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 (enabled by default).
(S) A severe warning (enabled by default).
(F) A fatal error (trappable).
(P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
(X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
(A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).
The majority of messages from the first three classifications above (W,
D & S) can be controlled using the "warnings" pragma.
If a message can be controlled by the "warnings" pragma, its warning
category is included with the classification letter in the description
below. E.g. "(W closed)" means a warning in the "closed" category.
Optional warnings are enabled by using the "warnings" pragma or the -w
and -W switches. Warnings may be captured by setting $SIG{__WARN__} to
a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead of
printing it. See perlvar.
Severe warnings are always enabled, unless they are explicitly disabled
with the "warnings" pragma or the -X switch.
Trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See "eval" in
perlfunc. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively disabled or
promoted to fatal errors using the "warnings" pragma. See warnings.
The messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or
lower-case. Some of these messages are generic. Spots that vary are
denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. These escapes are
ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than
letters. To look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a
letter.
accept() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to do an accept on a closed socket. Did you
forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
"accept" in perlfunc.
ADJUST is experimental
(S experimental::class) This warning is emitted if you use the
"ADJUST" keyword of "use feature 'class'". This keyword is
currently experimental and its behaviour may change in future
releases of Perl.
Aliasing via reference is experimental
(S experimental::refaliasing) This warning is emitted if you use a
reference constructor on the left-hand side of an assignment to
alias one variable to another. Simply suppress the warning if you
want to use the feature, but know that in doing so you are taking
the risk of using an experimental feature which may change or be
removed in a future Perl version:
no warnings "experimental::refaliasing";
use feature "refaliasing";
\$x = \$y;
'%c' allowed only after types %s in %s
(F) The modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack()
only after certain types. See "pack" in perlfunc.
alpha->numify() is lossy
(W numeric) An alpha version can not be numified without losing
information.
Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
(W ambiguous) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a
Perl keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for
calling one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because
the subroutine is not imported.
To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an
ampersand before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its
package. Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend
that it's imported with the "use subs" pragma).
To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the "CORE::"
prefix on the operator (e.g. CORE::log($x)) or declare the
subroutine to be an object method (see "Subroutine Attributes" in
perlsub or attributes).
Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
(F) You wrote something like "tr/a-z-0//" which doesn't mean
anything at all. To include a "-" character in a transliteration,
put it either first or last. (In the past, "tr/a-z-0//" was
synonymous with "tr/a-y//", which was probably not what you would
have expected.)
Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
(S ambiguous) You said something that may not be interpreted the way
you thought. Normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by
supplying a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or
declaration.
Ambiguous use of -%s resolved as -&%s()
(S ambiguous) You wrote something like "-foo", which might be the
string "-foo", or a call to the function "foo", negated. If you
meant the string, just write "-foo". If you meant the function
call, write "-foo()".
Ambiguous use of %c resolved as operator %c
(S ambiguous) "%", "&", and "*" are both infix operators (modulus,
bitwise and, and multiplication) and initial special characters
(denoting hashes, subroutines and typeglobs), and you said something
like "*foo * foo" that might be interpreted as either of them. We
assumed you meant the infix operator, but please try to make it more
clear -- in the example given, you might write "*foo * foo()" if you
really meant to multiply a glob by the result of calling a function.
Ambiguous use of %c{%s} resolved to %c%s
(W ambiguous) You wrote something like "@{foo}", which might be
asking for the variable @foo, or it might be calling a function
named foo, and dereferencing it as an array reference. If you
wanted the variable, you can just write @foo. If you wanted to call
the function, write "@{foo()}" ... or you could just not have a
variable and a function with the same name, and save yourself a lot
of trouble.
Ambiguous use of %c{%s[...]} resolved to %c%s[...]
Ambiguous use of %c{%s{...}} resolved to %c%s{...}
(W ambiguous) You wrote something like "${foo[2]}" (where foo
represents the name of a Perl keyword), which might be looking for
element number 2 of the array named @foo, in which case please write
$foo[2], or you might have meant to pass an anonymous arrayref to
the function named foo, and then do a scalar deref on the value it
returns. If you meant that, write "${foo([2])}".
In regular expressions, the "${foo[2]}" syntax is sometimes
necessary to disambiguate between array subscripts and character
classes. "/$length[2345]/", for instance, will be interpreted as
$length followed by the character class "[2345]". If an array
subscript is what you want, you can avoid the warning by changing
"/${length[2345]}/" to the unsightly "/${\$length[2345]}/", by
renaming your array to something that does not coincide with a
built-in keyword, or by simply turning off warnings with "no
warnings 'ambiguous';".
'|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also
tried to redirect STDIN using '<'. Only one STDIN stream to a
customer, please.
'|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file
and into a pipe to another command. You need to choose one or the
other, though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or
Perl script which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
while (<STDIN>) {
print;
print OUT;
}
close OUT;
Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
(W misc) The pattern match ("//"), substitution ("s///"), and
transliteration ("tr///") operators work on scalar values. If you
apply one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array
or hash to a scalar value (the length of an array, or the population
info of a hash) and then work on that scalar value. This is
probably not what you meant to do. See "grep" in perlfunc and "map"
in perlfunc for alternatives.
Arg too short for msgsnd
(F) msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
(W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an
operator that expected a numeric value instead. If you're fortunate
the message will identify which operator was so unfortunate.
Note that for the "Inf" and "NaN" (infinity and not-a-number) the
definition of "numeric" is somewhat unusual: the strings themselves
(like "Inf") are considered numeric, and anything following them is
considered non-numeric.
Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
(W layer) When pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O
system you forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (Layers take
care of transforming data between external and internal
representations.) Perl stopped parsing the layer list at this point
and did not attempt to push this layer. If your program didn't
explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of
the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
Argument "%s" treated as 0 in increment (++)
(W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to the "++"
operator which expects either a number or a string matching
"/^[a-zA-Z]*[0-9]*\z/". See "Auto-increment and Auto-decrement" in
perlop for details.
Array passed to stat will be coerced to a scalar%s
(W syntax) You called stat() on an array, but the array will be
coerced to a scalar - the number of elements in the array.
A signature parameter must start with '$', '@' or '%'
(F) Each subroutine signature parameter declaration must start with
a valid sigil; for example:
sub foo ($x, $, $y = 1, @z) {}
A slurpy parameter may not have a default value
(F) Only scalar subroutine signature parameters may have a default
value; for example:
sub foo ($x = 1) {} # legal
sub foo (@x = (1)) {} # invalid
sub foo (%x = (a => b)) {} # invalid
assertion botched: %s
(X) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
Assertion %s failed: file "%s", line %d
(X) A general assertion failed. The file in question must be
examined.
Assigned value is not a reference
(F) You tried to assign something that was not a reference to an
lvalue reference (e.g., "\$x = $y"). If you meant to make $x an
alias to $y, use "\$x = \$y".
Assigned value is not %s reference
(F) You tried to assign a reference to a reference constructor, but
the two references were not of the same type. You cannot alias a
scalar to an array, or an array to a hash; the two types must match.
\$x = \@y; # error
\@x = \%y; # error
$y = [];
\$x = $y; # error; did you mean \$y?
Assigning non-zero to $[ is no longer possible
(F) When the "array_base" feature is disabled (e.g., and under "use
v5.16;", and as of Perl 5.30) the special variable $[, which is
deprecated, is now a fixed zero value.
Assignment to both a list and a scalar
(F) If you assign to a conditional operator, the 2nd and 3rd
arguments must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise
Perl won't know which context to supply to the right side.
Assuming NOT a POSIX class since %s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(W regexp) You had something like these:
[[:alnum]]
[[:digit:xyz]
They look like they might have been meant to be the POSIX classes
"[:alnum:]" or "[:digit:]". If so, they should be written:
[[:alnum:]]
[[:digit:]xyz]
Since these aren't legal POSIX class specifications, but are legal
bracketed character classes, Perl treats them as the latter. In the
first example, it matches the characters ":", "[", "a", "l", "m",
"n", and "u".
If these weren't meant to be POSIX classes, this warning message is
spurious, and can be suppressed by reordering things, such as
[[al:num]]
or
[[:munla]]
<> at require-statement should be quotes
(F) You wrote "require <file>" when you should have written "require
'file'".
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 freed package
(F) You wrote "bless $foo" with one argument after somehow causing
the current package to be freed. Perl cannot figure out what to do,
so it throws up its hands in despair.
Attempt to bless into a class
(F) You are attempting to call "bless" with a package name that is a
new-style "class". This is not necessary, as instances created by
the constructor are already in the correct class. Instances cannot
be created by other means, such as "bless".
Attempt to bless into a reference
(F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is expected to be
the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. You've
supplied instead a reference to something: perhaps you wrote
bless $self, $proto;
when you intended
bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;
If you actually want to bless into the stringified version of the
reference supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for example
by:
bless $self, "$proto";
Attempt to clear deleted array
(S debugging) An array was assigned to when it was being freed.
Freed values are not supposed to be visible to Perl code. This can
also happen if XS code calls "av_clear" from a custom magic callback
on the array.
Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
(F) The failing code attempted to delete from a restricted hash a
key which is not in its key set.
Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
(F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been
declared readonly from a restricted hash.
Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%x
(S internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas
that will be garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered to be
outside any of those arenas.
Attempt to free nonexistent shared string '%s'%s
(S 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: SV 0x%x
(S 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
(S internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases.
Attempt to free unreferenced scalar: SV 0x%x
(S internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar
to see if it would go to 0, and discovered that it had already gone
to 0 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact, probably was
freed. This could indicate that SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many
times, or that SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or that the
SV was mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or that memory has
been corrupted.
Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
(W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value (like the result of a
function, or a computed expression) to the "p" pack() template.
This means the result contains a pointer to a location that could
become invalid anytime, even before the end of the current
statement. Use literals or global values as arguments to the "p"
pack() template to avoid this warning.
Attempt to reload %s aborted.
(F) You tried to load a file with "use" or "require" that failed to
compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again
unless you delete its entry from %INC. See "require" in perlfunc
and "%INC" in perlvar.
Attempt to set length of freed array
(W misc) You tried to set the length of an array which has been
freed. You can do this by storing a reference to the scalar
representing the last index of an array and later assigning through
that reference. For example
$r = do {my @a; \$#a};
$$r = 503
Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
(W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to
substr() used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you
forgot to dereference it first. See "substr" in perlfunc.
Attribute prototype(%s) discards earlier prototype attribute in same sub
(W misc) A sub was declared as sub foo : prototype(A) : prototype(B)
{}, for example. Since each sub can only have one prototype, the
earlier declaration(s) are discarded while the last one is applied.
av_reify called on tied array
(S debugging) This indicates that something went wrong and Perl got
very confused about @_ or @DB::args being tied.
Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
(F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(),
semctl() or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are,
respectively, sizeof(struct msqid_ds *), sizeof(struct semid_ds *),
and sizeof(struct shmid_ds *).
Bad evalled substitution pattern
(F) You've used the "/e" switch to evaluate the replacement for a
substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate,
most likely an unexpected right brace '}'.
Bad filehandle: %s
(F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the
symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do
an open(), or did it in another package.
Bad free() ignored
(S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be
disabled by setting environment variable "PERL_BADFREE" to 0.
This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with
"hard" dynamic linking, like "AIX" and "OS/2". It is a bug of
"Berkeley DB" which is left unnoticed if "DB" uses forgiving system
malloc().
Bad infix plugin result (%zd) - did not consume entire identifier <%s>
(F) A plugin using the "PL_infix_plugin" mechanism to parse an infix
keyword consumed part of a named identifier operator name but did
not consume all of it. This is not permitted as it leads to fragile
parsing results.
Badly placed ()'s
(A) You've accidentally run your script through csh instead of Perl.
Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
Bad name after %s
(F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then
didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate
outside of quotes, so
$var = 'myvar';
$sym = mypack::$var;
is not the same as
$var = 'myvar';
$sym = "mypack::$var";
Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
(F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the
plugin API.
Bad realloc() ignored
(S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that
had never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be
disabled by setting the environment variable "PERL_BADFREE" to 1.
Bad symbol for %s
(P) An internal request asked to add an entry of the named type to
something that wasn't a symbol table entry.
Bad symbol for scalar
(P) An internal request asked to add a scalar entry to something
that wasn't a symbol table entry.
Bareword found in conditional
(W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
conditional, which often indicates that an || or && was parsed as
part of the last argument of the previous construct, for example:
open FOO || die;
It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has been interpreted
as a bareword:
use constant TYPO => 1;
if (TYOP) { print "foo" }
The "strict" pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.
Bareword in require contains "%s"
Bareword in require maps to disallowed filename "%s"
Bareword in require maps to empty filename
(F) The bareword form of require has been invoked with a filename
which could not have been generated by a valid bareword permitted by
the parser. You shouldn't be able to get this error from Perl code,
but XS code may throw it if it passes an invalid module name to
"Perl_load_module".
