PERLDIAG(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLDIAG(1)
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 (optional).
(S) A severe warning (default).
(F) A fatal error (trappable).
(P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
(X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
(A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
The majority of messages from the first three 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 $SIG{__WARN__} to
a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead of
printing it. See perlvar.
Default warnings are always enabled unless they are explicitly disabled
with the "warnings" pragma or the -X switch.
Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See "eval" in
perlfunc. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively disabled or
promoted to fatal errors using the "warnings" pragma. See warnings.
The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
letter.
accept() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you
forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
"accept" in perlfunc.
Allocation too large: %lx
(X) You cant allocate more than 64K on an MS-DOS machine.
! allowed only after types %s
(F) The ! is allowed in pack() or unpack() only after certain
types. See "pack" in perlfunc.
Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
(W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a
Perl keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for
calling one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because
the subroutine is not imported.
To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an amper
sand before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its pack
age. Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that
its imported with the "use subs" pragma).
To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the "CORE::"
prefix on the operator (e.g. "CORE::log($x)") or declare the sub
routine 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 doesnt mean any
thing 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 its pretty easy to disambiguate it by
supplying a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declara
tion.
| and < may not both be specified on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redi
rection, 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 redi
rection, 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 nothings stopping you from piping into a program or
Perl script which splits output into two streams, such as
open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Cant write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
while () {
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 popula
tion info of a hash -- and then work on that scalar value. This is
probably not what you meant to do. See "grep" in perlfunc and
"map" in perlfunc for alternatives.
Args must match #! line
(F) The setuid emulator requires that the arguments Perl was
invoked with match the arguments specified on the #! line. Since
some systems impose a one-argument limit on the #! line, try com
bining switches; for example, turn "-w -U" into "-wU".
Arg too short for msgsnd
(F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
%s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element
(F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array element, such
as:
$foo{$bar}
$ref->{"susie"}[12]
%s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
(F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or array ele
ment, 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" isnt numeric%s
(W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an oper
ator that expected a numeric value instead. If youre 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 repre
sentations.) Perl stopped parsing the layer list at this point and
did not attempt to push this layer. If your program didnt explic
itly 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 fail
ure.
Assertion failed: file "%s"
(P) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be exam
ined.
Assignment to both a list and a scalar
(F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd argu
ments must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl
wont 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 run
ning. Usually its a good idea to first collect the return values
of the created threads by joining them, and only then exit from the
main thread. See threads.
Attempt to access disallowed key %s in a restricted hash
(F) The failing code has attempted to get or set a key which is not
in the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash.
Attempt to bless into a reference
(F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to
be the name of the package to bless the resulting object into.
Youve 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%lx
(P internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from are
nas 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 shouldnt 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 state
ment. Use literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack()
template to avoid this warning.
Attempt to set length of freed array
(W) You tried to set the length of an array which has been freed.
You can do this by storing a reference to the scalar representing
the last index of an array and later assigning through that refer
ence. 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 sub
str() used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you
forgot to dereference it first. See "substr" in perlfunc.
Bad arg length for %s, is %d, should be %s
(F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), sem
ctl() or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respec
tively, sizeof(struct msqid_ds *), sizeof(struct semid_ds *), and
sizeof(struct shmid_ds *).
Bad evalled substitution pattern
(F) Youve used the "/e" switch to evaluate the replacement for a
substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evalu
ate, 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 didnt 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.
Bad index while coercing array into hash
(F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0th element of a
pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater.
See perlref.
Badly placed ()s
(A) Youve 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 didnt finish the symbol. In particular, you cant interpo
late outside of quotes, so
$var = myvar;
$sym = mypack::$var;
is not the same as
$var = myvar;
$sym = "mypack::$var";
Bad realloc() ignored
(S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that
had never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be
disabled by setting environment variable "PERL_BADFREE" to 1.
Bad symbol for array
(P) An internal request asked to add an array entry to something
that wasnt a symbol table entry.
Bad symbol for filehandle
(P) An internal request asked to add a filehandle entry to some
thing that wasnt a symbol table entry.
Bad symbol for hash
(P) An internal request asked to add a hash entry to something that
wasnt a symbol table entry.
Bareword found in conditional
(W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a con
ditional, 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 inter
preted 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 sub
routine 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 sub
routine. 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 subse
quent 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 vari
ables. The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand
side of a substitution, but stylistically its 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 perl
port for more on portability concerns.
bind() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you for
get to check the return value of your socket() call? See "bind" in
perlfunc.
binmode() on closed filehandle %s
(W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never
opened. Check you control flow and number of arguments.
Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
(W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
Bizarre copy of %s in %s
(P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
copyable.
Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
(W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing
to iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol
definition which was too long, so it was truncated to the string
shown.
Callback called exit
(F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
exited by calling exit.
%s() called too early to check prototype
(W prototype) Youve 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 youre calling the function correctly, you may put an amper
sand 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 inte
gers, and you attempted to compress Infinity or a very large number
(> 1e308). See "pack" in perlfunc.
Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
(F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed
integer format can only be used with positive integers. See "pack"
in perlfunc.
Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
(F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER com
pressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and
you attempted to compress something else. See "pack" in perlfunc.
Cant bless non-reference value
(F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl
"enforces" encapsulation of objects. See perlobj.
Cant call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
(F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a
package functioning as a class, but that package doesnt have ANY
THING defined in it, let alone methods. See perlobj.
Cant 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);
Cant call method "%s" on unblessed reference
(F) A method call must know in what package its supposed to run.
It ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply,
but you didnt supply an object reference in this case. A refer
ence isnt an object reference until it has been blessed. See per
lobj.
Cant 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);
Cant 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 doesnt exist.
Cant check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
(P) For some reason you cant check the filesystem of the script
for nosuid.
Cant coerce array into hash
(F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has
no information on how to map from keys to array indices. You can
do that only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.
Cant coerce %s to integer in %s
(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
(typeglobs), cant be forced to stop being what they are. So you
cant say things like:
*foo += 1;
You CAN say
$foo = *foo;
$foo += 1;
but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
Cant coerce %s to number in %s
(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
(typeglobs), cant be forced to stop being what they are.
Cant coerce %s to string in %s
(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
(typeglobs), cant be forced to stop being what they are.
Cant create pipe mailbox
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from
exhausted quotas or other plumbing problems.
Cant declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
(F) Currently, only scalar variables can be declared with a spe
cific class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration. The seman
tics may be extended for other types of variables in future.
Cant declare %s in "%s"
(F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my"
or "our" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as names.
Cant 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.
Cant do inplace edit on %s: %s
(S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
reason.
Cant do inplace edit without backup
(F) Youre 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.
Cant 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 dur
ing inplace editing with the -i switch. The file was ignored.
