operators.
- rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
- (W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir()
on is either closed or not really a dirhandle. Check your control
flow.
- 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 $foo{&bar}
always behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when
evaluating its argument, while @foo{&bar} behaves like a list when you
assign to it, and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do
weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash element as
a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will not
magically convert between scalars and lists for you. See perlref.
- Search pattern not terminated
- (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or
m{} construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
Missing the leading "$" 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. Therefore 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 disambiguate the parsing is to put parentheses
around the conditional expression, i.e. "(foo) ? 0 : 1".
- seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
- (W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is
either closed or not really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
- %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
system.
- send() on closed socket %s
- (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed
sometime before now. Check your control flow.
- Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
- (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension
(?. 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 expression about where
the problem was discovered. This happens when using the
"(?^...)" construct to tell Perl to use the default regular
expression modifiers, and you redundantly specify a default modifier. For
other causes, see perlre.
- Sequence \%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <--
HERE in m/%s/
- (F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument
following the escape sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly
written.
- 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 contain braces,
they must balance for Perl to detect the end of the clause properly. The
<-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
discovered. See perlre.
- 500 Server error
- See Server error.
- Server error
- (A) 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
PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a location where
the CGI server can't find it, basically, 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.
- shm%s not implemented
- (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your
system.
- !=~ should be !~
- (W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~
will be interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
operators: probably not what you intended.
- <> 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?
- Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks
encapsulation
- (F) You should not use the "~~" operator on an
object that does not overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's
underlying structure for the smart match.
- 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 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 explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array =
$offset. See "splice" in perlfunc.
- Split loop
- (P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split
shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is
what happened.) See "split" in perlfunc.
- Statement unlikely to be reached
- (W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after
it other than a die(). This is almost always an error, because
exec() never returns unless there was a failure. You probably
wanted to use system() instead, which does return. To suppress this
warning, put the exec() in a block by itself.
- "state" variable %s can't be in a package
- (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it
doesn't make sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the
front. Use local() if you want to localize a package variable.
- stat() on unopened filehandle %s
- (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on
a filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
- Stub found while resolving method "%s"
overloading "%s" in package "%s"
- (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by
importation stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit
calls to "can" may break this.
- Subroutine %s redefined
- (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this
warning, say
{
no warnings 'redefine';
eval "sub name { ... }";
}
- Substitution loop
- (P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a
substitution shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of
input, which is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution in
"Regexp Quote-Like Operators" in perlop.
- Substitution pattern not terminated
- (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an
s/// or s{}{} construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting
level. Missing the leading "$" from variable $s may cause this
error.
- Substitution replacement not terminated
- (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s///
or s{}{} construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting
level. Missing the leading "$" 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 argument for
example).
- sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
- (P) Perl tried to force the upgrade of an SV to a type
which was actually inferior to its current type.
- 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 alternation, 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 OK
- (F) The final summary message when a "perl -c"
succeeds.
- syntax error
- (F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons
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. (Sometimes 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 understanding random input. Occasionally the
line number may be misleading, and once in a blue moon the only way to
figure 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 version 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
functionality 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.
- telldir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
- (W io) The dirhandle you tried to telldir() is
either closed or not really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
- 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
interpreted as a compiler directive. You may say only one of
$[ = 0;
$[ = 1;
...
local $[ = 0;
local $[ = 1;
...
This is to prevent the problem of one module changing the array base out
from under another module inadvertently. See "$[" 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
- (F) The function indicated isn't implemented on this
architecture, 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) This attribute was never supported on "my" or
"sub" declarations.
- 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.
- 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 (or 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 -%c option is a part of Perl's first argument:
e.g. change "perl -n -%c" to "perl -%c -n".
If the Perl script is being executed as "perl scriptname", then
the -%c option must appear on the command line: "perl -%c
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, -m or -C option.
In the case of -M and -m, this is an error because those
options are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the "use"
pragma instead.
The -C option only works if it is specified on the command line as
well (with the same sequence of letters or numbers following). Either
specify this option on the command line, or, if your system supports it,
make your script executable and run it directly instead of passing it to
perl.