Bareword in require must not start with a double-colon: "%s"
(F) In "require Bare::Word", the bareword is not allowed to start
with a double-colon. Write "require ::Foo::Bar" as "require
Foo::Bar" instead.
Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use
(F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>"
symbol. Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?
Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
(W bareword) You used a qualified bareword of the form "Foo::", but
the compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point.
Perhaps you need to predeclare a package?
Bareword filehandle "%s" not allowed under 'no feature
"bareword_filehandles"'
(F) You attempted to use a bareword filehandle with the
"bareword_filehandles" feature disabled.
Only the built-in handles "STDIN", "STDOUT", "STDERR", "ARGV",
"ARGVOUT" and "DATA" can be used with the "bareword_filehandles"
feature disabled.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted
(F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a BEGIN
subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter is
exited.
BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted
(F) Perl found a "BEGIN {}" subroutine (or a "use" directive, which
implies a "BEGIN {}") after one or more compilation errors had
already occurred. Since the intended environment for the "BEGIN {}"
could not be guaranteed (due to the errors), and since subsequent
code likely depends on its correct operation, Perl just gave up.
\%d better written as $%d
(W syntax) Outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables.
The use of backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a
substitution, but stylistically it's better to use the variable form
because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better
if there are more than 9 backreferences.
Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable
(W portable) The binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
(4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
perlport for more on portability concerns.
bind() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you
forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See "bind"
in perlfunc.
binmode() on closed filehandle %s
(W unopened) You tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never
opened. Check your control flow and number of arguments.
Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
(W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable.
Bizarre copy of %s
(P) Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not
copiable.
Bizarre SvTYPE [%d]
(P) When starting a new thread or returning values from a thread,
Perl encountered an invalid data type.
Both or neither range ends should be Unicode in regex; marked by
<-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) (only under "use re 'strict'" or within "(?[...])")
In a bracketed character class in a regular expression pattern, you
had a range which has exactly one end of it specified using "\N{}",
and the other end is specified using a non-portable mechanism. Perl
treats the range as a Unicode range, that is, all the characters in
it are considered to be the Unicode characters, and which may be
different code points on some platforms Perl runs on. For example,
"[\N{U+06}-\x08]" is treated as if you had instead said
"[\N{U+06}-\N{U+08}]", that is it matches the characters whose code
points in Unicode are 6, 7, and 8. But that "\x08" might indicate
that you meant something different, so the warning gets raised.
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.
Built-in function '%s' is experimental
(S experimental::builtin) A call is being made to a function in the
"builtin::" namespace, which is currently experimental. The
existence or nature of the function may be subject to change in a
future version of Perl.
builtin::import can only be called at compile time
(F) The "import" method of the "builtin" package was invoked when no
code is currently being compiled. Since this method is used to
introduce new lexical subroutines into the scope currently being
compiled, this is not going to have any effect.
Builtin version bundle "%s" is not supported by Perl
(F) You attempted to "use builtin :ver" for a version number that is
either older than 5.39 (when the ability was added), or newer than
the current perl version.
Callback called exit
(F) A subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv()
exited by calling exit.
%s() called too early to check prototype
(W prototype) You've called a function that has a prototype before
the parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl could
not check that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to
either add an early prototype declaration for the subroutine in
question, or move the subroutine definition ahead of the call to get
proper prototype checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that
you're calling the function correctly, you may put an ampersand
before the name to avoid the warning. See perlsub.
Cannot assign :param(%s) to field %s because that name is already in use
(F) An attempt was made to apply a parameter name to a field, when
the name is already being used by another field in the same class,
or one of its parent classes. This would cause a name clash so is
not allowed.
Cannot chr %f
(F) You passed an invalid number (like an infinity or not-a-number)
to "chr".
Cannot complete in-place edit of %s: %s
(F) Your perl script appears to have changed directory while
performing an in-place edit of a file specified by a relative path,
and your system doesn't include the directory relative POSIX
functions needed to handle that.
Cannot compress %f in pack
(F) You tried compressing an infinity or not-a-number as an unsigned
integer with BER, which makes no sense.
Cannot compress integer in pack
(F) An argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER
compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers,
and you attempted to compress a very large number (> 1e308). See
"pack" in perlfunc.
Cannot compress negative numbers in pack
(F) An argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed
integer format can only be used with positive integers. See "pack"
in perlfunc.
Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob
(F) You manipulated Perl's symbol table directly, stored a reference
in it, then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl
syntax. The access triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but
it there is no legal conversion from that type of reference to a
typeglob.
Cannot copy to %s
(P) Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type
that cannot be directly assigned to.
Cannot create class %s as it already has a non-empty @ISA
(F) An attempt was made to create a class out of a package that
already has an @ISA array, and the array is not empty. This is not
permitted, as it would lead to a class with inconsistent
inheritance.
Cannot create an object of incomplete class "%s"
(F) An attempt was made to create an object of a class where the
start of the class definition has been seen, but the class has not
been completed.
This can happen for a failed eval, or if you attempt to create an
object at compile time before the class is complete:
eval "class Foo {"; Foo->new; # error
class Bar { BEGIN { Bar->new } }; # error
Cannot find encoding "%s"
(S io) You tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to a
filehandle, either with open() or binmode().
Cannot invoke a method of "%s" on an instance of "%s"
(F) You tried to directly call a "method" subroutine of one class by
passing in a value that is an instance of a different class. This
is not permitted, as the method would not have access to the correct
instance fields.
Cannot invoke method on a non-instance
(F) You tried to directly call a "method" subroutine of a class by
passing in a value that is not an instance of that class. This is
not permitted, as the method would not then have access to its
instance fields.
Cannot open %s as a dirhandle: it is already open as a filehandle
(F) You tried to use opendir() to associate a dirhandle to a symbol
(glob or scalar) that already holds a filehandle. Since this idiom
might render your code confusing, it was deprecated in Perl 5.10.
As of Perl 5.28, it is a fatal error.
Cannot open %s as a filehandle: it is already open as a dirhandle
(F) You tried to use open() to associate a filehandle to a symbol
(glob or scalar) that already holds a dirhandle. Since this idiom
might render your code confusing, it was deprecated in Perl 5.10.
As of Perl 5.28, it is a fatal error.
Cannot '%s' outside of a 'class'
(F) You attempted to use one of the keywords that only makes sense
inside a "class" definition, at a location that is not inside such a
class.
Cannot pack %f with '%c'
(F) You tried converting an infinity or not-a-number to an integer,
which makes no sense.
Cannot printf %f with '%c'
(F) You tried printing an infinity or not-a-number as a character
(%c), which makes no sense. Maybe you meant '%s', or just
stringifying it?
Cannot reopen existing class "%s"
(F) You tried to begin a "class" definition for a class that already
exists. A class may only have one definition block.
Cannot set tied @DB::args
(F) "caller" tried to set @DB::args, but found it tied. Tying
@DB::args is not supported. (Before this error was added, it used
to crash.)
Cannot tie unreifiable array
(P) You somehow managed to call "tie" on an array that does not keep
a reference count on its arguments and cannot be made to do so.
Such arrays are not even supposed to be accessible to Perl code, but
are only used internally.
Cannot use __CLASS__ outside of a method or field initializer expression
(F) A "__CLASS__" expression yields the class name of the object
instance executing the current method, and therefore it can only be
placed inside an actual method (or method-like expression, such as a
field initializer expression).
Cannot yet reorder sv_vcatpvfn() arguments from va_list
(F) Some XS code tried to use sv_vcatpvfn() or a related function
with a format string that specifies explicit indexes for some of the
elements, and using a C-style variable-argument list (a "va_list").
This is not currently supported. XS authors wanting to do this must
instead construct a C array of "SV*" scalars containing the
arguments.
Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
(F) An argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. The BER
compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers,
and you attempted to compress something else. See "pack" in
perlfunc.
Can't "%s" out of a "defer" block
(F) An attempt was made to jump out of the scope of a "defer" block
by using a control-flow statement such as "return", "goto" or a loop
control. This is not permitted.
Can't "%s" out of a "finally" block
(F) Similar to above, but involving a "finally" block at the end of
a "try"/"catch" construction rather than a "defer" block.
Can't bless an object reference
(F) You attempted to call "bless" on a value that already refers to
a real object instance.
Can't bless non-reference value
(F) Only hard references may be blessed. This is how Perl
"enforces" encapsulation of objects. See perlobj.
Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
(F) You called "break", but you're in a "foreach" block rather than
a "given" block. You probably meant to use "next" or "last".
Can't "break" outside a given block
(F) You called "break", but you're not inside a "given" block.
Can't call destructor for 0x%p in global destruction
(S) This should not happen. Internals code has set up a destructor
using "mortal_destructor_sv" or "mortal_destructor_x" which is
firing during global destruction. Please attempt to reduce the code
that triggers this warning down to a small an example as possible
and then report the problem to
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/new/choose>
Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
(F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
object reference or package name contains an undefined value.
Something like this will reproduce the error:
$BADREF = undef;
process $BADREF 1,2,3;
$BADREF->process(1,2,3);
Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
(F) A method call must know in what package it's supposed to run.
It ordinarily finds this out from the object reference you supply,
but you didn't supply an object reference in this case. A reference
isn't an object reference until it has been blessed. See perlobj.
Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
(F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the
object reference or package name contains an expression that returns
a defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package
name. Something like this will reproduce the error:
$BADREF = 42;
process $BADREF 1,2,3;
$BADREF->process(1,2,3);
Can't call mro_isa_changed_in() on anonymous symbol table
(P) Perl got confused as to whether a hash was a plain hash or a
symbol table hash when trying to update @ISA caches.
Can't call mro_method_changed_in() on anonymous symbol table
(F) An XS module tried to call "mro_method_changed_in" on a hash
that was not attached to the symbol table.
Can't chdir to %s
(F) You called "perl -x/foo/bar", but /foo/bar is not a directory
that you can chdir to, possibly because it doesn't exist.
Can't coerce %s to %s in %s
(F) Certain types of SVs, in particular real symbol table entries
(typeglobs), can't be forced to stop being what they are. So you
can't say things like:
*foo += 1;
You CAN say
$foo = *foo;
$foo += 1;
but then $foo no longer contains a glob.
Can't "continue" outside a when block
(F) You called "continue", but you're not inside a "when" or
"default" block.
can't convert empty path
(F) On Cygwin, you called a path conversion function with an empty
path. Only non-empty paths are legal.
Can't create pipe mailbox
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. The process is suffering from
exhausted quotas or other plumbing problems.
Can't declare %s in "%s"
(F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be declared as "my",
"our" or "state" variables. They must have ordinary identifiers as
names.
Can't "default" outside a topicalizer
(F) You have used a "default" block that is neither inside a
"foreach" loop nor a "given" block. (Note that this error is issued
on exit from the "default" block, so you won't get the error if you
use an explicit "continue".)
Can't determine class of operator %s, assuming BASEOP
(S) This warning indicates something wrong in the internals of perl.
Perl was trying to find the class (e.g. LISTOP) of a particular OP,
and was unable to do so. This is likely to be due to a bug in the
perl internals, or due to a bug in XS code which manipulates perl
optrees.
Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
(S inplace) You tried to use the -i switch on a special file, such
as a file in /dev, a FIFO or an uneditable directory. The file was
ignored.
Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
(S inplace) The creation of the new file failed for the indicated
reason.
Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
(S inplace) Your filesystem does not support filenames longer than
14 characters and Perl was unable to create a unique filename during
inplace editing with the -i switch. The file was ignored.
Can't do %s("%s") on non-UTF-8 locale; resolved to "%s".
(W locale) You are 1) running under ""use locale""; 2) the current
locale is not a UTF-8 one; 3) you tried to do the designated case-
change operation on the specified Unicode character; and 4) the
result of this operation would mix Unicode and locale rules, which
likely conflict. Mixing of different rule types is forbidden, so
the operation was not done; instead the result is the indicated
value, which is the best available that uses entirely Unicode rules.
That turns out to almost always be the original character,
unchanged.
It is generally a bad idea to mix non-UTF-8 locales and Unicode, and
this issue is one of the reasons why. This warning is raised when
Unicode rules would normally cause the result of this operation to
contain a character that is in the range specified by the locale,
0..255, and hence is subject to the locale's rules, not Unicode's.
If you are using locale purely for its characteristics related to
things like its numeric and time formatting (and not "LC_CTYPE"),
consider using a restricted form of the locale pragma (see "The "use
locale" pragma" in perllocale) like
""use locale ':not_characters'"".
Note that failed case-changing operations done as a result of case-
insensitive "/i" regular expression matching will show up in this
warning as having the "fc" operation (as that is what the regular
expression engine calls behind the scenes.)
Can't do waitpid with flags
(F) This machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only
waitpid() without flags is emulated.
Can't emulate -%s on #! line
(F) The #! line specifies a switch that doesn't make sense at this
point. For example, it'd be kind of silly to put a -x on the #!
line.
Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
(F) Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-
endian, or it has a very strange pointer size. Packing and
unpacking big- or little-endian floating point values and pointers
may not be possible. See "pack" in perlfunc.