Cant 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 discov
ered. See perlre.
Cant do setegid!
(P) The setegid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emula
tor of suidperl.
Cant do seteuid!
(P) The setuid emulator of suidperl failed for some reason.
Cant do setuid
(F) This typically means that ordinary perl tried to exec suidperl
to do setuid emulation, but couldnt exec it. It looks for a name
of the form sperl5.000 in the same directory that the perl exe
cutable resides under the name perl5.000, typically /usr/local/bin
on Unix machines. If the file is there, check the execute permis
sions. If it isnt, ask your sysadmin why he and/or she removed
it.
Cant do waitpid with flags
(F) This machine doesnt have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
waitpid() without flags is emulated.
Cant emulate -%s on #! line
(F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesnt make sense at this
point. For example, itd be kind of silly to put a -x on the #!
line.
Cant 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 wasnt
found in $ENV{PATH}, the executable in question was compiled for
another architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an
interpreter that cant be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your
system doesnt support #! at all.)
Cant exec %s
(F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you
because thats what the #! line said. If thats not what you
wanted, you may need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
Cant 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.
Cant 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".
Cant 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 prop
erty (remember that the names of character properties consist only
of alphanumeric characters), or maybe you forgot the "Is" or "In"
prefix?
Cant find label %s
(F) You said to goto a label that isnt mentioned anywhere that
its possible for us to go to. See "goto" in perlfunc.
Cant find %s on PATH
(F) You used the -S switch, but the script to execute could not be
found in the PATH.
Cant 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 run
ning it.
Cant find %s property definition %s
(F) You may have tried to use "\p" which means a Unicode property
(for example "\p{Lu}" is all uppercase letters). If you did mean
to use a Unicode property, see perlunicode for the list of known
properties. If you didnt mean to use a Unicode property, escape
the "\p", either by "\\p" (just the "\p") or by "\Q\p" (the rest of
the string, until possible "\E").
Cant 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 youre getting this error from a here-document, you may have
included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag. A good
programmers editor will have a way to help you find these charac
ters.
Cant fork
(F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
pipeline.
Cant get filespec - stale stat buffer?
(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the differ
ence 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 havent made a sub
sequent 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
shouldnt ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it
arises only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
Cant get pipe mailbox device name
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
pipe, Perl cant retrieve its name for later use.
Cant 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 didnt get an answer.
Cant "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
foreach loop. You cant get there from here. See "goto" in perl
func.
Cant "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 isnt 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.
Cant goto subroutine from an eval-%s
(F) The "goto subroutine" call cant be used to jump out of an eval
"string" or block.
Cant goto subroutine outside a subroutine
(F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
subroutine call for another. It cant manufacture one out of whole
cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
routine anyway. See "goto" in perlfunc.
Cant 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.
Cant "last" outside a loop block
(F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current
block, except that theres this itty bitty problem called there
isnt a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesnt
count as a "loopish" block, as doesnt 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.
Cant load %s for module %s
(F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic exten
sion. 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 ver
sion of the library that is installed on your system. You may need
to rebuild your old dynamic extensions.
Cant localize lexical variable %s
(F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared
as a lexical variable using "my". This is not allowed. If you
want to localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it
with the package name.
Cant localize pseudo-hash element
(F) You said something like "local $ar->{key}", where $ar is a
reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasnt been implemented yet, but
you can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array
element directly -- "local $ar->[$ar->[0]{key}]".
Cant localize through a reference
(F) You said something like "local $$ref", which Perl cant cur
rently handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of
whatever $ref pointed to after the scope of the local() is fin
ished, it cant be sure that $ref will still be a reference.
Cant locate %s
(F) You said to "do" (or "require", or "use") a file that couldnt
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 vari
able 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.
Cant 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".
Cant 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.
Cant 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 doesnt define
that particular method, nor does any of its base classes. See per
lobj.
Cant locate package %s for @%s::ISA
(W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package
that doesnt seem to exist.
Cant locate PerlIO%s
(F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
Cant make list assignment to \%ENV on this system
(F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems,
notably VMS.
Cant modify %s in %s
(F) You arent allowed to assign to the item indicated, or other
wise try to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
Cant modify nonexistent substring
(P) The internal routine that does assignment to a substr() was
handed a NULL.
Cant modify non-lvalue subroutine call
(F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be
declared as such, see "Lvalue subroutines" in perlsub.
Cant msgrcv to read-only var
(F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a
receive buffer.
Cant "next" outside a loop block
(F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block,
but there isnt a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block
doesnt count as a "loopish" block, as doesnt 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 consid
ered a block that loops once. See "next" in perlfunc.
Cant 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 dont have read permission for a file which you
named on the command line.
Cant 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.
Cant open bidirectional pipe
(W pipe) You tried to say "open(CMD, "|cmd|")", which is not sup
ported. You can try any of several modules in the Perl library to
do this, such as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipes output
to a file using ">", and then read it in under a different file
handle.
Cant open error file %s as stderr
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redi
rection, and couldnt open the file specified after 2> or 2>>
on the command line for writing.
Cant open input file %s as stdin
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redi
rection, and couldnt open the file specified after < on the com
mand line for reading.
Cant open output file %s as stdout
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redi
rection, and couldnt open the file specified after > or >> on
the command line for writing.
Cant open output pipe (name: %s)
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redi
rection, and couldnt open the pipe into which to send data des
tined for stdout.
Cant open perl script%s
(F) The script you specified cant be opened for the indicated rea
son.
If youre debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on
the shells $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that
search, so you dont have to type the path or which $scriptname.
Cant read CRTL environ
(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of
%ENV from the CRTLs internal environment array and discovered the
array was missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL mis
placed its environ or define PERL_ENV_TABLES (see perlvms) so that
environ is not searched.
Cant redefine active sort subroutine %s
(F) Perl optimizes the internal handling of sort subroutines and
keeps pointers into them. You tried to redefine one such sort sub
routine when it was currently active, which is not allowed. If you
really want to do this, you should write "sort { &func } @x"
instead of "sort func @x".
Cant "redo" outside a loop block
(F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block,
but there isnt a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block
doesnt count as a "loopish" block, as doesnt 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 consid
ered a block that loops once. See "redo" in perlfunc.
Cant 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.
Cant rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
(S inplace) The rename done by the -i switch failed for some rea
son, probably because you dont have write permission to the direc
tory.
Cant 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.
Cant resolve method %s overloading %s in package %s
(F|P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
package. If method name is "???", this is an internal error.
Cant reswap uid and euid
(P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emula
tor of suidperl.
Cant 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.
Cant 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.
Cant 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.
Cant stat script "%s"
(P) For some reason you cant fstat() the script even though you
have it open already. Bizarre.