- 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 "do" inside a BEGIN block.
- Too many args to syscall
- (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to
syscall().
- 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.
- Type of argument to %s must be unblessed hashref or
arrayref
- (F) You called "keys", "values" or
"each" with a scalar argument that was not a reference to an
unblessed hash or array.
- umask not implemented
- (F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and
you tried to use it to restrict permissions for 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
inconsistency in how many execution contexts were entered and left.
- Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
- (W internal) The exit code detected an internal
inconsistency in how many values were temporarily localized.
- Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
- (W internal) The exit code detected an internal
inconsistency in how many blocks were entered and left.
- Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
- (W internal) The exit code detected an internal
inconsistency 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
- (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 non-character U+%X is illegal for open
interchange
- (W utf8, nonchar) Certain codepoints, such as U+FFFE and
U+FFFF, are defined by the Unicode standard to be non-characters. Those
are legal codepoints, but are reserved for internal use; so, applications
shouldn't attempt to exchange them. If you know what you are doing you can
turn off this warning by "no warnings 'nonchar';".
- Unicode surrogate U+%X is illegal in UTF-8
- (W utf8, surrogate) You had a UTF-16 surrogate in a context
where they are not considered acceptable. These code points, between
U+D800 and U+DFFF (inclusive), are used by Unicode only for UTF-16.
However, Perl internally allows all unsigned integer code points (up to
the size limit available on your platform), including surrogates. But
these can cause problems when being input or output, which is likely where
this message came from. If you really really know what you are doing you
can turn off this warning by "no warnings 'surrogate';".
- 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)
- (W) You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the
"re" pragma.
- Unknown switch condition (?(%s in regex; marked by <--
HERE in m/%s/
- (F) The condition part of a
(?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct is not known. The condition
must be one of the following:
(1) (2) ... true if 1st, 2nd, etc., capture matched
(<NAME>) ('NAME') true if named capture matched
(?=...) (?<=...) true if subpattern matches
(?!...) (?<!...) true if subpattern fails to match
(?{ CODE }) true if code returns a true value
(R) true if evaluating inside recursion
(R1) (R2) ... true if directly inside capture group 1, 2, etc.
(R&NAME) true if directly inside named capture
(DEFINE) always false; for defining named subpatterns
The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
discovered. See perlre.
- Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
- (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See perlrun
documentation of the "-C" switch for the list of known
options.
- Unknown Unicode option value %x
- (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See perlrun
documentation of the "-C" switch for the list of known
options.
- Unknown verb pattern '%s' in regex; marked by <-- HERE
in m/%s/
- (F) You either made a typo or have incorrectly put a
"*" quantifier after an open brace in your pattern. Check the
pattern and review perlre for details on legal verb patterns.
- Unknown warnings category '%s'
- (F) An error issued by the "warnings" pragma. You
specified 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 loaded 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.
- 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 subroutine.
- Unrecognized character %s; marked by <-- HERE after %s
near column %d
- (F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the
specified character in your Perl script (or eval) near the specified
column. Perhaps you tried to run a compressed script, a binary program, or
a directory as a Perl program.
- Unrecognized escape \%c in character class passed through
in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
- (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which
is not recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
understood literally, but this may change in a future version of Perl. The
<-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the escape was
discovered.
- Unrecognized escape \%c passed through
- (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which
is not recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally, but
this may change in a future version of Perl.
- Unrecognized escape \%s passed through in regex; marked by
<-- HERE in m/%s/
- (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which
is not recognized by Perl. The character(s) were understood literally, but
this may change in a future version of Perl. 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
readdir().
- Unsupported function %s
- (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function,
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
identifier at the start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the
start of a block. Perhaps you terminated 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 character
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
converted to an integer. See "pack" in perlfunc.
- Unterminated \g{...} pattern in regex; marked by <--
HERE in m/%s/
- (F) You missed a close brace on a \g{..} pattern (group
reference) in a regular expression. Fix the pattern and retry.
- 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".
- Unterminated verb pattern argument in regex; marked by
<-- HERE in m/%s/
- (F) You used a pattern of the form "(*VERB:ARG)"
but did not terminate the pattern with a ")". Fix the pattern
and retry.