Can't exec "%s": %s
(W exec) A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute
the named program for the indicated reason. Typical reasons
include: the permissions were wrong on the file, the file wasn't
found in $ENV{PATH}, the executable in question was compiled for
another architecture, or the #! line in a script points to an
interpreter that can't be run for similar reasons. (Or maybe your
system doesn't support #! at all.)
Can't exec %s
(F) Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you because
that's what the #! line said. If that's not what you wanted, you
may need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere.
Can't execute %s
(F) You used the -S switch, but the copies of the script to execute
found in the PATH did not have correct permissions.
Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
(F) A string of a form "CORE::word" was given to prototype(), but
there is no builtin with the name "word".
Can't find label %s
(F) You said to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere that it's
possible for us to go to. See "goto" in perlfunc.
Can't find %s on PATH
(F) You used the -S switch, but the script to execute could not be
found in the PATH.
Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
(F) You used the -S switch, but the script to execute could not be
found in the PATH, or at least not with the correct permissions.
The script exists in the current directory, but PATH prohibits
running it.
Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
(F) Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines. This message
means that the closing delimiter was omitted. Because bracketed
quotes count nesting levels, the following is missing its final
parenthesis:
print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);
If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have
included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag or there
may not be a linebreak after it. A good programmer's editor will
have a way to help you find these characters (or lack of
characters). See perlop for the full details on here-documents.
Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"
Can't find Unicode property definition "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE
in m/%s/
(F) The named property which you specified via "\p" or "\P" is not
one known to Perl. Perhaps you misspelled the name? See
"Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}" in perluniprops for a
complete list of available official properties. If it is a user-
defined property it must have been defined by the time the regular
expression is matched.
If you didn't mean to use a Unicode property, escape the "\p",
either by "\\p" (just the "\p") or by "\Q\p" (the rest of the
string, or until "\E").
Can't fork: %s
(F) A fatal error occurred while trying to fork while opening a
pipeline.
Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
(W pipe) A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN and will be
retried after five seconds.
Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. This arises because of the
difference between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model
Perl assumes. Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather
than by bits in the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections
can be taken into account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the
stat buffer contains all the necessary information, and passes it,
instead of the filespec, to the access-checking routine. It will
try to retrieve the filespec using the device name and FID present
in the stat buffer, but this works only if you haven't made a
subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine, because the device name
is overwritten with each call. If this warning appears, the name
lookup failed, and the access-checking routine gave up and returned
FALSE, just to be conservative. (Note: The access-checking routine
knows about the Perl "stat" operator and file tests, so you
shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it
arises only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly.)
Can't get pipe mailbox device name
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. After creating a mailbox to act as a
pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use.
Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want
your mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer.
Can't "goto" into a binary or list expression
(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
binary or list expression. You can't get there from here. The
reason for this restriction is that the interpreter would get
confused as to how many arguments there are, resulting in stack
corruption or crashes. This error occurs in cases such as these:
goto F;
print do { F: }; # Can't jump into the arguments to print
goto G;
$x + do { G: $y }; # How is + supposed to get its first operand?
Can't "goto" into a "defer" block
(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the scope of a
"defer" block. This is not permitted.
Can't "goto" into a "given" block
(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
"given" block. You can't get there from here. See "goto" in
perlfunc.
Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
foreach loop. You can't get there from here. See "goto" in
perlfunc.
Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of what might look
like a block, except that it isn't a proper block. This usually
occurs if you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine,
which is a no-no. See "goto" in perlfunc.
Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
(F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
"string" or block.
Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
(F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the
comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such as the
reduce() function in List::Util).
Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
(F) The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one
subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole
cloth. In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD
routine anyway. See "goto" in perlfunc.
Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
(W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD
signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this
signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of
child processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value.
This situation typically indicates that the parent program under
which Perl may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless.
Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
(F) Process identifiers must be (signed) integers. It is a fatal
error to attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise
non-numeric process identifier.
Can't "last" outside a loop block
(F) A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current
block, except that there's this itty bitty problem called there
isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't
count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to sort(),
map() or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same
effect though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block
that loops once. See "last" in perlfunc.
Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
(F) Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a
package, but failed because the package stash has no name.
Can't load '%s' for module %s
(F) The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension.
This may either mean that you upgraded your version of perl to one
that is incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is
known to happen between major versions of perl), or (more likely)
that your dynamic extension was built against an older version of
the library that is installed on your system. You may need to
rebuild your old dynamic extensions.
Can't localize lexical variable %s
(F) You used local on a variable name that was previously declared
as a lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed.
If you want to localize a package variable of the same name, qualify
it with the package name.
Can't localize through a reference
(F) You said something like "local $$ref", which Perl can't
currently handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of
whatever $ref pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished,
it can't be sure that $ref will still be a reference.
Can't locate %s
(F) You said to "do" (or "require", or "use") a file that couldn't
be found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in
@INC, unless the file name included the full path to the file.
Perhaps you need to set the PERL5LIB or PERL5OPT environment
variable to say where the extra library is, or maybe the script
needs to add the library name to @INC. Or maybe you just misspelled
the name of the file. See "require" in perlfunc and lib.
Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
(F) A function (or method) was called in a package which allows
autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable
causes are a misprint in a function/method name or a failure to
"AutoSplit" the file, say, by doing "make install".
Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
(F) The module you loaded is trying to load an external library,
like for example, foo.so or bar.dll, but the DynaLoader module was
unable to locate this library. See DynaLoader.
Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
(F) You called a method correctly, and it correctly indicated a
package functioning as a class, but that package doesn't define that
particular method, nor does any of its base classes. See perlobj.
Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s" (perhaps you forgot to
load "%s"?)
(F) You called a method on a class that did not exist, and the
method could not be found in UNIVERSAL. This often means that a
method requires a package that has not been loaded.
Can't locate object method "INC", nor "INCDIR" nor string overload via
package "%s" %s in @INC
(F) You pushed an object, either directly or via an array reference
hook, into @INC, but the object doesn't support any known hook
methods, nor a string overload and is also not a blessed CODE
reference. In short the "require" function does not know what to do
with the object. See also "require" in perlfunc.
Attempt to call undefined %s method with arguments ("%s"%s) via package
"%s" (Perhaps you forgot to load the package?)
(D deprecated::missing_import_called_with_args) You called the
import() or unimport() method of a class that has no import method
defined in its inheritance graph, and passed an argument to the
method. This is very often the sign of a misspelled package name in
a use or require statement that has silently succeded due to a case
insensitive file system.
Another common reason this may happen is when mistakenly attempting
to import or unimport a symbol from a class definition or package
which does not use "Exporter" or otherwise define its own "import"
or "unimport" method.
Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
(W syntax) The @ISA array contained the name of another package that
doesn't seem to exist.
Can't locate PerlIO%s
(F) You tried to use in open() a PerlIO layer that does not exist,
e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile").
Can't make list assignment to %ENV on this system
(F) List assignment to %ENV is not supported on some systems,
notably VMS.
Can't make loaded symbols global on this platform while loading %s
(S) A module passed the flag 0x01 to DynaLoader::dl_load_file() to
request that symbols from the stated file are made available
globally within the process, but that functionality is not available
on this platform. Whilst the module likely will still work, this
may prevent the perl interpreter from loading other XS-based
extensions which need to link directly to functions defined in the C
or XS code in the stated file.
Can't modify %s in %s
(F) You aren't allowed to assign to the item indicated, or otherwise
try to change it, such as with an auto-increment.
Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call of &%s
Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call of &%s in %s
(F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context should be
declared as such. See "Lvalue subroutines" in perlsub.
Can't modify reference to %s in %s assignment
(F) Only a limited number of constructs can be used as the argument
to a reference constructor on the left-hand side of an assignment,
and what you used was not one of them. See "Assigning to
References" in perlref.
Can't modify reference to localized parenthesized array in list
assignment
(F) Assigning to "\local(@array)" or "\(local @array)" is not
supported, as it is not clear exactly what it should do. If you
meant to make @array refer to some other array, use "\@array =
\@other_array". If you want to make the elements of @array aliases
of the scalars referenced on the right-hand side, use "\(@array) =
@scalar_refs".
Can't modify reference to parenthesized hash in list assignment
(F) Assigning to "\(%hash)" is not supported. If you meant to make
%hash refer to some other hash, use "\%hash = \%other_hash". If you
want to make the elements of %hash into aliases of the scalars
referenced on the right-hand side, use a hash slice: "\@hash{@keys}
= @those_scalar_refs".
Can't msgrcv to read-only var
(F) The target of a msgrcv must be modifiable to be used as a
receive buffer.
Can't "next" outside a loop block
(F) A "next" statement was executed to reiterate the current block,
but there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block
doesn't count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to
sort(), map() or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get
the same effect though, because the inner curlies will be considered
a block that loops once. See "next" in perlfunc.
Can't open %s: %s
(S inplace) The implicit opening of a file through use of the "<>"
filehandle, either implicitly under the "-n" or "-p" command-line
switches, or explicitly, failed for the indicated reason. Usually
this is because you don't have read permission for a file which you
named on the command line.
(F) You tried to call perl with the -e switch, but /dev/null (or
your operating system's equivalent) could not be opened.
Can't open a reference
(W io) You tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing,
using the 3-arg open() syntax:
open FH, '>', $ref;
but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form
of open is not supported.
Can't open bidirectional pipe
(W pipe) You tried to say "open(CMD, "|cmd|")", which is not
supported. You can try any of several modules in the Perl library
to do this, such as IPC::Open2. Alternately, direct the pipe's
output to a file using ">", and then read it in under a different
file handle.
Can't open error file %s as stderr
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '2>' or
'2>>' on the command line for writing.
Can't open input file %s as stdin
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '<' on the
command line for reading.
Can't open output file %s as stdout
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after '>' or '>>'
on the command line for writing.
Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line
redirection, and couldn't open the pipe into which to send data
destined for stdout.
Can't open perl script "%s": %s
(F) The script you specified can't be opened for the indicated
reason.
If you're debugging a script that uses #!, and normally relies on
the shell's $PATH search, the -S option causes perl to do that
search, so you don't have to type the path or `which $scriptname`.
Can't read CRTL environ
(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of
%ENV from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the
array was missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced
its environ or define PERL_ENV_TABLES (see perlvms) so that environ
is not searched.
Can't redeclare "%s" in "%s"
(F) A "my", "our" or "state" declaration was found within another
declaration, such as "my ($x, my($y), $z)" or "our (my $x)".
Can't "redo" outside a loop block
(F) A "redo" statement was executed to restart the current block,
but there isn't a current block. Note that an "if" or "else" block
doesn't count as a "loopish" block, as doesn't a block given to
sort(), map() or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get
the same effect though, because the inner curlies will be considered
a block that loops once. See "redo" in perlfunc.
Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
(S inplace) You requested an inplace edit without creating a backup
file. Perl was unable to remove the original file to replace it
with the modified file. The file was left unmodified.
Can't rename in-place work file '%s' to '%s': %s
(F) When closed implicitly, the temporary file for in-place editing
couldn't be renamed to the original filename.
Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
(F) The rename done by the -i switch failed for some reason,
probably because you don't have write permission to the directory.
Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl thought stdin was a pipe, and
tried to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed.
Can't represent character for Ox%X on this platform
(F) There is a hard limit to how big a character code point can be
due to the fundamental properties of UTF-8, especially on EBCDIC
platforms. The given code point exceeds that. The only work-around
is to not use such a large code point.
Can't reset %ENV on this system
(F) You called reset('E') or similar, which tried to reset all
variables in the current package beginning with "E". In the main
package, that includes %ENV. Resetting %ENV is not supported on
some systems, notably VMS.
Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
(F)(P) Error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as
opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method callable via the
package. If the method name is "???", this is an internal error.
Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
(F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues (such as
temporary or readonly values) from a subroutine used as an lvalue.
This is not allowed.
Can't return outside a subroutine
(F) The return statement was executed in mainline code, that is,
where there was no subroutine call to return out of. See perlsub.
Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
(F) You tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue
subroutine, but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl
think you meant to return only one value. You probably meant to
write parentheses around the call to the subroutine, which tell Perl
that the call should be in list context.
Can't take log of %g
(F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the logarithm of a
negative number or zero. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that for the
negative numbers.
Can't take sqrt of %g
(F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a
negative number. There's a Math::Complex package that comes
standard with Perl, though, if you really want to do that.
Can't undef active subroutine
(F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. You can,
however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the
redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure.
Can't unweaken a nonreference
(F) You attempted to unweaken something that was not a reference.
Only references can be unweakened.
Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d
(P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making
it into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are
so specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This
message indicates that such a conversion was attempted.
Can't use '%c' after -mname
(F) You tried to call perl with the -m switch, but you put something
other than "=" after the module name.
Can't use a hash as a reference
(F) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in "%foo->{"bar"}" or
"%$ref->{"hello"}". Versions of perl <= 5.22.0 used to allow this
syntax, but shouldn't have. This was deprecated in perl 5.6.1.