Cant swap uid and euid
(P) The setreuid() call failed for some reason in the setuid emula
tor of suidperl.
Cant take log of %g
(F) For ordinary real numbers, you cant take the logarithm of a
negative number or zero. Theres a Math::Complex package that comes
standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
negative numbers.
Cant take sqrt of %g
(F) For ordinary real numbers, you cant take the square root of a
negative number. Theres a Math::Complex package that comes stan
dard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
Cant undef active subroutine
(F) You cant undefine a routine thats currently running. You
can, however, redefine it while its running, and you can even
undef the redefined subroutine while the old routine is running.
Go figure.
Cant unshift
(F) You tried to unshift an "unreal" array that cant be unshifted,
such as the main Perl stack.
Cant upgrade that kind of scalar
(P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making
it into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types
are so specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted.
This message indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
Cant upgrade to undef
(P) The undefined SV is the bottom of the totem pole, in the scheme
of upgradability. Upgrading to undef indicates an error in the
code calling sv_upgrade.
Cant use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
(F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a sym
bol table that doesnt have a name. Symbol tables can become
anonymous for example by undefining stashes: "undef %Some::Pack
age::".
Cant 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.
Cant 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.
Cant 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.
Cant use %s for loop variable
(F) Only a simple scalar variable may be used as a loop variable on
a foreach.
Cant use global %s in "my"
(F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable.
This is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one
location (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly
confusing to have variables in your program that looked like magi
cal variables but werent.
Cant use "my %s" in sort comparison
(F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort compar
isons. 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.
Cant use %s ref as %s ref
(F) Youve 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.
Cant 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.
Cant 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
didnt look like a hash or array reference, or anything else sub
scriptable.
Cant 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 ordi
nary Perl code produces a value that prints out looking like
SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form instead.
Cant weaken a nonreference
(F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference.
Only references can be weakened.
Cant x= to read-only value
(F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined
value) with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the
value itself. Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary,
and repeat that.
Character in "C" format wrapped in pack
(W pack) You said
pack("C", $x)
where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the "C" format is
only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII,
EBCDIC, and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved
as if you meant
pack("C", $x & 255)
If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the "U" format
instead.
Character in "c" format wrapped in pack
(W pack) You said
pack("c", $x)
where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the "c" format
is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII,
EBCDIC, and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved
as if you meant
pack("c", $x & 255);
If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the "U" format
instead.
close() on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
Code missing after /
(F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a /. There must be
another template code following the slash. See "pack" in perlfunc.
%s: Command not found
(A) Youve 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" state
ment. 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 back
tracks 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 wasnt locked. The cond_broad
cast() function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting
in a cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isnt sent before the
other thread has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the
signaling thread to first wait for a lock on variable. This lock
attempt will only succeed after the other thread has entered
cond_wait() and thus relinquished the lock.
cond_signal() called on unlocked variable
(W threads) Within a thread-enabled program, you tried to call
cond_signal() on a variable which wasnt locked. The cond_signal()
function is used to wake up another thread that is waiting in a
cond_wait(). To ensure that the signal isnt sent before the other
thread has a chance to enter the wait, it is usual for the signal
ing thread to first wait for a lock on variable. This lock attempt
will only succeed after the other thread has entered cond_wait()
and thus relinquished the lock.
connect() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you
forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See "con
nect" in perlfunc.
Constant(%s)%s: %s
(F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to
define an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character
name specified in the "\N{...}" escape. Perhaps you forgot to load
the corresponding "overload" or "charnames" pragma? See charnames
and overload.
Constant is not %s reference
(F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the "use constant"
pragma) is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of
reference. The message indicates the type of reference that was
expected. This usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing
the constant value. See "Constant Functions" in perlsub and con
stant.
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 eli
gible for inlining. See "Constant Functions" in perlsub for com
mentary 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 with
out a valid magic number.
Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%lx at 0x%lx
(P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal fail
ure.
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 indi
rectly) 100 times more than it has returned. This probably indi
cates an infinite recursion, unless youre writing strange bench
mark programs, in which case it indicates something else.
defined(@array) is deprecated
(D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it
checks for an undefined scalar value. If you want to see if the
array is empty, just use "if (@array) { # not empty }" for example.
defined(%hash) is deprecated
(D deprecated) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because it
checks for an undefined scalar value. If you want to see if the
hash is empty, just use "if (%hash) { # not empty }" for example.
%s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
(F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
there are neither package declarations nor a $VERSION.
Delimiter for here document is too long
(F) In a here document construct like "< operator
(F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size
of a Perl identifier. If youre just trying to glob a long list of
filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into
a variable and glob that.
exec? Im not *that* kind of operating system
(F) The "exec" function is not implemented in MacPerl. See perl
port.
Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors
(F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
Exiting eval via %s
(W exiting) You are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such
as a goto, or a loop control statement.
Exiting format via %s
(W exiting) You are exiting a format by unconventional means, such
as a goto, or a loop control statement.
Exiting pseudo-block via %s
(W exiting) You are exiting a rather special block construct (like
a sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a
goto, or a loop control statement. See "sort" in perlfunc.
Exiting subroutine via %s
(W exiting) You are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means,
such as a goto, or a loop control statement.
Exiting substitution via %s
(W exiting) You are exiting a substitution by unconventional means,
such as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
Explicit blessing to (assuming package main)
(W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string.
This has the effect of blessing the reference into the package
main. This is usually not what you want. Consider providing a
default target package, e.g. bless($ref, $p || MyPackage);
%s: Expression syntax
(A) Youve accidentally run your script through csh instead of
Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
yourself.
%s failed--call queue aborted
(F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a CHECK,
INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the queue
of such routines has been 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 "-". Con
sider quoting the "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows in the regular
expression about where the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Fatal VMS error at %s, line %d
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
system service or RTL routine; Perls 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 doesnt implement fcntl(). What is
this, a PDP-11 or something?
Filehandle %s opened only for input
(W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you
intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it
with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
intended only to write the file, use ">" or ">>". See "open" in
perlfunc.
Filehandle %s opened only for output
(W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing,
If you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to
open it with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing.
If you intended 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 file
handle 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 file
handle id as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN previ
ously.
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 youre 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 doesnt implement gethostent(), prob
ably because if it did, itd 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) Youve said "use strict vars", which indicates that all vari
ables must either be lexically scoped (using "my"), declared
beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified to say which pack
age 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 vari
ables 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 con
fig.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 its looking for the corresponding right angle
bracket, and not finding it. Chances are you left some needed
parentheses out earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less
than".
Got an error from DosAllocMem
(P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably youre using an obso
lete version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
goto must have label
(F) Unlike with "next" or "last", youre 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 didnt, 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.