- Unterminated verb pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE
in m/%s/
- (F) You used a pattern of the form "(*VERB)" but
did not terminate the pattern with a ")". Fix the pattern and
retry.
- 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)
- (F) You called a POSIX function with incorrect arguments.
See "FUNCTIONS" in POSIX for more information.
- Usage: Win32::%s(%s)
- (F) You called a Win32 function with incorrect arguments.
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 =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
discovered. See perlre.
- Useless localization of %s
- (W syntax) The localization of lvalues such as
"local($x=10)" is legal, but in fact the local()
currently has no effect. This may change at some point in the future, but
in the meantime such code is discouraged.
- 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 /d modifier in transliteration operator
- (W misc) You have used the /d modifier where the searchlist
has the same length as the replacelist. See perlop for more information
about the /d modifier.
- 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);
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 compile time, and returns no useful value. See perlmod.
- Use of assignment to $[ is deprecated
- (D deprecated) The $[ variable (index of the first element
in an array) is deprecated. See "$[" in perlvar.
- Use of bare << to mean <<"" is
deprecated
- (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the explicitly
quoted form if you wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the
here-document.
- Use of comma-less variable list is deprecated
- (D deprecated) The values you give to a format should be
separated by commas, not just aligned on a line.
- 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 substitutions.
- 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 := for an empty attribute list is not allowed
- (F) The construction "my $x := 42" used to parse
as equivalent to "my $x : = 42" (applying an empty attribute
list to $x). This construct was deprecated in 5.12.0, and has now been
made a syntax error, so ":=" can be reclaimed as a new operator
in the future.
If you need an empty attribute list, for example in a code generator, add a
space before the "=".
- Use of freed value in iteration
- (F) Perhaps you modified the iterated array within the
loop? This error is typically caused by code like the following:
@a = (3,4);
@a = () for (1,2,@a);
You are not supposed to modify arrays while they are being iterated over.
For speed and efficiency reasons, Perl internally does not do full
reference-counting of iterated items, hence deleting such an item in the
middle of an iteration causes Perl to see a freed value.
- Use of *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated
- (D deprecated) You are now encouraged to use the shorter
*glob{IO} form to access the filehandle slot within a typeglob.
- Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
- (W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a
"split" operator. Since "split" always tries to match
the pattern repeatedly, the "/g" has no effect.
- Use of "goto" to jump into a construct is
deprecated
- (D deprecated) Using "goto" to jump from an outer
scope into an inner scope is deprecated and should be avoided.
- Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is
deprecated
- (D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature,
"AUTOLOAD" subroutines are looked up as methods (using the @ISA
hierarchy) even when the subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain
functions (e.g. "Foo::bar()"), not as methods (e.g.
"Foo->bar()" or "$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
'AUTOLOAD';".
- 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 %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 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 %s on a handle without * is deprecated
- (D deprecated) You used "tie", "tied"
or "untie" on a scalar but that scalar happens to hold a
typeglob, which means its filehandle will be tied. If you mean to tie a
handle, use an explicit * as in "tie *$handle".
This is a long-standing bug that will be removed in Perl 5.16, as there is
currently no way to tie the scalar itself when it holds a typeglob, and no
way to untie a scalar that has had a typeglob assigned to it.
- Use of ?PATTERN? without explicit operator is
deprecated
- (D deprecated) You have written something like
"?\w?", for a regular expression that matches only once.
Starting this term directly with the question mark delimiter is now
deprecated, so that the question mark will be available for use in new
operators in the future. Write "m?\w?" instead, explicitly using
the "m" operator: the question mark delimiter still invokes
match-once behaviour.
- Use of qw(...) as parentheses is deprecated
- (D deprecated) You have something like "foreach $x
qw(a b c) {...}", using a "qw(...)" list literal where a
parenthesised expression is expected. Historically the parser fooled
itself into thinking that "qw(...)" literals were always
enclosed in parentheses, and as a result you could sometimes omit
parentheses around them. (You could never do the "foreach qw(a b c)
{...}" that you might have expected, though.) The parser no longer
lies to itself in this way. Wrap the list literal in parentheses, like
"foreach $x (qw(a b c)) {...}".