Can't use an array as a reference
(F) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in "@foo->[23]" or
"@$ref->[99]". Versions of perl <= 5.22.0 used to allow this
syntax, but shouldn't have. This was deprecated in perl 5.6.1.
Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup
(F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol
table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous
for example by undefining stashes: "undef %Some::Package::".
Can't use an undefined value as %s reference
(F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference
must be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious
errors.
Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
(F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic
references are disallowed. See perlref.
Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available
(F) The first time the "%!" hash is used, perl automatically loads
the Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %!
hash to provide symbolic names for $! errno values.
Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s
(F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-
endian byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers
is not allowed. See "pack" in perlfunc.
Can't use 'defined(@array)' (Maybe you should just omit the defined()?)
(F) defined() is not 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.
Can't use 'defined(%hash)' (Maybe you should just omit the defined()?)
(F) defined() is not usually right on hashes.
Although "defined %hash" is false on a plain not-yet-used hash, it
becomes true in several non-obvious circumstances, including
iterators, weak references, stash names, even remaining true after
"undef %hash". These things make "defined %hash" fairly useless in
practice, so it now generates a fatal error.
If a check for non-empty is what you wanted then just put it in
boolean context (see "Scalar values" in perldata):
if (%hash) {
# not empty
}
If you had "defined %Foo::Bar::QUUX" to check whether such a package
variable exists then that's never really been reliable, and isn't a
good way to enquire about the features of a package, or whether it's
loaded, etc.
Can't use %s for loop variable
(P) The parser got confused when trying to parse a "foreach" loop.
Can't use global %s in %s
(F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable.
This is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one
location (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly
confusing to have variables in your program that looked like magical
variables but weren't.
Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s
(F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type that is
already inside a group with a byte-order modifier. For example you
cannot force little-endianness on a type that is inside a big-endian
group.
Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison
(F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort
comparisons. You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or
cmp operator, and the variable had earlier been declared as a
lexical variable. Either qualify the sort variable with the package
name, or rename the lexical variable.
Can't use %s ref as %s ref
(F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a
reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to
test the type of the reference, if need be.
Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
Can't use string ("%s"...) as %s ref while "strict refs" in use
(F) You've told Perl to dereference a string, something which "use
strict" blocks to prevent it happening accidentally. See "Symbolic
references" in perlref. This can be triggered by an "@" or "$" in a
double-quoted string immediately before interpolating a variable,
for example in "user @$twitter_id", which says to treat the contents
of $twitter_id as an array reference; use a "\" to have a literal
"@" symbol followed by the contents of $twitter_id: "user
\@$twitter_id".
Can't use subscript on %s
(F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a
subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that
didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else
subscriptable.
Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression
(W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator
that creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to
indicate a backreference to a matched substring is valid only as
part of a regular expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary
Perl code produces a value that prints out looking like
SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form instead.
Can't weaken a nonreference
(F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference.
Only references can be weakened.
Can't "when" outside a topicalizer
(F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a "foreach"
loop nor a "given" block. (Note that this error is issued on exit
from the "when" block, so you won't get the error if the match
fails, or if you use an explicit "continue".)
Can't x= to read-only value
(F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value)
with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value
itself. Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and
repeat that.
catch block requires a (VAR)
(F) You tried to use the "try" and "catch" syntax of "use feature
'try'" but did not include the error variable in the "catch" block.
The parenthesized variable name is not optional, unlike in some
other forms of syntax you may be familiar with from CPAN modules or
other languages.
The required syntax is
try { ... }
catch ($var) { ... }
Changing use VERSION while another use VERSION is in scope is now
deprecated
(W deprecated) Once you have a "use VERSION" statement in scope, any
"use VERSION" statement that requests a different version is now
deprecated, due to the increasing complexity of swapping from one
prevailing version to another.
It is suggested that you do not try to mix multiple different
version declarations within the same file as it leads to complex
behaviours about the visibility of features and builtin functions,
as well as confusing human readers.
If it is essential to have different "use VERSION" declarations in
different regions of the same file, you should surround each one by
its own enclosing scope so the two do not mix.
{
use v5.20;
...
}
{
use v5.36;
...
}
Character following "\c" must be printable ASCII
(F) In "\cX", X must be a printable (non-control) ASCII character.
Note that ASCII characters that don't map to control characters are
discouraged, and will generate the warning (when enabled) ""\c%c" is
more clearly written simply as "%s"".
Character following \%c must be '{' or a single-character Unicode
property name in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) (In the above the %c is replaced by either "p" or "P".) You
specified something that isn't a legal Unicode property name. Most
Unicode properties are specified by "\p{...}". But if the name is a
single character one, the braces may be omitted.
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.
Character in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
(W unpack) You tried something like
unpack("H", "\x{2a1}")
where the format expects to process a byte (a character with a value
below 256), but a higher value was provided instead. Perl uses the
value modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided:
unpack("H", "\x{a1}")
Character in 'W' format wrapped in pack
(W pack) You said
pack("U0W", $x)
where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255. However, "U0"-mode
expects all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved
as if you meant:
pack("U0W", $x & 255)
Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
(W pack) You tried something like
pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")
where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character
with a value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher
value. Perl uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if
you had provided:
pack("u", "\x{f3}b")
Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
(W unpack) You tried something like
unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")
where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character
with a value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher
value. Perl uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if
you had provided:
unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")
charnames alias definitions may not contain a sequence of multiple
spaces; marked by <-- HERE in %s
(F) You defined a character name which had multiple space characters
in a row. Change them to single spaces. Usually these names are
defined in the ":alias" import argument to "use charnames", but they
could be defined by a translator installed into $^H{charnames}. See
"CUSTOM ALIASES" in charnames.
chdir() on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) You tried chdir() on a filehandle that was never
opened.
"\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"
(W syntax) The "\cX" construct is intended to be a way to specify
non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which is
better written as simply itself, perhaps preceded by a backslash for
non-word characters. Doing it the way you did is not portable
between ASCII and EBCDIC platforms.
Class already has a superclass, cannot add another
(F) You attempted to specify a second superclass for a "class" by
using the ":isa" attribute, when one is already specified. Unlike
classes whose instances are created with "bless", classes created
via the "class" keyword cannot have more than one superclass.
Class attribute %s requires a value
(F) You specified an attribute for a class that would require a
value to be passed in parentheses, but did not provide one.
Remember that whitespace is not permitted between the attribute name
and its value; you must write this as
class Example::Class :attr(VALUE) ...
class is experimental
(S experimental::class) This warning is emitted if you use the
"class" keyword of "use feature 'class'". This keyword is currently
experimental and its behaviour may change in future releases of
Perl.
Class :isa attribute requires a class but "%s" is not one
(F) When creating a subclass using the "class" ":isa" attribute, the
named superclass must also be a real class created using the "class"
keyword.
Cloning substitution context is unimplemented
(F) Creating a new thread inside the "s///" operator is not
supported.
closedir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
(W io) The dirhandle you tried to close is either closed or not
really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
close() on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
Closure prototype called
(F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to an
attribute handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure
is created. This subroutine cannot be called.
\C no longer supported in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The \C character class used to allow a match of single byte
within a multi-byte utf-8 character, but was removed in v5.24 as it
broke encapsulation and its implementation was extremely buggy. If
you really need to process the individual bytes, you probably want
to convert your string to one where each underlying byte is stored
as a character, with utf8::encode().
Code missing after '/'
(F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be
another template code following the slash. See "pack" in perlfunc.
Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, and not portable
(S non_unicode portable) You had a code point that has never been in
any standard, so it is likely that languages other than Perl will
NOT understand it. This code point also will not fit in a 32-bit
word on ASCII platforms and therefore is non-portable between
systems.
At one time, it was legal in some standards to have code points up
to 0x7FFF_FFFF, but not higher, and this code point is higher.
Acceptance of these code points is a Perl extension, and you should
expect that nothing other than Perl can handle them; Perl itself on
EBCDIC platforms before v5.24 does not handle them.
Perl also makes no guarantees that the representation of these code
points won't change at some point in the future, say when machines
become available that have larger than a 64-bit word. At that time,
files containing any of these, written by an older Perl might
require conversion before being readable by a newer Perl.
Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
(S non_unicode) You had a code point above the Unicode maximum of
U+10FFFF.
Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code points,
but these may not be accepted by other languages/systems. Further,
even if these languages/systems accept these large code points, they
may have chosen a different representation for them than the
UTF-8-like one that Perl has, which would mean files are not
exchangeable between them and Perl.
On EBCDIC platforms, code points above 0x3FFF_FFFF have a different
representation in Perl v5.24 than before, so any file containing
these that was written before that version will require conversion
before being readable by a later Perl.
%s: Command not found
(A) You've accidentally run your script through csh or another shell
instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
into Perl yourself. The #! line at the top of your file could look
like
#!/usr/bin/perl
%s: command not found
(A) You've accidentally run your script through bash or another
shell instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your
script into Perl yourself. The #! line at the top of your file
could look like
#!/usr/bin/perl
%s: command not found: %s
(A) You've accidentally run your script through zsh or another shell
instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
into Perl yourself. The #! line at the top of your file could look
like
#!/usr/bin/perl
Compilation failed in require
(F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a "require"
statement. Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors
that it encountered were severe enough to halt compilation
immediately.
connect() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you
forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
"connect" in perlfunc.
Constant(%s): Call to &{$^H{%s}} did not return a defined value
(F) The subroutine registered to handle constant overloading (see
overload) or a custom charnames handler (see "CUSTOM TRANSLATORS" in
charnames) returned an undefined value.
Constant(%s): $^H{%s} is not defined
(F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to define an
overloaded constant. Perhaps you forgot to load the corresponding
overload pragma?
Constant is not %s reference
(F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the "use constant"
pragma) is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of
reference. The message indicates the type of reference that was
expected. This usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing
the constant value. See "Constant Functions" in perlsub and
constant.
Constants from lexical variables potentially modified elsewhere are no
longer permitted
(F) You wrote something like
my $var;
$sub = sub () { $var };
but $var is referenced elsewhere and could be modified after the
"sub" expression is evaluated. Either it is explicitly modified
elsewhere ("$var = 3") or it is passed to a subroutine or to an
operator like "printf" or "map", which may or may not modify the
variable.
Traditionally, Perl has captured the value of the variable at that
point and turned the subroutine into a constant eligible for
inlining. In those cases where the variable can be modified
elsewhere, this breaks the behavior of closures, in which the
subroutine captures the variable itself, rather than its value, so
future changes to the variable are reflected in the subroutine's
return value.
This usage was deprecated, and as of Perl 5.32 is no longer allowed,
making it possible to change the behavior in the future.
If you intended for the subroutine to be eligible for inlining, then
make sure the variable is not referenced elsewhere, possibly by
copying it:
my $var2 = $var;
$sub = sub () { $var2 };
If you do want this subroutine to be a closure that reflects future
changes to the variable that it closes over, add an explicit
"return":
my $var;
$sub = sub () { return $var };
Constant subroutine %s redefined
(W redefine)(S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been
eligible for inlining. See "Constant Functions" in perlsub for
commentary and workarounds.
Constant subroutine %s undefined
(W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been
eligible for inlining. See "Constant Functions" in perlsub for
commentary and workarounds.
Constant(%s) unknown
(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 pragma?
:const is not permitted on named subroutines
(F) The "const" attribute causes an anonymous subroutine to be run
and its value captured at the time that it is cloned. Named
subroutines are not cloned like this, so the attribute does not make
sense on them.
Copy method did not return a reference
(F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See "Copy Constructor"
in overload.
&CORE::%s cannot be called directly
(F) You tried to call a subroutine in the "CORE::" namespace with
&foo syntax or through a reference. Some subroutines in this
package cannot yet be called that way, but must be called as
barewords. Something like this will work:
BEGIN { *shove = \&CORE::push; }
shove @array, 1,2,3; # pushes on to @array
CORE::%s is not a keyword
(F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords.
Corrupted regexp opcode %d > %d
(P) This is either an error in Perl, or, if you're using one, your
custom regular expression engine. If not the latter, report the
problem to <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/new/choose>.
corrupted regexp pointers
(P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
expression compiler gave it.
corrupted regexp program
(P) The regular expression engine got passed a regexp program
without a valid magic number.
Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
(P) The malloc package that comes with Perl had an internal failure.
Count after length/code in unpack
(F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-length string,
but you have also specified an explicit size for the string. See
"pack" in perlfunc.
Declaring references is experimental
(S experimental::declared_refs) This warning is emitted if you use a
reference constructor on the right-hand side of "my", "state",
"our", or "local". Simply suppress the warning if you want to use
the feature, but know that in doing so you are taking the risk of
using an experimental feature which may change or be removed in a
future Perl version:
no warnings "experimental::declared_refs";
use feature "declared_refs";
$fooref = my \$foo;
Deep recursion on anonymous subroutine
Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
(W recursion) This subroutine has called itself (directly or
indirectly) 100 times more than it has returned. This probably
indicates an infinite recursion, unless you're writing strange
benchmark programs, in which case it indicates something else.