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). Youve exceeded Perls limits.
Future versions of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary
limitations.
Illegal binary digit %s
(F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
Illegal binary digit %s ignored
(W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than 0 or 1 in a
binary number. Interpretation of the binary number stopped before
the offending digit.
Illegal character %s (carriage return)
(F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this
error when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason,
your version of Perl appears to have been built without this sup
port. Talk to your Perl administrator.
Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
(W syntax) An illegal character was found in a prototype declara
tion. Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &,
and \.
Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
(F) When using the "sub" keyword to construct an anonymous subrou
tine, 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 hex
adecimal number stopped before the illegal character.
Illegal modulus zero
(F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
numbers dont 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: %s
(X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
following switches: -[DIMUdmtw].
Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
(W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the
CRTLs 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 logi
cal name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over
%ENV, and didnt 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 mes
sage being repeated.
Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the "G_KEEPERR" flag
could also result in this warning. See "G_KEEPERR" in perlcall.
In EBCDIC the v-string components cannot exceed 2147483647
(F) An error peculiar to EBCDIC. Internally, v-strings are stored
as Unicode code points, and encoded in EBCDIC as UTF-EBCDIC. The
UTF-EBCDIC encoding is limited to code points no larger than
2147483647 (0x7FFFFFFF).
Insecure dependency in %s
(F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didnt
like. The tainting mechanism is turned on when youre running
setuid or setgid, or when you specify -T to turn it on explicitly.
The tainting mechanism labels all data thats 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 cant 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 direc
tory. See perlsec.
Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
(F) You cant 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 sup
plied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See perlsec.
Integer overflow in %s number
(W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have spec
ified 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 pre
cision errors in subsequent operations.
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 prob
lem was discovered.
Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of
times youve called "fork" and "exec", to determine whether the
current call to "exec" should affect the current script or a sub
process (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) Youve run afoul of the rule that says that any list
operator followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all
the list operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See
"Terms and List Operators (Leftward)" in perlop.
Invalid %s attribute: %s
The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recog
nized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See attributes.
Invalid %s attributes: %s
The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not rec
ognized 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
didnt 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 discov
ered.
Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum charac
ter 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 parame
ter list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
Invalid type %s in %s
(F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type. See
"pack" in perlfunc. (W) The given character is not a valid pack or
unpack type but used to be silently ignored.
ioctl is not implemented
(F) Your machine apparently doesnt implement ioctl(), which is
pretty strange for a machine that supports C.
ioctl() on unopened %s
(W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never
opened. Check you control flow and number of 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 doesnt implement the sockatmark() functionality,
neither as a system call or an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
%s is not a code reference
(W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of over
load::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 youre 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 youre 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 youre 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 perl
func.
listen() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you
forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
"listen" in perlfunc.
Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE
in m/%s/
(F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which look
behind can handle. This restriction may be eased in a future
release. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
the problem was discovered.
lstat() on filehandle %s
(W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a
fstat() instead on the filehandle.)
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 con
text. 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 something that didnt comply with UTF-8
encoding rules.
One possible cause is that you read in data that you thought to be
in UTF-8 but it wasnt (it was for example legacy 8-bit data).
Another possibility is careless use of utf8::upgrade().
Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but while
doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
%s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) The pattern youve specified would be an infinite loop
if the regular expression engine didnt specifically check for
that. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the
problem was discovered. See perlre.
"%s" may clash with future reserved word
(W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a
perl4 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned
about is "use" or "my".
% may not be used in pack
(F) You cant pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
checksumming process loses information, and you cant 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 doesnt 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 to -%c
(F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
(F) Wrong syntax of character name literal "\N{charname}" within
double-quotish context.
Missing comma after first argument to %s function
(F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
"indirect object" before the argument list, this aint 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 youve 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 "\p{...}" or "\P{...}".
Missing right curly or square bracket
(F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than
closing ones. As a general rule, youll find its 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". Dont automatically
put a semicolon on the previous line just because you saw this mes
sage.
Modification of a read-only value attempted
(F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
constant. You didnt, 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() thats 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
couldnt 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 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 dont have System V message IPC on your system.
Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
(W syntax) Multidimensional arrays arent written like $foo[1,2,3].
Theyre written like $foo[1][2][3], as in C.
/ must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
(F) You had a pack template indicating a counted-length string,
Currently the only things that can have their length counted are
a*, A* or Z*. See "pack" in perlfunc.
/ 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. Dont
try that yet.
"my" variable %s cant be in a package
(F) Lexically scoped variables arent in a package, so it doesnt
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.
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 cant quantify a quantifier without intervening parenthe
ses. 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 arent. See perlre.
%s never introduced
(S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went
out of scope before it could possibly have been used.
Newline in left-justified string for %s
(W printf) There is a newline in a string to be left justified by
"printf" or "sprintf".
The padding spaces will appear after the newline, which is probably
not what you wanted. Usually you should remove the newline from
the string and put formatting characters in the "sprintf" format.
No %s allowed while running setuid
(F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid
or setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking
there will be another way to do what you want that is, if not
secure, at least securable. See perlsec.
No comma allowed after %s
(F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is
not allowed to have a comma between that and the following argu
ments. Otherwise itd 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 con
stant 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
doesnt 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) didnt 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) didnt define a "DB::sub" routine to be called at
the beginning of each ordinary subroutine call.
No -e allowed in setuid scripts
(F) A setuid script cant be specified by the user.
No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
redirection, and found a 2> or a 2>> on the command line, but
cant 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 cant find
the name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
No #! line
(F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #!
line even on machines that dont support the #! construct.
"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 doesnt 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
cant 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" decla
rations, because that doesnt 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 begin
ning with #! and containing the word "perl".
No setregid available
(F) Configure didnt find anything resembling the setregid() call
for your system.
No setreuid available
(F) Configure didnt 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 havent specified one.
No such class %s
(F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my" or "our" declaration,
but this class doesnt exist at this point in your program.
No such pipe open
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose()
tried to close a pipe which hadnt been opened. This should have
been caught earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
No such pseudo-hash field "%s"
(F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used
is not defined. The hash at index 0 should map all valid field
names to array indices for that to work.
No such pseudo-hash field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
(F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type
does not know about the field name. The field names are looked up
in the %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time. The
%FIELDS hash is %usually set up with the fields pragma.
No such signal: SIG%s
(W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that
was not recognized. Say "kill -l" in your shell to see the valid
signal names on your system.
Not a CODE reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that
is, a subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead.
You can use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it
really was. See also perlref.
Not a format reference
(F) Im not sure how you managed to generate a reference to an
anonymous format, but this indicates you did, and that it didnt
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 refer
ence to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to
find out what kind of ref it really was. See perlref.