- 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 usually indicates programmer error.
If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
$array[0+$ref]. This warning is not given for overloaded objects, however,
because you can overload the numification and stringification operators
and then you presumably 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 will try to tell you the
name of the variable (if any) that was undefined. In some cases it cannot
do this, so it also tells you what operation you used the undefined value
in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your program and the operation
displayed in the warning may not necessarily appear literally in your
program. For example, "that $foo" is usually optimized into
""that " . $foo", and the warning will refer to the
"concatenation (.)" operator, even though there is no
"." in your program.
- Using a hash as a reference is deprecated
- (D deprecated) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as
in "%foo->{"bar"}" or
"%$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.
- Using just the first character returned by \N{} in
character class
- (W) A charnames handler may return a sequence of more than
one character. Currently all but the first one are discarded when used in
a regular expression pattern bracketed character class.
- Using !~ with %s doesn't make sense
- (F) Using the "!~" operator with
"s///r", "tr///r" or "y///r" is currently
reserved for future use, as the exact behaviour has not been decided.
(Simply returning the boolean opposite of the modified string is usually
not particularly useful.)
- User-defined case-mapping '%s' is deprecated
- (W deprecated) You defined a function, such as
"ToLower" that overrides the standard case mapping, such as
"lc()" gives. This feature is being deprecated due to its many
issues, as documented in "User-Defined Case Mappings (for serious
hackers only)" in perlunicode. It is planned to remove this feature
in Perl 5.16. A CPAN module providing improved functionality is being
prepared.
- UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
- (W utf8, surrogate) You had a UTF-16 surrogate in a context
where they are not considered acceptable. These code points, between
U+D800 and U+DFFF (inclusive), are used by Unicode only for UTF-16.
However, Perl internally allows all unsigned integer code points (up to
the size limit available on your platform), including surrogates. But
these can cause problems when being input or output, which is likely where
this message came from. If you really really know what you are doing you
can turn off this warning by "no warnings 'surrogate';".
- 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 constructs 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 characters. The return value has been truncated to
1024 characters.
- Variable "%s" is not available
- (W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine
or eval is attempting to capture an outer lexical that is not currently
available. This can happen for one of two reasons. First, the outer
lexical may be declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that has not yet
been created. (Remember that named subs are created at compile time, while
anonymous subs are created at run-time.) For example,
sub { my $a; sub f { $a } }
At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current value of $a,
since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely, the
following won't give a warning since the anonymous subroutine has by now
been created and is live:
sub { my $a; eval 'sub f { $a }' }->();
The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a variable that has gone
out of scope, for example,
sub f {
my $a;
sub { eval '$a' }
}
f()->();
Here, when the '$a' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not currently
being executed, so its $a is not available for capture.
- Variable "%s" is not imported%s
- (W misc) With "use strict" in effect, you
referred to a global 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 the front of your variable.
- Variable length lookbehind not implemented in m/%s/
- (F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose
length is fixed and known at compile time. See perlre.
- "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in
same %s
- (W misc) A "my", "our" or
"state" 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 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 named subroutine.
When the inner subroutine is called, it will see the value of the outer
subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first* call to the
outer subroutine; 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.
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 created, they are
automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
- Verb pattern '%s' has a mandatory argument in regex; marked
by <-- HERE in m/%s/
- (F) You used a verb pattern that requires an argument.
Supply an argument or check that you are using the right verb.
- Verb pattern '%s' may not have an argument in regex; marked
by <-- HERE in m/%s/
- (F) You used a verb pattern that is not allowed an
argument. Remove the argument or check that you are using the right
verb.
- 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.
- Version string '%s' contains invalid data; ignoring:
'%s'
- (W misc) The version string contains invalid characters at
the end, which are being ignored.
- 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
file system 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.
- Wide character in %s
- (S 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 any 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%X" does not map to Unicode
- (F) 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 relative
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 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.
SEE ALSO¶
warnings, perllexwarn.