This threshold can be changed from 100, by recompiling the perl
binary, setting the C pre-processor macro "PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN" to
the desired value.
(?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(F) You used something like "(?(DEFINE)...|..)" which is illegal.
The most likely cause of this error is that you left out a
parenthesis inside of the "...." part.
The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem
was discovered.
%s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
(F) You said something like "use Module 42" but in the Module file
there are neither package declarations nor a $VERSION.
delete argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
(F) The argument to "delete" must be either a hash or array element,
such as:
$foo{$bar}
$ref->{"susie"}[12]
or a hash or array slice, such as:
@foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
$ref->[12]->@{"susie", "queue"}
or a hash key/value or array index/value slice, such as:
%foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
$ref->[12]->%{"susie", "queue"}
Delimiter for here document is too long
(F) In a here document construct like "<<FOO", the label "FOO" is
too long for Perl to handle. You have to be seriously twisted to
write code that triggers this error.
DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
(F) A DESTROY() method created a new reference to the object which
is just being DESTROYed. Perl is confused, and prefers to abort
rather than to create a dangling reference.
Did not produce a valid header
See "500 Server error".
%s did not return a true value
(F) A required (or used) file must return a true value to indicate
that it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code
correctly. It's traditional to end such a file with a "1;", though
any true value would do. See "require" in perlfunc.
(Did you mean &%s instead?)
(W misc) You probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as
$FOO or some such.
(Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
(W shadow) Remember that "our" does not localize the declared global
variable. You have declared it again in the same lexical scope,
which seems superfluous.
(Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
(W) You probably said %hash{$key} when you meant $hash{$key} or
@hash{@keys}. On the other hand, maybe you just meant %hash and got
carried away.
Died
(F) You passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of "die """) or
you called it with no args and $@ was empty.
Document contains no data
See "500 Server error".
%s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
(F) You said something like "use Module 42" but the Module did not
define a $VERSION.
'/' does not take a repeat count in %s
(F) You cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the '/'
code. See "pack" in perlfunc.
do "%s" failed, '.' is no longer in @INC; did you mean do "./%s"?
(D deprecated::dot_in_inc) Previously " do "somefile"; " would
search the current directory for the specified file. Since perl
v5.26.0, . has been removed from @INC by default, so this is no
longer true. To search the current directory (and only the current
directory) you can write " do "./somefile"; ".
'%s' does not appear to be an imported builtin function
(F) An attempt was made to remove a previously-imported lexical from
builtin by using the "unimport" method (likely via "no builtin ..."
syntax), but the requested function has not been imported into the
current scope.
Don't know how to get file name
(P) "PerlIO_getname", a perl internal I/O function specific to VMS,
was somehow called on another platform. This should not happen.
Don't know how to handle magic of type \%o
(P) The internal handling of magical variables has been cursed.
Downgrading a use VERSION declaration to below v5.11 is not permitted
(F) A "use VERSION" statement that requests a version below v5.11
(when the effects of "use strict" would be disabled) has been found
after a previous declaration of one having a larger number (which
would have enabled these effects). Because of a change to the way
that "use VERSION" interacts with the strictness flags, this is no
longer supported.
(Do you need to predeclare %s?)
(S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the
message "%s found where operator expected". It often means a
subroutine or module name is being referenced that hasn't been
declared yet. This may be because of ordering problems in your
file, or because of a missing "sub", "package", "require", or "use"
statement. If you're referencing something that isn't defined yet,
you don't actually have to define the subroutine or package before
the current location. You can use an empty "sub foo;" or "package
FOO;" to enter a "forward" declaration.
dump() must be written as CORE::dump() as of Perl 5.30
(F) You used the obsolete dump() built-in function. That was
deprecated in Perl 5.8.0. As of Perl 5.30 it must be written in
fully qualified format: CORE::dump().
See "dump" in perlfunc.
dump is not supported
(F) Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.
Duplicate free() ignored
(S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had
already been freed.
Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
(W unpack) You have applied the same modifier more than once after a
type in a pack template. See "pack" in perlfunc.
each on anonymous %s will always start from the beginning
(W syntax) You called each on an anonymous hash or array. Since a
new hash or array is created each time, each() will restart
iterating over your hash or array every time.
elseif should be elsif
(S syntax) There is no keyword "elseif" in Perl because Larry thinks
it's ugly. Your code will be interpreted as an attempt to call a
method named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block.
This is unlikely to be what you want.
Empty \%c in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
Empty \%c{}
Empty \%c{} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You used something like "\b{}", "\B{}", "\o{}", "\p", "\P", or
"\x" without specifying anything for it to operate on.
Unfortunately, for backwards compatibility reasons, an empty "\x" is
legal outside "use re 'strict'" and expands to a NUL character.
Empty (?) without any modifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) (only under "use re 'strict'") "(?)" does nothing, so
perhaps this is a typo.
${^ENCODING} is no longer supported
(F) The special variable "${^ENCODING}", formerly used to implement
the "encoding" pragma, is no longer supported as of Perl 5.26.0.
Setting it to anything other than "undef" is a fatal error as of
Perl 5.28.
${^HOOK}{%s} may only be a CODE reference or undef
(F) You attempted to assign something other than undef or a CODE ref
to "%{^HOOK}". Hooks may only be CODE refs. See "%{^HOOK}" in
perlvar for details.
Attempt to set unknown hook '%s' in %{^HOOK}
(F) You attempted to assign something other than undef or a CODE ref
to "%{^HOOK}". Hooks may only be CODE refs. See "%{^HOOK}" in
perlvar for details.
entering effective %s failed
(F) While under the "use filetest" pragma, switching the real and
effective uids or gids failed.
%ENV is aliased to %s
(F) You're running under taint mode, and the %ENV variable has been
aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of
the program's environment. This is potentially insecure.
Error converting file specification %s
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Because Perl may have to deal with
file specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them
to a single form when it must operate on them directly. Either
you've passed an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found
a case the conversion routines don't handle. Drat.
Error %s in expansion of %s
(F) An error was encountered in handling a user-defined property
("User-Defined Character Properties" in perlunicode). These are
programmer written subroutines, hence subject to errors that may
prevent them from compiling or running. The calls to these subs are
"eval"'d, and if there is a failure, this message is raised, using
the contents of $@ from the failed "eval".
Another possibility is that tainted data was encountered somewhere
in the chain of expanding the property. If so, the message wording
will indicate that this is the problem. See "Insecure user-defined
property %s".
Eval-group in insecure regular expression
(F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
expression that contains the "(?{ ... })" zero-width assertion,
which is unsafe. See "(?{ code })" in perlre, and perlsec.
Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
(F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the "(?{
... })" zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
pattern contains interpolated values. Since that is a security
risk, it is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by
using the "re 'eval'" pragma or by explicitly building the pattern
from an interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval().
See "(?{ code })" in perlre.
Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
(F) A regular expression contained the "(?{ ... })" zero-width
assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the "use re
'eval'" pragma is in effect. See "(?{ code })" in perlre.
EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(F) You used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without
consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so that text is
consumed.
The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem
was discovered.
Excessively long <> operator
(F) The contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of
a Perl identifier. If you're just trying to glob a long list of
filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into
a variable and glob that.
exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
(F) The "exec" function is not implemented on some systems, e.g.
Catamount. See perlport.
%sExecution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
(F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
(F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
exists argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
(F) The argument to "exists" must be a hash or array element or a
subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
$foo{$bar}
$ref->{"susie"}[12]
&do_something
exists 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.
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.
Expected %s reference in export_lexically
(F) The type of a reference given to "export_lexically" in builtin
did not match the sigil of the preceding name, or the value was not
a reference at all.
Expecting close bracket in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You wrote something like
(?13
to denote a capturing group of the form "(?PARNO)", but omitted the
")".
Expecting interpolated extended charclass in regex; marked by <-- HERE
in m/%s/
(F) It looked like you were attempting to interpolate an already-
compiled extended character class, like so:
my $thai_or_lao = qr/(?[ \p{Thai} + \p{Lao} ])/;
...
qr/(?[ \p{Digit} & $thai_or_lao ])/;
But the marked code isn't syntactically correct to be such an
interpolated class.
Experimental aliasing via reference not enabled
(F) To do aliasing via references, you must first enable the
feature:
no warnings "experimental::refaliasing";
use feature "refaliasing";
\$x = \$y;
Experimental %s on scalar is now forbidden
(F) An experimental feature added in Perl 5.14 allowed "each",
"keys", "push", "pop", "shift", "splice", "unshift", and "values" to
be called with a scalar argument. This experiment is considered
unsuccessful, and has been removed. The "postderef" feature may
meet your needs better.
Experimental subroutine signatures not enabled
(F) To use subroutine signatures, you must first enable them:
use feature "signatures";
sub foo ($left, $right) { ... }
Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
(W misc) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This
has the effect of blessing the reference into the package main.
This is usually not what you want. Consider providing a default
target package, e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
export_lexically can only be called at compile time
(F) "export_lexically" in builtin was called at runtime. Because it
creates new names in the lexical scope currently being compiled, it
can only be called from code inside "BEGIN" block in that scope.
%s: Expression syntax
(A) You've accidentally run your script through csh instead of Perl.
Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
%s failed--call queue aborted
(F) An untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK,
CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. Processing of the remainder of the
queue of such routines has been prematurely ended.
Failed to close in-place work file %s: %s
(F) Closing an output file from in-place editing, as with the "-i"
command-line switch, failed.
False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp)(F) 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 "-". In a "(?[...])" construct, this is an error, rather
than a warning. Consider quoting the "-", "\-". The <-- HERE shows
whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
See perlre.
Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Something untoward happened in a VMS
system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide
more details. The filename in "at %s" and the line number in "line
%d" tell you which section of the Perl source code is distressed.
fcntl is not implemented
(F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is
this, a PDP-11 or something?
FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
(F) A tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements,
which is not possible.
Field already has a parameter name, cannot add another
(F) A field may have at most one application of the ":param"
attribute to assign a parameter name to it; once applied a second
one is not allowed.
Field attribute %s requires a value
(F) You specified an attribute for a field that would require a
value to be passed in parentheses, but did not provide one.
Remember that whitespace is not permitted between the attribute name
and its value; you must write this as
field $var :attr(VALUE) ...
field is experimental
(S experimental::class) This warning is emitted if you use the
"field" keyword of "use feature 'class'". This keyword is currently
experimental and its behaviour may change in future releases of
Perl.
Field %s is not accessible outside a method
(F) An attempt was made to access a field variable of a class from
code that does not appear inside the body of a "method" subroutine.
This is not permitted, as only methods will have access to the
fields of an instance.
Field %s of "%s" is not accessible in a method of "%s"
(F) An attempt was made to access a field variable of a class, from
a method of another class nested inside the one that actually
defined it. This is not permitted, as only methods defined by a
given class are permitted to access fields of that class.
Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
(W pack) Each line in an uuencoded string starts with a length
indicator which can't encode values above 63. So there is no point
in asking for a line length bigger than that. Perl will behave as
if you specified "u63" as the format.
Filehandle %s opened only for input
(W io) You tried to write on a read-only filehandle. If you
intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it
with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing. If you
intended only to write the file, use ">" or ">>". See "open" in
perlfunc.
Filehandle %s opened only for output
(W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing,
If you intended it to be a read/write filehandle, you needed to open
it with "+<" or "+>" or "+>>" instead of with ">". If you intended
only to read from the file, use "<". See "open" in perlfunc.
Another possibility is that you attempted to open filedescriptor 0
(also known as STDIN) for output (maybe you closed STDIN earlier?).
Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
(W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same
filehandle id as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed
STDOUT or STDERR previously.
Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
(W io) You opened for writing a filehandle that got the same
filehandle id as STDIN. This occurred because you closed STDIN
previously.
Filehandle STD%s reopened as %s only for input
(W io) You opened for reading a filehandle that got the same
filehandle id as STDOUT or STDERR. This occurred because you closed
the handle previously.
Final $ should be \$ or $name
(F) You must now decide whether the final $ in a string was meant to
be a literal dollar sign, or was meant to introduce a variable name
that happens to be missing. So you have to put either the backslash
or the name.
defer is experimental
(S experimental::defer) The "defer" block modifier is experimental.
If you want to use the feature, disable the warning with "no
warnings 'experimental::defer'", but know that in doing so you are
taking the risk that your code may break in a future Perl version.
flock() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock() got itself
closed some time before now. Check your control flow. flock()
operates on filehandles. Are you attempting to call flock() on a
dirhandle by the same name?
for my (...) is experimental
(S experimental::for_list) This warning is emitted if you use "for"
to iterate multiple values at a time. This syntax is currently
experimental and its behaviour may change in future releases of
Perl.
Forked open '%s' not meaningful in <>
(S inplace) You had "|-" or "-|" in @ARGV and tried to use "<>" to
read from it.
Previously this would fork and produce a confusing error message.
Format not terminated
(F) A format must be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl
got to the end of your file without finding such a line.