Not a HASH reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but
found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See perlref.
Not an ARRAY reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but
found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See perlref.
Not a perl script
(F) The setuid emulator requires that scripts have a well-formed #!
line even on machines that dont support the #! construct. The
line must mention perl.
Not a SCALAR reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but
found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See perlref.
Not a subroutine reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that
is, a subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead.
You can use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it
really was. See also perlref.
Not a subroutine reference in overload table
(F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table
that doesnt 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) Youve 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 its assuming that local system time is equiva
lent to UTC. If its not, define the logical name SYS$TIME
ZONE_DIFFERENTIAL to translate to the number of seconds which need
to be added to UTC to get local time.
Non-string passed as bitmask
(W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to
select(). Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor
bitmasks for select. See "select" in perlfunc
Null filename used
(F) You cant require the null filename, especially because on many
machines that means the current directory! See "require" in perl
func.
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. Youve exceeded that length. Future ver
sions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation.
In the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead
of "1_000_000").
Octal number in vector unsupported
(F) Numbers with a leading 0 are not currently allowed in vectors.
The octal number interpretation of such numbers may be supported in
a future version.
Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
(W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
(4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See perl
port for more on portability concerns.
See also perlport for writing portable code.
Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
(W overload) The call to overload::constant contained an odd number
of arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
(W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to 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) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with an offset
pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine. The
sole exception to this is that "sysread()"ing past the buffer will
extend the buffer and zero pad the new area.
%s() on unopened %s
(W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that
was never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a
socket() call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
-%s on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehan
dle that isnt open. Check your control flow. See also "-X" in
perlfunc.
oops: oopsAV
(S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
oops: oopsHV
(S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
Operation "%s": no method found, %s
(F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for
which no handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogen
erated in terms of other handlers, there is no default handler for
any operation, unless "fallback" overloading key is specified to be
true. See overload.
Operator or semicolon missing before %s
(S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the
parser was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you
really meant to use an operator, but this is highly likely to be
incorrect. For example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be inter
preted 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 insuffi
cient 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 insuffi
cient 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 insuf
ficient 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 trap
pable. 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 cant 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() wouldnt give it more memory, virtual or
otherwise.
@ outside of string in unpack
(F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
the string being unpacked. See "pack" in perlfunc.
%s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
(W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a pack
age-specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl
itself some day, even though it doesnt yet. Perhaps you should
use a mixed-case attribute name, instead. See attributes.
pack/unpack repeat count overflow
(F) You cant specify a repeat count so large that it overflows
your signed integers. See "pack" in perlfunc.
page overflow
(W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on
a page. See perlform.
panic: %s
(P) An internal error.
panic: ck_grep
(P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to 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 dis
covered it wasnt an eval context.
panic: do_subst
(P) The internal pp_subst() routine was called with invalid opera
tional data.
panic: do_trans_%s
(P) The internal do_trans routines were called with invalid opera
tional data.
panic: frexp
(P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impos
sible.
panic: goto
(P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified
label, and then discovered it wasnt a context we know how to do a
goto in.
panic: INTERPCASEMOD
(P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
panic: INTERPCONCAT
(P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
panic: kid popen errno read
(F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its
errno.
panic: last
(P) We popped the context stack to a block context, and then dis
covered it wasnt a block context.
panic: leave_scope clearsv
(P) A writable lexical variable became read-only somehow within the
scope.
panic: leave_scope inconsistency
(P) The savestack probably got out of sync. At least, there was an
invalid enum on the top of it.
panic: magic_killbackrefs
(P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all
weak references to an object.
panic: malloc
(P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
panic: mapstart
(P) The compiler is screwed up with respect to the map() function.
panic: memory wrap
(P) Something tried to allocate more memory than possible.
panic: null array
(P) One of the internal array routines was passed a null AV
pointer.
panic: pad_alloc
(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allo
cating and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
panic: pad_free curpad
(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allo
cating 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 allo
cating 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 allo
cating 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 opera
tional 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 didnt supply the destination.
panic: return
(P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context,
and then discovered it wasnt a subroutine or eval context.
panic: scan_num
(P) scan_num() got called on something that wasnt a number.
panic: sv_insert
(P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than
there was string.
panic: top_env
(P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like
that.
panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
(P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed
to even) byte length.
panic: yylex
(P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modi
fier.
Parentheses missing around "%s" list
(W parenthesis) You said something like
my $foo, $bar = @_;
when you meant
my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
Remember that "my", "our", and "local" bind tighter than comma.
"-p" destination: %s
(F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the
"-p" command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless
youve redirected it with select().)
(perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
(F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
"Cant locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often
means that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
Perl %s required--this is only version %s, stopped
(F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more
recent than the currently running version. How long has it been
since you upgraded, anyway? See "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, 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 prob
lem can be found in perllocale section LOCALE PROBLEMS.
Permission denied
(F) The setuid emulator in suidperl decided you were up to no good.
pid %x not a child
(W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait
for a process which isnt a subprocess of the current process.
While this is fine from VMS perspective, its probably not what
you intended.
P must have an explicit size in unpack
(F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
-P not allowed for setuid/setgid script
(F) The script would have to be opened by the C preprocessor by
name, which provides a race condition that breaks security.
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, its "[[:print:]]", not "isprint". See perlre.
POSIX getpgrp cant 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 fre
quently 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 arent 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 dont 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 con
junction with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
This expression is actually equivalent to "$x & ($y == 0)", due to
the higher precedence of "==". This is probably not what you want.
(If you really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, bet
ter, put the parentheses explicitly and write "$x & ($y == 0)").
Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
(W ambiguous) You said something like @foo in a double-quoted
string but there was no array @foo in scope at the time. If you
wanted a literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out
what happened to the array you apparently lost track of.
Possible Y2K bug: %s
(W y2k) You are concatenating the number 19 with another number,
which could be a potential Year 2000 problem.
pragma "attrs" is deprecated, use "sub NAME : ATTRS" instead
(D deprecated) You have written something like this:
sub doit
{
use attrs qw(locked);
}
You should use the new declaration syntax instead.
sub doit : locked
{
...
The "use attrs" pragma is now obsolete, and is only provided for
backward-compatibility. See "Subroutine Attributes" in perlsub.
Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
(S precedence) The old irregular construct
open FOO || die;
is now misinterpreted as
open(FOO || die);
because of the strict regularization of Perl 5s 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 youre writing to got itself closed some
time before now. Check your control flow.
print() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) The filehandle youre 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 sighan
dlers, see "Signals" in perlipc. See also "Process terminated by
SIGTERM/SIGINT" in perlos2.
Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
(S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previ
ously been declared or defined with a different function prototype.
Prototype not terminated
(F) Youve omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
definition.
Pseudo-hashes are deprecated
(D deprecated) Pseudo-hashes were deprecated in Perl 5.8.0 and
they will be removed in Perl 5.10.0, see perl58delta for more
details. You can continue to use the "fields" pragma.
Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash
it if you meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
expression about where the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max val
ues 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 repe
titions of "xyz" is "/abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/", not "/abc(?=xyz){3}/".
The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the prob
lem 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 magi
cal string increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.
readline() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) The filehandle youre reading from got itself closed
sometime before now. Check your control flow.
read() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
read() on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never
opened.
Reallocation too large: %lx
(F) You cant 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 cant use the -D option unless the code to pro
duce the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some
overhead, which is why its currently left out of your copy.
Recursive inheritance detected in package %s
(F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were used. Probably indi
cates an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method %s
(F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while
invoking a method. Probably indicates an unintended loop in your
inheritance hierarchy.
Reference found where even-sized list expected
(W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a
list with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash).
This usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you
meant to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value pairs.
%hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
%hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
%hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
%hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
Reference is already weak
(W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already
weak. Doing so has no effect.
Reference miscount in sv_replace()
(W internal) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV
with a reference count of other than 1.
Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You used something like "\7" in your regular expression, but
there are not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the
expression. If you wanted to have the character with value 7
inserted into the regular expression, prepend a zero to make the
number at least two digits: "\07"
The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the prob
lem was discovered.
regexp memory corruption
(P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
expression compiler gave it.
Regexp out of space
(P) A "cant 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.
Reversed %s= operator
(W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The =
must always comes last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary
operators.
Runaway format
(F) Your format contained the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence, but
it produced 200 lines at once, and the 200th line looked exactly
like the 199th line. Apparently you didnt arrange for the argu
ments to exhaust themselves, either by using ^ instead of @ (for
scalar variables), or by shifting or popping (for array variables).
See perlform.
Scalars leaked: %d
(P) Something went wrong in Perls 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) Youve used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
single element of an array. Generally its 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 youre 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) Youve used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a
single element of a hash. Generally its better to ask for a
scalar value (indicated by $). The difference is that $foo{&bar}
always behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when
evaluating its argument, while @foo{&bar} behaves like a list when
you assign to it, and provides a list context to its subscript,
which can do weird things if youre expecting only one subscript.
On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash
element as a list, you need to look into how references work,
because Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists
for you. See perlref.
Script is not setuid/setgid in suidperl
(F) Oddly, the suidperl program was invoked on a script without a
setuid or setgid bit set. This doesnt make much sense.
Search pattern not terminated
(F) The lexer couldnt find the final delimiter of a // or m{} con
struct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
Missing the leading "$" from a variable $m may cause this error.
Note that since Perl 5.9.0 a // can also be the defined-or con
struct, 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 pat
tern
(F) The lexer couldnt 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".
%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 doesnt 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 miss
ing 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 dont have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
send() on closed socket %s
(W closed) The socket youre 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 doesnt make
sense. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where
the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
parenthesis. Embedded parentheses arent allowed. The <-- HERE
shows in the regular expression about where the problem was discov
ered. See perlre.
Sequence (?{...}) not terminated or not {}-balanced in regex; marked by
<-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) If the contents of a (?{...}) clause contains braces, they must
balance for Perl to properly detect the end of the clause. The <--
HERE shows in the regular expression about where the problem was
discovered. See perlre.
500 Server error
See Server error.
Server error
This is the error message generally seen in a browser window when
trying to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The
actual error text varies widely from server to server. The most
frequently-seen variants are "500 Server error", "Method (some
thing) 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 isnt running under, and
isnt in a location where the CGI server cant 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 doesnt
support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Con
figure didnt think so.
seteuid() not implemented
(F) You tried to assign to $>, and your operating system doesnt
support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Con
figure didnt think so.
setpgrp cant 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 doesnt
support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Con
figure didnt think so.
setruid() not implemented
(F) You tried to assign to $<, and your operating system doesnt
support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Con
figure didnt think so.
setsockopt() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket.
Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?
See "setsockopt" in perlfunc.
Setuid/gid script is writable by world
(F) The setuid emulator wont run a script that is writable by the
world, because the world might have written on it already.
Setuid script not plain file
(F) The setuid emulator wont run a script that isnt read from a
file, but from a socket, a pipe or another device.
shm%s not implemented
(F) You dont have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
<> should be quotes
(F) You wrote "require " 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 doesnt, in fact,
exist. Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
sort is now a reserved word
(F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into any
more. But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as a
filehandle.
Sort subroutine didnt return a numeric value
(F) A sort comparison routine must return a number. You probably
blew it by not using "<=>" or "cmp", or by not using them cor
rectly. See "sort" in perlfunc.
Sort subroutine didnt 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 isnt what you
want, try explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array =
$offset. See "splice" in perlfunc.
Split loop
(P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split
shouldnt iterate more times than there are characters of input,
which is what happened.) See "split" in perlfunc.
Statement unlikely to be reached
(W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than
a die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never
returns unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use
system() instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put
the exec() in a block by itself.
stat() on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle
that was either never opened or has since been closed.
Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s"
(P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importa
tion stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit
calls to "can" may break this.
Subroutine %s redefined
(W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning,
say
{
no warnings redefine;
eval "sub name { ... }";
}
Substitution loop
(P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a substi
tution shouldnt iterate more times than there are characters of
input, which is what happened.) See the discussion of substitution
in "Quote and Quote-like Operators" in perlop.
Substitution pattern not terminated
(F) The lexer couldnt find the interior delimiter of an s/// or
s{}{} construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting
level. Missing the leading "$" from variable $s may cause this
error.
Substitution replacement not terminated
(F) The lexer couldnt find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting
level. Missing the leading "$" from variable $s may cause this
error.
substr outside of string
(W substr),(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed out
side 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).
suidperl is no longer needed since %s
(F) Your Perl was compiled with -DSETUID_SCRIPTS_ARE_SECURE_NOW,
but a version of the setuid emulator somehow got run anyway.
Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by
<-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at
most two branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want
one or both to contain 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 prob
lem was discovered. See perlre.
Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) If the argument to the (?(...)if-clause|else-clause) construct
is a number, it can be only a number. The <-- HERE shows in the
regular expression about where the problem was discovered. See
perlre.
switching effective %s is not implemented
(F) While under the "use filetest" pragma, we cannot switch the
real and effective uids or gids.
%s syntax
(F) The final summary message when a "perl -c" succeeds.
syntax error
(F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common 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 syn
tax 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 whats 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) Youve 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 youre writing to got itself closed some
time before now. Check your control flow.