Format %s redefined
(W redefine) You redefined a format. To suppress this warning, say
{
no warnings 'redefine';
eval "format NAME =...";
}
Found = in conditional, should be ==
(W syntax) You said
if ($foo = 123)
when you meant
if ($foo == 123)
(or something like that).
%s found where operator expected
(S syntax) The Perl lexer knows whether to expect a term or an
operator. If it sees what it knows to be a term when it was
expecting to see an operator, it gives you this warning. Usually it
indicates that an operator or delimiter was omitted, such as a
semicolon.
gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
(S) A warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed.
gethostent not implemented
(F) Your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent(),
probably because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return
every hostname on the Internet.
get%sname() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed
socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket()
call?
getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. The call to "sys$getuai" underlying
the "getpwnam" operator returned an invalid UIC.
getsockopt() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did
you forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
"getsockopt" in perlfunc.
get_layers: unknown argument '%s'
(F) You called PerlIO::get_layers() with an unknown argument. Legal
arguments are provided in key/value pairs, with the keys being one
of "input", "output" or "detail", followed by a boolean.
given is deprecated
(D deprecated::smartmatch) "given" depends on smartmatch, which is
deprecated. It will be removed in Perl 5.42. See the explanation
under "Experimental Details on given and when" in perlsyn.
Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name (did you forget to
declare "my %s"?)
(F) You've said "use strict" or "use strict vars", which indicates
that all variables must either be lexically scoped (using "my" or
"state"), declared beforehand using "our", or explicitly qualified
to say which package the global variable is in (using "::").
glob failed (%s)
(S glob) Something went wrong with the external program(s) used for
"glob" and "<*.c>". Usually, this means that you supplied a "glob"
pattern that caused the external program to fail and exit with a
nonzero status. If the message indicates that the abnormal exit
resulted in a coredump, this may also mean that your csh (C shell)
is broken. If so, you should change all of the csh-related
variables in config.sh: If you have tcsh, make the variables refer
to it as if it were csh (e.g. "full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'");
otherwise, make them all empty (except that "d_csh" should be
'undef') so that Perl will think csh is missing. In either case,
after editing config.sh, run "./Configure -S" and rebuild Perl.
Glob not terminated
(F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was
expecting a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle
bracket, and not finding it. Chances are you left some needed
parentheses out earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less
than".
gmtime(%f) failed
(W overflow) You called "gmtime" with a number that it could not
handle: too large, too small, or NaN. The returned value is
"undef".
gmtime(%f) too large
(W overflow) You called "gmtime" with a number that was larger than
it can reliably handle and "gmtime" probably returned the wrong
date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special not-a-
number value).
gmtime(%f) too small
(W overflow) You called "gmtime" with a number that was smaller than
it can reliably handle and "gmtime" probably returned the wrong
date.
Got an error from DosAllocMem
(P) An error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an
obsolete version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
goto must have label
(F) Unlike with "next" or "last", you're not allowed to goto an
unspecified destination. See "goto" in perlfunc.
Goto undefined subroutine%s
(F) You tried to call a subroutine with "goto &sub" syntax, but the
indicated subroutine hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has since
been undefined.
Group name must start with a non-digit word character in regex; marked
by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) Group names must follow the rules for perl identifiers, meaning
they must start with a non-digit word character. A common cause of
this error is using (?&0) instead of (?0). See perlre.
()-group starts with a count
(F) A ()-group started with a count. A count is supposed to follow
something: a template character or a ()-group. See "pack" in
perlfunc.
%s had compilation errors.
(F) The final summary message when a "perl -c" fails.
Had to create %s unexpectedly
(S internal) A routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that
ought to have existed already, but for some reason it didn't, and
had to be created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump.
%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 float: exponent overflow
(W overflow) The hexadecimal floating point has a larger exponent
than the floating point supports.
Hexadecimal float: exponent underflow
(W overflow) The hexadecimal floating point has a smaller exponent
than the floating point supports. With the IEEE 754 floating point,
this may also mean that the subnormals (formerly known as denormals)
are being used, which may or may not be an error.
Hexadecimal float: internal error (%s)
(F) Something went horribly bad in hexadecimal float handling.
Hexadecimal float: mantissa overflow
(W overflow) The hexadecimal floating point literal had more bits in
the mantissa (the part between the 0x and the exponent, also known
as the fraction or the significand) than the floating point
supports.
Hexadecimal float: precision loss
(W overflow) The hexadecimal floating point had internally more
digits than could be output. This can be caused by unsupported long
double formats, or by 64-bit integers not being available (needed to
retrieve the digits under some configurations).
Hexadecimal float: unsupported long double format
(F) You have configured Perl to use long doubles but the internals
of the long double format are unknown; therefore the hexadecimal
float output is impossible.
Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
(W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is larger than
2**32-1 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems.
See perlport for more on portability concerns.
Identifier too long
(F) Perl limits identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.)
to about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for
compound names (like $A::B). You've exceeded Perl's limits. Future
versions of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary
limitations.
Ignoring zero length \N{} in character class in regex; marked by
<-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) Named Unicode character escapes ("\N{...}") may return a
zero-length sequence. When such an escape is used in a character
class its behavior is not well defined. Check that the correct
escape has been used, and the correct charname handler is in scope.
Illegal %s digit '%c' ignored
(W digit) Here %s is one of "binary", "octal", or "hex". You may
have tried to use a digit other than one that is legal for the given
type, such as only 0 and 1 for binary. For octals, this is raised
only if the illegal character is an '8' or '9'. For hex, 'A' - 'F'
and 'a' - 'f' are legal. Interpretation of the number stopped just
before the offending digit or character.
Illegal binary digit '%c'
(F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number.
Illegal character after '_' in prototype for %s : %s
(W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype
declaration. The '_' in a prototype must be followed by a ';',
indicating the rest of the parameters are optional, or one of '@' or
'%', since those two will accept 0 or more final parameters.
Illegal character \%o (carriage return)
(F) Perl normally treats carriage returns in the program text as it
would any other whitespace, which means you should never see this
error when Perl was built using standard options. For some reason,
your version of Perl appears to have been built without this
support. Talk to your Perl administrator.
Illegal character following sigil in a subroutine signature
(F) A parameter in a subroutine signature contained an unexpected
character following the "$", "@" or "%" sigil character. Normally
the sigil should be followed by the variable name or "=" etc.
Perhaps you are trying use a prototype while in the scope of "use
feature 'signatures'"? For example:
sub foo ($$) {} # legal - a prototype
use feature 'signatures;
sub foo ($$) {} # illegal - was expecting a signature
sub foo ($x, $y)
:prototype($$) {} # legal
Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s
(W illegalproto) An illegal character was found in a prototype
declaration. Legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [,
], &, \, and +. Perhaps you were trying to write a subroutine
signature but didn't enable that feature first ("use feature
'signatures'"), so your signature was instead interpreted as a bad
prototype.
Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine
(F) When using the "sub" keyword to construct an anonymous
subroutine, you must always specify a block of code. See perlsub.
Illegal declaration of subroutine %s
(F) A subroutine was not declared correctly. See perlsub.
Illegal division by zero
(F) You tried to divide a number by 0. Either something was wrong
in your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against
meaningless input.
Illegal modulus zero
(F) You tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. Most
numbers don't take to this kindly.
Illegal number of bits in vec
(F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power
of two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
Illegal octal digit '%c'
(F) You used an 8 or 9 in an octal number.
Illegal operator following parameter in a subroutine signature
(F) A parameter in a subroutine signature, was followed by something
other than "=" introducing a default, "," or ")".
use feature 'signatures';
sub foo ($=1) {} # legal
sub foo ($x = 1) {} # legal
sub foo ($x += 1) {} # illegal
sub foo ($x == 1) {} # illegal
Illegal pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You wrote something like
(?+foo)
The "+" is valid only when followed by digits, indicating a
capturing group. See "(?PARNO)".
Illegal suidscript
(F) The script run under suidperl was somehow illegal.
Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: -%c
(X) The PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the
following switches: -[CDIMUdmtw].
Illegal user-defined property name
(F) You specified a Unicode-like property name in a regular
expression pattern (using "\p{}" or "\P{}") that Perl knows isn't an
official Unicode property, and was likely meant to be a user-defined
property name, but it can't be one of those, as they must begin with
either "In" or "Is". Check the spelling. See also "Can't find
Unicode property definition "%s"".
Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
(W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the
CRTL's internal environ array, and encountered an element without
the "=" delimiter used to separate keys from values. The element is
ignored.
Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
(W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a
logical name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over
%ENV, and didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value,
so the line was ignored.
(in cleanup) %s
(W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a DESTROY() method
raised the indicated exception. Since destructors are usually
called by the system at arbitrary points during execution, and often
a vast number of times, the warning is issued only once for any
number of failures that would otherwise result in the same message
being repeated.
Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the "G_KEEPERR" flag
could also result in this warning. See "G_KEEPERR" in perlcall.
Implicit use of @_ in %s with signatured subroutine is experimental
(S experimental::args_array_with_signatures) An expression that
implicitly involves the @_ arguments array was found in a subroutine
that uses a signature. This is experimental because the interaction
between the arguments array and parameter handling via signatures is
not guaranteed to remain stable in any future version of Perl, and
such code should be avoided.
Incomplete expression within '(?[ ])' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(F) There was a syntax error within the "(?[ ])". This can happen
if the expression inside the construct was completely empty, or if
there are too many or few operands for the number of operators.
Perl is not smart enough to give you a more precise indication as to
what is wrong.
Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on
parent '%s'
(F) The method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not
C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. See
the C3 documentation in mro for more information.
Indentation on line %d of here-doc doesn't match delimiter
(F) You have an indented here-document where one or more of its
lines have whitespace at the beginning that does not match the
closing delimiter.
For example, line 2 below is wrong because it does not have at least
2 spaces, but lines 1 and 3 are fine because they have at least 2:
if ($something) {
print <<~EOF;
Line 1
Line 2 not
Line 3
EOF
}
Note that tabs and spaces are compared strictly, meaning 1 tab will
not match 8 spaces.
Infinite recursion in regex
(F) You used a pattern that references itself without consuming any
input text. You should check the pattern to ensure that recursive
patterns either consume text or fail.
Infinite recursion in user-defined property
(F) A user-defined property ("User-Defined Character Properties" in
perlunicode) can depend on the definitions of other user-defined
properties. If the chain of dependencies leads back to this
property, infinite recursion would occur, were it not for the check
that raised this error.
Restructure your property definitions to avoid this.
Infinite recursion via empty pattern
(F) You tried to use the empty pattern inside of a regex code block,
for instance "/(?{ s!!! })/", which resulted in re-executing the
same pattern, which is an infinite loop which is broken by throwing
an exception.
Initialization of state variables in list currently forbidden
(F) "state" only permits initializing a single variable, specified
without parentheses. So "state $x = 42" and "state @x = qw(a b c)"
are allowed, but not "state ($x) = 42" or "(state $x) = 42". To
initialize more than one "state" variable, initialize them one at a
time.
%%s[%s] in scalar context better written as $%s[%s]
(W syntax) In scalar context, you've used an array index/value slice
(indicated by %) to select a single element of an array. Generally
it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $). The
difference is that $foo[&bar] always behaves like a scalar, both in
the value it returns and when evaluating its argument, while
%foo[&bar] provides a list context to its subscript, which can do
weird things if you're expecting only one subscript. When called in
list context, it also returns the index (what &bar returns) in
addition to the value.
%%s{%s} in scalar context better written as $%s{%s}
(W syntax) In scalar context, you've used a hash key/value slice
(indicated by %) to select a single element of a hash. Generally
it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $). The
difference is that $foo{&bar} always behaves like a scalar, both in
the value it returns and when evaluating its argument, while
@foo{&bar} and provides a list context to its subscript, which can
do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript. When called
in list context, it also returns the key in addition to the value.
Insecure dependency in %s
(F) You tried to do something that the tainting mechanism didn't
like. The tainting mechanism is turned on when you're running
setuid or setgid, or when you specify -T to turn it on explicitly.
The tainting mechanism labels all data that's derived directly or
indirectly from the user, who is considered to be unworthy of your
trust. If any such data is used in a "dangerous" operation, you get
this error. See perlsec for more information.
Insecure directory in %s
(F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
setgid script if $ENV{PATH} contains a directory that is writable by
the world. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory.
See perlsec.
Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
(F) You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or
setgid script if any of $ENV{PATH}, $ENV{IFS}, $ENV{CDPATH},
$ENV{ENV}, $ENV{BASH_ENV} or $ENV{TERM} are derived from data
supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set
the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See perlsec.
Insecure user-defined property %s
(F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
expression that contains a call to a user-defined character property
function, i.e. "\p{IsFoo}" or "\p{InFoo}". See "User-Defined
Character Properties" in perlunicode and perlsec.
Integer overflow in format string for %s
(F) The indexes and widths specified in the format string of
printf() or sprintf() are too large. The numbers must not overflow
the size of integers for your architecture.
Integer overflow in %s number
(S overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number you have
specified either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct() is
too big for your architecture, and has been converted to a floating
point number. On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal,
octal or binary number representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF,
037777777777, or 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively.
Note that Perl transparently promotes all numbers to a floating
point representation internally--subject to loss of precision errors
in subsequent operations.
Integer overflow in srand
(S overflow) The number you have passed to srand is too big to fit
in your architecture's integer representation. The number has been
replaced with the largest integer supported (0xFFFFFFFF on 32-bit
architectures). This means you may be getting less randomness than
you expect, because different random seeds above the maximum will
return the same sequence of random numbers.
Integer overflow in version
Integer overflow in version %d
(W overflow) Some portion of a version initialization is too large
for the size of integers for your architecture. This is not a
warning because there is no rational reason for a version to try and
use an element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused
by trying to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like
100/9.
Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(P) Something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser.
The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem
was discovered.
Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl keeps track of the number of
times you've called "fork" and "exec", to determine whether the
current call to "exec" should affect the current script or a
subprocess (see "exec LIST" in perlvms). Somehow, this count has
become scrambled, so Perl is making a guess and treating this "exec"
as a request to terminate the Perl script and execute the specified
command.
internal %<num>p might conflict with future printf extensions
(S internal) Perl's internal routine that handles "printf" and
"sprintf" formatting follows a slightly different set of rules when
called from C or XS code. Specifically, formats consisting of
digits followed by "p" (e.g., "%7p") are reserved for future use.
If you see this message, then an XS module tried to call that
routine with one such reserved format.
Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(P) Something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The
<-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
discovered.
%s (...) interpreted as function
(W syntax) You've run afoul of the rule that says that any list
operator followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the
list operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See "Terms
and List Operators (Leftward)" in perlop.
In '(?...)', the '(' and '?' must be adjacent in regex; marked by
<-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The two-character sequence "(?" in this context in a regular
expression pattern should be an indivisible token, with nothing
intervening between the "(" and the "?", but you separated them with
whitespace.
In '(*...)', the '(' and '*' must be adjacent in regex; marked by
<-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The two-character sequence "(*" in this context in a regular
expression pattern should be an indivisible token, with nothing
intervening between the "(" and the "*", but you separated them.
Fix the pattern and retry.
Invalid %s attribute: %s
(F) The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not
recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See attributes.
Invalid %s attributes: %s
(F) The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable were not
recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See attributes.
Invalid character in charnames alias definition; marked by <-- HERE in
'%s
(F) You tried to create a custom alias for a character name, with
the ":alias" option to "use charnames" and the specified character
in the indicated name isn't valid. See "CUSTOM ALIASES" in
charnames.
Invalid \0 character in %s for %s: %s\0%s
(W syscalls) Embedded \0 characters in pathnames or other system
call arguments produce a warning as of 5.20. The parts after the \0
were formerly ignored by system calls.
Invalid character in \N{...}; marked by <-- HERE in \N{%s}
(F) Only certain characters are valid for character names. The
indicated one isn't. See "CUSTOM ALIASES" in charnames.
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)(F) The numeric escape (for example "\xHH") of value < 256
didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion from
the encoding specified by the encoding pragma. The escape was
replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD) instead, except within
"(?[ ])", where it is a fatal error. The <-- HERE shows
whereabouts in the regular expression the escape was discovered.
Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(F) The character constant represented by "..." is not a valid
hexadecimal number. Either it is empty, or you tried to use a
character other than 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number.
Invalid module name %s with -%c option: contains single ':'
(F) The module argument to perl's -m and -M command-line options
cannot contain single colons in the module name, but only in the
arguments after "=". In other words, -MFoo::Bar=:baz is ok, but
-MFoo:Bar=baz is not.
Invalid mro name: '%s'
(F) You tried to "mro::set_mro("classname", "foo")" or "use mro
'foo'", where "foo" is not a valid method resolution order (MRO).
Currently, the only valid ones supported are "dfs" and "c3", unless
you have loaded a module that is a MRO plugin. See mro and
perlmroapi.
Invalid negative number (%s) in chr
(W utf8) You passed a negative number to "chr". Negative numbers
are not valid character numbers, so it returns the Unicode
replacement character (U+FFFD).
Invalid number '%s' for -C option.
(F) You supplied a number to the -C option that either has extra
leading zeroes or overflows perl's unsigned integer representation.
invalid option -D%c, use -D'' to see choices
(S debugging) Perl was called with invalid debugger flags. Call
perl with the -D option with no flags to see the list of acceptable
values. See also "-Dletters" in perlrun.
Invalid quantifier in {,} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The pattern looks like a {min,max} quantifier, but the min or
max could not be parsed as a valid number - either it has leading
zeroes, or it represents too big a number to cope with. The
<-- HERE shows where in the regular expression the problem was
discovered. See perlre.
Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The range specified in a character class had a minimum character
greater than the maximum character. One possibility is that you
forgot the "{}" from your ending "\x{}" - "\x" without the curly
braces can go only up to "ff". The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in
the regular expression 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 reference to group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The capture group you specified can't possibly exist because the
number you used is not within the legal range of possible values for
this machine.
Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
(F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the
elements of an attribute list. If the previous attribute had a
parenthesised parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too
soon. See attributes.
Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
(W layer) When pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something
other than a colon or whitespace was seen between the elements of a
layer list. If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter
list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.
Invalid strict version format (%s)
(F) A version number did not meet the "strict" criteria for
versions. A "strict" version number is a positive decimal number
(integer or decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a
dotted-decimal v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least
three components. The parenthesized text indicates which criteria
were not met. See the version module for more details on allowed
version formats.
Invalid type '%s' in %s
(F) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type. See
"pack" in perlfunc.
(W) The given character is not a valid pack or unpack type but used
to be silently ignored.
Invalid version bundle "%s"
(F) A version number that is used to specify an import bundle during
a "use builtin ..." statement must be formatted as ":MAJOR.MINOR"
with an optional third component, which is ignored. Each component
must be a number of 1 to 3 digits. No other characters are
permitted. The value that was specified does not conform to these
rules.
Invalid version format (%s)
(F) A version number did not meet the "lax" criteria for versions.
A "lax" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or
decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal
v-string. If the v-string has fewer than three components, it must
have a leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading 'v' is
optional. Both decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a
trailing "alpha" component separated by an underscore character
after a fractional or dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized
text indicates which criteria were not met. See the version module
for more details on allowed version formats.
Invalid version object
(F) The internal structure of the version object was invalid.
Perhaps the internals were modified directly in some way or an
arbitrary reference was blessed into the "version" class.
In '(*VERB...)', the '(' and '*' must be adjacent in regex; marked by
<-- HERE in m/%s/
Inverting a character class which contains a multi-character sequence is
illegal in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You wrote something like
qr/\P{name=KATAKANA LETTER AINU P}/
qr/[^\p{name=KATAKANA LETTER AINU P}]/
This name actually evaluates to a sequence of two Katakana
characters, not just a single one, and it is illegal to try to take
the complement of a sequence. (Mathematically it would mean any
sequence of characters from 0 to infinity in length that weren't
these two in a row, and that is likely not of any real use.)
(F) The two-character sequence "(*" in this context in a regular
expression pattern should be an indivisible token, with nothing
intervening between the "(" and the "*", but you separated them.
ioctl is not implemented
(F) Your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is
pretty strange for a machine that supports C.
ioctl() on unopened %s
(W unopened) You tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never
opened. Check your control flow and number of arguments.
IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
(F) Your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, and therefore
you cannot use IO layers. To have PerlIO, Perl must be configured
with 'useperlio'.
IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
(F) Your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality,
neither as a system call nor an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK).
'%s' is an unknown bound type in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You used "\b{...}" or "\B{...}" and the "..." is not known to
Perl. The current valid ones are given in "\b{}, \b, \B{}, \B" in
perlrebackslash.
%s() isn't allowed on :utf8 handles
(F) The sysread(), recv(), syswrite() and send() operators are not
allowed on handles that have the ":utf8" layer, either explicitly,
or implicitly, eg., with the :encoding(UTF-16LE) layer.
Previously sysread() and recv() currently use only the ":utf8" flag
for the stream, ignoring the actual layers. Since sysread() and
recv() did no UTF-8 validation they can end up creating invalidly
encoded scalars.
Similarly, syswrite() and send() used only the ":utf8" flag,
otherwise ignoring any layers. If the flag is set, both wrote the
value UTF-8 encoded, even if the layer is some different encoding,
such as the example above.
Ideally, all of these operators would completely ignore the ":utf8"
state, working only with bytes, but this would result in silently
breaking existing code.
"%s" is more clearly written simply as "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE
in m/%s/
(W regexp) (only under "use re 'strict'" or within "(?[...])")
You specified a character that has the given plainer way of writing
it, and which is also portable to platforms running with different
character sets.
$* is no longer supported as of Perl 5.30
(F) The special variable $*, deprecated in older perls, was removed
in 5.10.0, is no longer supported and is a fatal error as of Perl
5.30. In previous versions of perl the use of $* enabled or
disabled multi-line matching within a string.
Instead of using $* you should use the "/m" (and maybe "/s") regexp
modifiers. You can enable "/m" for a lexical scope (even a whole
file) with "use re '/m'". (In older versions: when $* was set to a
true value then all regular expressions behaved as if they were
written using "/m".)
Use of this variable will be a fatal error in Perl 5.30.
$# is no longer supported as of Perl 5.30
(F) The special variable $#, deprecated in older perls, was removed
as of 5.10.0, is no longer supported and is a fatal error as of Perl
5.30. You should use the printf/sprintf functions instead.
'%s' is not a code reference
(W overload) The second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of
overload::constant needs to be a code reference. Either an
anonymous subroutine, or a reference to a subroutine.
'%s' is not an overloadable type
(W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload
package is unaware of.
'%s' is not recognised as a builtin function
(F) An attempt was made to "use" the builtin pragma module to create
a lexical alias for an unknown function name.
-i used with no filenames on the command line, reading from STDIN
(S inplace) The "-i" option was passed on the command line,
indicating that the script is intended to edit files in place, but
no files were given. This is usually a mistake, since editing STDIN
in place doesn't make sense, and can be confusing because it can
make perl look like it is hanging when it is really just trying to
read from STDIN. You should either pass a filename to edit, or
remove "-i" from the command line. See perlrun for more details.
Junk on end of regexp in regex m/%s/
(P) The regular expression parser is confused.
\K not permitted in lookahead/lookbehind in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(F) Your regular expression used "\K" in a lookahead or lookbehind
assertion, which currently isn't permitted.
This may change in the future, see Support \K in lookarounds
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/18134>.
Label not found for "last %s"
(F) You named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a
loop of that name, not even if you count where you were called from.
See "last" in perlfunc.
Label not found for "next %s"
(F) You named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop
of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
"last" in perlfunc.
Label not found for "redo %s"
(F) You named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop
of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See
"last" in perlfunc.
leaving effective %s failed
(F) While under the "use filetest" pragma, switching the real and
effective uids or gids failed.
length/code after end of string in unpack
(F) While unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an
unpack length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This
results in an undefined value for the length. See "pack" in
perlfunc.
length() used on %s (did you mean "scalar(%s)"?)
(W syntax) You used length() on either an array or a hash when you
probably wanted a count of the items.
Array size can be obtained by doing:
scalar(@array);
The number of items in a hash can be obtained by doing:
scalar(keys %hash);
Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
(F) An extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse
(using lex_stuff_pvn or similar), but tried to insert a character
that couldn't be part of the current input. This is an inherent
pitfall of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the reasons to avoid
it. Where it is necessary to stuff, stuffing only plain ASCII is
recommended.
Lexing code internal error (%s)
(F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in
a detectable way.
listen() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you
forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
"listen" in perlfunc.
List form of piped open not implemented
(F) On some platforms, notably Windows, the three-or-more-arguments
form of "open" does not support pipes, such as "open($pipe, '|-',
@args)". Use the two-argument "open($pipe, '|prog arg1 arg2...')"
form instead.
Literal vertical space in [] is illegal except under /x in regex; marked
by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) (only under "use re 'strict'" or within "(?[...])")
Likely you forgot the "/x" modifier or there was a typo in the
pattern. For example, did you really mean to match a form-feed? If
so, all the ASCII vertical space control characters are
representable by escape sequences which won't present such a jarring
appearance as your pattern does when displayed.
\r carriage return
\f form feed
\n line feed
\cK vertical tab
%s: loadable library and perl binaries are mismatched (got %s handshake
key %p, needed %p)
(P) A dynamic loading library ".so" or ".dll" was being loaded into
the process that was built against a different build of perl than
the said library was compiled against. Reinstalling the XS module
will likely fix this error.