"-T" and "-B" not implemented on filehandles
(F) Perl cant peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it
doesnt know about your kind of stdio. Youll have to use a file
name instead.
Target of goto is too deeply nested
(F) You tried to use "goto" to reach a label that was too deeply
nested for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
tell() on unopened filehandle
(W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle
that was either never opened or has since been closed.
That use of $[ is unsupported
(F) Assignment to $[ is now strictly circumscribed, and 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 per
lvar.
The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia
(F) Configure couldnt find the crypt() function on your machine,
probably because your vendor didnt supply it, probably because
they think the U.S. Government thinks its a secret, or at least
that they will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me
on that, I will deny it.
The %s function is unimplemented
The function indicated isnt implemented on this architecture,
according to the probings of Configure.
The stat preceding %s wasnt 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 file
name instead.
The unique attribute may only be applied to our variables
(F) Currently this attribute is not supported on "my" or "sub" dec
larations. See "our" in perlfunc.
This Perl cant reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
This Perl cant set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
(W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or
delete an element of the CRTLs internal environ array, but your
copy of Perl wasnt built with a CRTL that contained the setenv()
function. Youll need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or
redefine PERL_ENV_TABLES (see perlvms) so that the environ array
isnt the target of the change to %ENV which produced the warning.
thread failed to start: %s
(W threads)(S) The entry point function of threads->create() failed
for some reason.
5.005 threads are deprecated
(D deprecated) The 5.005-style threads (activated by "use
Thread;") are deprecated and one should use the new ithreads
instead, see perl58delta for more details.
times not implemented
(F) Your version of the C library apparently doesnt do times(). I
suspect youre not running on Unix.
"-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
(X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
-T option, but Perl was not invoked with -T in its command line.
This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a -T in a
script, its too late to properly taint everything from the envi
ronment. So Perl gives up.
If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be
fixed by editing the #! line so that the -T option is a part of
Perls first argument: e.g. change "perl -n -T" to "perl -T -n".
If the Perl script is being executed as "perl scriptname", then the
-T option must appear on the command line: "perl -T scriptname".
To%s: illegal mapping %s
(F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
specified an illegal mapping. See "User-Defined Character Proper
ties" in perlunicode.
Too deeply nested ()-groups
(F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nest
ing level.
Too few args to syscall
(F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify
the system call to call, silly dilly.
Too late for "-%s" option
(X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
-M or -m option. This is an error because -M and -m options are
not intended for use inside scripts. Use the "use" pragma instead.
Too late to run %s block
(W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time
proper, when the opportunity to run them has already passed.
Perhaps you are loading a file with "require" or "do" when you
should be using "use" instead. Or perhaps you should put the
"require" or "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) Youve accidentally run your script through csh instead of
Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
yourself.
Too many (s
(A) Youve 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 couldnt 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 couldnt 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
its disallowed. See Safe.
truncate not implemented
(F) Your machine doesnt implement a file truncation mechanism that
Configure knows about.
Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
(F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or "@{EXPR}". Hashes must be
%NAME or "%{EXPR}". No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
{EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See perlref.
umask not implemented
(F) Your machine doesnt 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 doesnt seem to exist. Perhaps its
really in another package? See perlform.
Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
(F) The sort comparison routine specified doesnt seem to exist.
Perhaps its in a different package? See "sort" in perlfunc.
Undefined subroutine &%s called
(F) The subroutine indicated hasnt been defined, or if it was, it
has since been undefined.
Undefined subroutine called
(F) The anonymous subroutine youre trying to call hasnt been
defined, or if it was, it has since been undefined.
Undefined subroutine in sort
(F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesnt
seem to have been defined yet. See "sort" in perlfunc.
Undefined top format "%s" called
(F) The format indicated doesnt seem to exist. Perhaps its
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. Its possible that you really mean
"undef *foo".
%s: Undefined variable
(A) Youve accidentally run your script through csh instead of
Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl
yourself.
unexec of %s into %s failed!
(F) The unexec() routine failed for some reason. See your local
FSF representative, who probably put it there in the first place.
Unicode character %s is illegal
(W utf8) Certain Unicode characters have been designated off-limits
by the Unicode standard and should not be generated. If you really
know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by "no warn
ings utf8;".
Unknown BYTEORDER
(F) There are no byte-swapping functions for a machine with this
byte order.
Unknown open() mode %s
(F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
of valid modes: "<", ">", ">>", "+<", "+>", "+>>", "-|", "|-",
"<&", ">&".
Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
(W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the
Perl I/O system. (Layers take care of transforming data between
external and internal representations.) Note that some layers,
such as "mmap", are not supported in all environments. If your
program didnt 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. Someones very confused, or perhaps
trying to subvert Perls population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
Unknown "re" subpragma %s (known ones are: %s)
You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
Unknown switch condition (?(%.2s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause)
construct is not known. The condition may be lookahead or lookbe
hind (the condition is true if the lookahead or lookbehind is
true), a (?{...}) construct (the condition is true if the code
evaluates to a true value), or a number (the condition is true if
the set of capturing parentheses named by the number matched).
The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the prob
lem was discovered. See perlre.
Unknown Unicode option letter %c
You specified an unknown Unicode option. See perlrun documentation
of the "-C" switch for the list of known options.
Unknown Unicode option value %x
You specified an unknown Unicode option. See perlrun documentation
of the "-C" switch for the list of known options.
Unknown warnings category %s
(F) An error issued by the "warnings" pragma. You specified a warn
ings category that is unknown to perl at this point.
Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a
module (e.g. "use warnings File::Find"), you must have imported
this module first.
unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish
to include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or
put it first. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about
where the problem was discovered. See perlre.
unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
expressions. If youre a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
the matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expres
sion 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 youre probably missing a matching opening
bracket. As a general rule, youll 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. Its 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
(F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified char
acter in your Perl script (or eval). Perhaps you tried to run a
compressed script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl pro
gram.
/%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed through
(W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
understood literally.
Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
(W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
recognized by Perl.
Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
recognized by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated
variable or a ""-delimited regular expression. The character was
understood literally. The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression
about where the escape was discovered.
Unrecognized signal name "%s"
(F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
recognized. Say "kill -l" in your shell to see the valid signal
names on your system.
Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
(F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Dont do that. (If
you think you didnt do that, check the #! line to see if its sup
plying 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 new
line, PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See "chomp"
in perlfunc.
Unsupported directory function "%s" called
(F) Your machine doesnt support opendir() and readdir().
Unsupported function %s
(F) This machine doesnt implement the indicated function, appar
ently. At least, Configure doesnt 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 doesnt support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or
at least thats what Configure thought.
Unterminated attribute list
(F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
start of an attribute, and it wasnt 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) paren
thesis 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 <> operator
(F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was
expecting a term, so its looking for the corresponding right angle
bracket, and not finding it. Chances are you left some needed
parentheses out earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less
than".
untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
(W untie) A copy of the object returned from "tie" (or "tied") was
still valid when "untie" was called.
Usage: POSIX::%s(%s)
(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) - dont 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 =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the prob
lem was discovered. See perlre.
Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has
no meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
must be written as
if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
The <-- HERE shows in the regular expression about where the prob
lem was discovered. See perlre.
Useless use of %s in void context
(W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that
does nothing with the return value, such as a statement that
doesnt 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, youd 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 Cs 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 isnt very use
ful.
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 argu
ments apart from the array, like "push(@x)" or "unshift(@foo)".
That wont usually have any effect on the array, so is completely
useless. Its 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 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 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 mod
ifier 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
didnt use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when
/g is used. (This may change in the future.)
Use of freed value in iteration
(F) Perhaps you modified the iterated array within the loop? This
error is typically caused by code like the following:
@a = (3,4);
@a = () for (1,2,@a);
You are not supposed to modify arrays while they are being iterated
over. For speed and efficiency reasons, Perl internally does not
do full reference-counting of iterated items, hence deleting such
an item in the 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 repeat
edly, the "/g" has no effect.
Use of implicit split to @_ is deprecated
(D deprecated) It makes a lot of work for the compiler when you
clobber a subroutines argument list, so its better if you assign
the results of a split() explicitly to an array (or list).
Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s() is deprecated
(D deprecated) As an (ahem) accidental feature, "AUTOLOAD" subrou
tines 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 = \&Base
Class::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 theres a better way to do it in
Perl.
Use of $* is deprecated
(D deprecated) This variable magically turned on multi-line pattern
matching, both for you and for any luckless subroutine that you
happen to call. You should use the new "//m" and "//s" modifiers
now to do that without the dangerous action-at-a-distance effects
of $*.
Use of $# is deprecated
(D deprecated) This was an ill-advised attempt to emulate a poorly
defined awk feature. Use an explicit printf() or sprintf()
instead.
Use of %s is deprecated
(D deprecated) The construct indicated is no longer recommended for
use, generally because theres 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 "package" with no arguments is deprecated
(D deprecated) You used the "package" keyword without specifying a
package name. So no namespace is current at all. Using this can
cause many otherwise reasonable constructs to fail in baffling
ways. "use strict;" instead.
Use of reference "%s" as array index
(W misc) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this prob
ably isnt 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, either, because you can overload the numification and
stringification operators and then you assumedly know what you are
doing.
Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
(D deprecated) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so youre 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 "&" pre
fix, or using a package qualifier, e.g. "&our()", or "Foo::our()".
Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
(W taint, deprecated) You have supplied "system()" or "exec()" with
multiple arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used
to be allowed but will become a fatal error in a future version of
perl. Untaint your arguments. See perlsec.
Use of uninitialized value%s
(W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a
mistake. To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your
variables.
To help you figure out what was undefined, perl tells you what
operation you used the undefined value in. Note, however, that
perl optimizes your program and the 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 shouldnt have. It is now depre
cated, 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 shouldnt have. It is now deprecated, and
will be removed in a future version.
UTF-16 surrogate %s
(W utf8) You tried to generate half of an UTF-16 surrogate by
requesting a Unicode character between the code points 0xD800 and
0xDFFF (inclusive). That range is reserved exclusively for the use
of UTF-16 encoding (by having two 16-bit UCS-2 characters); but
Perl encodes its characters in UTF-8, so what you got is a very
illegal character. If you really know what you are doing you can
turn off this warning by "no warnings utf8;".
Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
(W misc) In a conditional expression, you used , <*>
(glob), "each()", or "readdir()" as a boolean value. Each of these
constructs can return a value of "0"; that would make the condi
tional 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 imported%s
(F) While "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 regex; marked by <-- HERE
in m/%s/
(F) Lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is
fixed and known at compile time. The <-- HERE shows in the regular
expression about where the problem was discovered. See perlre.
"%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
(W misc) A "my" or "our" variable has been redeclared in the cur
rent scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the
previous instance. This is almost always a typographical error.
Note that the earlier variable will still exist until the end of
the scope or until all closure referents to it are destroyed.
Variable "%s" may be unavailable
(W closure) An inner (nested) anonymous subroutine is inside a
named subroutine, and outside that is another subroutine; and the
anonymous (innermost) subroutine is referencing a lexical variable
defined in the outermost subroutine. For example:
sub outermost { my $a; sub middle { sub { $a } } }
If the anonymous subroutine is called or referenced (directly or
indirectly) from the outermost subroutine, it will share the vari
able as you would expect. But if the anonymous subroutine is
called or referenced when the outermost subroutine is not active,
it will see the value of the shared variable as it was before and
during the *first* call to the outermost subroutine, which is prob
ably not what you want.
In these circumstances, it is usually best to make the middle sub
routine anonymous, using the "sub {}" syntax. Perl has specific
support for shared variables in nested anonymous subroutines; a
named subroutine in between interferes with this feature.
Variable syntax
(A) Youve 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 subroutine.
When the inner subroutine is called, it will probably see the value
of the outer subroutines 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 sub
routines will no longer share a common value for the variable. In
other words, the variable will no longer be shared.
Furthermore, if the outer subroutine is anonymous and references a
lexical variable outside itself, then the outer and inner subrou
tines will never share the given variable.
This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
anonymous, using the "sub {}" syntax. When inner anonymous subs
that reference variables in outer subroutines are called or refer
enced, they are automatically rebound to the current values of such
variables.
Version number must be a constant number
(P) The attempt to translate a "use Module n.n LIST" statement into
its equivalent "BEGIN" block found an internal inconsistency with
the version number.
Warning: somethings 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
(W utf8) Perl met a wide character (>255) when it wasnt expecting
one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print). The eas
iest 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 "[TEM
PLATE]" only if "TEMPLATE" always matches the same amount of packed
bytes that can be determined from the template alone. This is not
possible if it contains an of the codes @, /, U, u, w or a
*-length. Redesign the template.
write() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) The filehandle youre writing to got itself closed some
time before now. Check your control flow.
%s "\x%s" does not map to Unicode
When reading in different encodings Perl tries to map everything
into Unicode characters. The bytes you read in are not legal in
this encoding, for example
utf8 "\xE4" does not map to Unicode
if you try to read in the a-diaereses Latin-1 as UTF-8.
X outside of string
(F) You had a (un)pack template that specified a 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 perl
func.
YOU HAVENT DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
(F) And you probably never will, because you probably dont have
the sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesnt give a
rip about what you want. Your best bet is to put a setuid C wrap
per 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.
perl v5.8.8 2008-04-25 PERLDIAG(1)
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