Locale '%s' contains (at least) the following characters which have
unexpected meanings: %s The Perl program will use the expected meanings
(W locale) You are using the named UTF-8 locale. UTF-8 locales are
expected to have very particular behavior, which most do. This
message arises when perl found some departures from the
expectations, and is notifying you that the expected behavior
overrides these differences. In some cases the differences are
caused by the locale definition being defective, but the most common
causes of this warning are when there are ambiguities and conflicts
in following the Standard, and the locale has chosen an approach
that differs from Perl's.
One of these is because that, contrary to the claims, Unicode is not
completely locale insensitive. Turkish and some related languages
have two types of "I" characters. One is dotted in both upper- and
lowercase, and the other is dotless in both cases. Unicode allows a
locale to use either the Turkish rules, or the rules used in all
other instances, where there is only one type of "I", which is
dotless in the uppercase, and dotted in the lower. The perl core
does not (yet) handle the Turkish case, and this message warns you
of that. Instead, the Unicode::Casing module allows you to mostly
implement the Turkish casing rules.
The other common cause is for the characters
$ + < = > ^ ` | ~
These are problematic. The C standard says that these should be
considered punctuation in the C locale (and the POSIX standard
defers to the C standard), and Unicode is generally considered a
superset of the C locale. But Unicode has added an extra category,
"Symbol", and classifies these particular characters as being
symbols. Most UTF-8 locales have them treated as punctuation, so
that ispunct(3) returns non-zero for them. But a few locales have
it return 0. Perl takes the first approach, not using ispunct() at
all (see Note [5] in perlrecharclass), and this message is raised to
notify you that you are getting Perl's approach, not the locale's.
Locale '%s' is unsupported, and may crash the interpreter
(S locale) The named locale is not supported by Perl, and using it
leads to undefined behavior, including potentially crashing the
computer.
Currently the only locales that generate this severe warning are
non-UTF-8 ones which have characters that require more than one byte
to represent (common in older East Asian language locales). See
perllocale.
Locale '%s' may not work well.%s
(W locale) You are using the named locale, which is a non-UTF-8 one,
and which perl has determined is not fully compatible with what it
can handle. The second %s gives a reason.
By far the most common reason is that the locale has characters in
it that are represented by more than one byte. The only such
locales that Perl can handle are the UTF-8 locales. Most likely the
specified locale is a non-UTF-8 one for an East Asian language such
as Chinese or Japanese. If the locale is a superset of ASCII, the
ASCII portion of it may work in Perl.
Some essentially obsolete locales that aren't supersets of ASCII,
mainly those in ISO 646 or other 7-bit locales, such as ASMO 449,
can also have problems, depending on what portions of the ASCII
character set get changed by the locale and are also used by the
program. The warning message lists the determinable conflicting
characters.
Note that not all incompatibilities are found.
If this happens to you, there's not much you can do except switch to
use a different locale or use Encode to translate from the locale
into UTF-8; if that's impracticable, you have been warned that some
things may break.
This message is output once each time a bad locale is switched into
within the scope of "use locale", or on the first possibly-affected
operation if the "use locale" inherits a bad one. It is not raised
for any operations from the POSIX module.
localtime(%f) failed
(W overflow) You called "localtime" with a number that it could not
handle: too large, too small, or NaN. The returned value is
"undef".
localtime(%f) too large
(W overflow) You called "localtime" with a number that was larger
than it can reliably handle and "localtime" probably returned the
wrong date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special
not-a-number value).
localtime(%f) too small
(W overflow) You called "localtime" with a number that was smaller
than it can reliably handle and "localtime" probably returned the
wrong date.
Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/
(F) There is currently a limit on the length of string which
lookbehind can handle. This restriction may be eased in a future
release.
Lost precision when %s %f by 1
(W imprecision) You attempted to increment or decrement a value by
one, but the result is too large for the underlying floating point
representation to store accurately. Hence, the target of "++" or
"--" is increased or decreased by quite different value than one,
such as zero (i.e. the target is unchanged) or two, due to rounding.
Perl issues this warning because it has already switched from
integers to floating point when values are too large for integers,
and now even floating point is insufficient. You may wish to switch
to using Math::BigInt explicitly.
lstat() on filehandle%s
(W io) You tried to do an lstat on a filehandle. What did you mean
by that? lstat() makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did a
fstat() instead on the filehandle.)
lvalue attribute %s already-defined subroutine
(W misc) Although attributes.pm allows this, turning the lvalue
attribute on or off on a Perl subroutine that is already defined
does not always work properly. It may or may not do what you want,
depending on what code is inside the subroutine, with exact details
subject to change between Perl versions. Only do this if you really
know what you are doing.
lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined
(W misc) Using the ":lvalue" declarative syntax to make a Perl
subroutine an lvalue subroutine after it has been defined is not
permitted. To make the subroutine an lvalue subroutine, add the
lvalue attribute to the definition, or put the "sub foo :lvalue;"
declaration before the definition.
See also attributes.pm.
Magical list constants are not supported
(F) You assigned a magical array to a stash element, and then tried
to use the subroutine from the same slot. You are asking Perl to do
something it cannot do, details subject to change between Perl
versions.
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. Perhaps the function's author
was trying to write a subroutine signature but didn't enable that
feature first ("use feature 'signatures'"), so the signature was
instead interpreted as a bad prototype.
Malformed UTF-8 character%s
(S utf8)(F) Perl detected a string that should be UTF-8, but didn't
comply with UTF-8 encoding rules, or represents a code point whose
ordinal integer value doesn't fit into the word size of the current
platform (overflows). Details as to the exact malformation are
given in the variable, %s, part of the message.
One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data
that you thought to be in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was for example
legacy 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use
"Encode::decode('UTF-8', ...)".
If you use the :encoding(UTF-8) PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte
sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use ":utf8", the flag
is set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error
message.
See also "Handling Malformed Data" in Encode.
Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N{%s} immediately after '%s'
(F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8.
Malformed UTF-8 string in "%s"
(F) This message indicates a bug either in the Perl core or in XS
code. Such code was trying to find out if a character, allegedly
stored internally encoded as UTF-8, was of a given type, such as
being punctuation or a digit. But the character was not encoded in
legal UTF-8. The %s is replaced by a string that can be used by
knowledgeable people to determine what the type being checked
against was.
Passing malformed strings was deprecated in Perl 5.18, and became
fatal in Perl 5.26.
Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack
(F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8
encoding rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more
progress.
Malformed UTF-8 string in pack
(F) You tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8
encoding rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more
progress.
Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack
(F) You tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8
encoding rules and perl was unable to guess how to make more
progress.
Malformed UTF-16 surrogate
(F) Perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data but
while doing it Perl met a malformed Unicode surrogate.
Mandatory parameter follows optional parameter
(F) In a subroutine signature, you wrote something like "$x = undef,
$y", making an earlier parameter optional and a later one mandatory.
Parameters are filled from left to right, so it's impossible for the
caller to omit an earlier one and pass a later one. If you want to
act as if the parameters are filled from right to left, declare the
rightmost optional and then shuffle the parameters around in the
subroutine's body.
Matched non-Unicode code point 0x%X against Unicode property; may not be
portable
(S non_unicode) Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode
code points; each code point may be as large as what is storable in
a signed integer on your system, but these may not be accepted by
other languages/systems. This message occurs when you matched a
string containing such a code point against a regular expression
pattern, and the code point was matched against a Unicode property,
"\p{...}" or "\P{...}". Unicode properties are only defined on
Unicode code points, so the result of this match is undefined by
Unicode, but Perl (starting in v5.20) treats non-Unicode code points
as if they were typical unassigned Unicode ones, and matched this
one accordingly. Whether a given property matches these code points
or not is specified in "Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}"
in perluniprops.
This message is suppressed (unless it has been made fatal) if it is
immaterial to the results of the match if the code point is Unicode
or not. For example, the property "\p{ASCII_Hex_Digit}" only can
match the 22 characters "[0-9A-Fa-f]", so obviously all other code
points, Unicode or not, won't match it. (And "\P{ASCII_Hex_Digit}"
will match every code point except these 22.)
Getting this message indicates that the outcome of the match
arguably should have been the opposite of what actually happened.
If you think that is the case, you may wish to make the
"non_unicode" warnings category fatal; if you agree with Perl's
decision, you may wish to turn off this category.
See "Beyond Unicode code points" in perlunicode for more
information.
%s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) The pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if
the regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that.
The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem
was discovered. See perlre.
Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded
(F) Perl aborted due to too high a number of signals pending. This
usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver
signals too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl
process from resources it would need to reach a point where it can
process signals safely. (See "Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)" in
perlipc.)
"%s" may clash with future reserved word
(W) This warning may be due to running a perl5 script through a
perl4 interpreter, especially if the word that is being warned about
is "use" or "my".
'%' may not be used in pack
(F) You can't pack a string by supplying a checksum, because the
checksumming process loses information, and you can't go the other
way. See "unpack" in perlfunc.
Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing
(F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table
that doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See overload.
method is experimental
(S experimental::class) This warning is emitted if you use the
"method" keyword of "use feature 'class'". This keyword is
currently experimental and its behaviour may change in future
releases of Perl.
Method %s not permitted
See "500 Server error".
Method %s redefined
(W redefine) You redefined a method. To suppress this warning, say
{
no warnings 'redefine';
*name = method { ... };
}
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.
Mismatched brackets in template
(F) A pack template could not be parsed because pairs of "[...]" or
"(...)" could not be matched up. See "pack" in perlfunc.
Misplaced _ in number
(W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not
separate two digits.
Missing argument for %n in %s
(F) A %n was used in a format string with no corresponding argument
for perl to write the current string length to.
Missing argument in %s
(W missing) You called a function with fewer arguments than other
arguments you supplied indicated would be needed.
Currently only emitted when a printf-type format required more
arguments than were supplied, but might be used in the future for
other cases where we can statically determine that arguments to
functions are missing, e.g. for the "pack" in perlfunc function.
Missing argument to -%c
(F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow
immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces.
Missing braces on \N{}
Missing braces on \N{} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) Wrong syntax of character name literal "\N{charname}" within
double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space
(or comment) between the "\N" and the "{" in a regex with the "/x"
modifier. This modifier does not change the requirement that the
brace immediately follow the "\N".
Missing braces on \o{}
(F) A "\o" must be followed immediately by a "{" in double-quotish
context.
Missing comma after first argument to %s function
(F) While certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an
"indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them.
Missing comma after first argument to return
(F) While certain operators allow you to specify a filehandle or an
"indirect object" before the argument list, "return" isn't one of
them.
Missing command in piped open
(W pipe) You used the "open(FH, "| command")" or "open(FH, "command
|")" construction, but the command was missing or blank.
Missing control char name in \c
(F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required
control character name.
Missing ']' in prototype for %s : %s
(W illegalproto) A grouping was started with "[" but never closed
with "]".
Missing name in "%s sub"
(F) The syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that they
have a name with which they can be found.
Missing $ on loop variable
(F) Apparently you've been programming in csh too much. Variables
are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where
it can vary from one line to the next.
(Missing operator before %s?)
(S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the
message "%s found where operator expected". Often the missing
operator is a comma.
Missing or undefined argument to %s
(F) You tried to call "require" or "do" with no argument or with an
undefined value as an argument. Require expects either a package
name or a file-specification as an argument; do expects a filename.
See "require EXPR" in perlfunc and "do EXPR" in perlfunc.
Missing or undefined argument to %s via %{^HOOK}{require__before}
(F) A "%{^HOOK}{require__before}" hook rewrote the name of the file
being compiled with "require" or "do" with an empty string an
undefined value which is forbidden. See "%{^HOOK}" in perlvar and
"require EXPR" in perlfunc.
Missing right brace on \%c{} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) Missing right brace in "\x{...}", "\p{...}", "\P{...}", or
"\N{...}".
Missing right brace on \N{}
Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N
(F) "\N" has two meanings.
The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed in braces,
meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that
name. Thus "\N{ASTERISK}" is another way of writing "*", valid in
both double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In
patterns, it doesn't have the meaning an unescaped "*" does.
Starting in Perl 5.12.0, "\N" also can have an additional meaning
(only) in patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This
is short for "[^\n]", and like "." but is not affected by the "/s"
regex modifier.)
This can lead to some ambiguities. When "\N" is not followed
immediately by a left brace, Perl assumes the "[^\n]" meaning.
Also, if the braces form a valid quantifier such as "\N{3}" or
"\N{5,}", Perl assumes that this means to match the given quantity
of non-newlines (in these examples, 3; and 5 or more, respectively).
In all other case, where there is a "\N{" and a matching "}", Perl
assumes that a character name is desired.
However, if there is no matching "}", Perl doesn't know if it was
mistakenly omitted, or if "[^\n]{" was desired, and raises this
error. If you meant the former, add the right brace; if you meant
the latter, escape the brace with a backslash, like so: "\N\{"
Missing right curly or square bracket
(F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than
closing ones. As a general rule, you'll find it's missing near the
place you were last editing.
(Missing semicolon on previous line?)
(S syntax) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the
message "%s found where operator expected". Don't automatically put
a semicolon on the previous line just because you saw this message.
Modification of a read-only value attempted
(F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a
constant. You didn't, of course, try "2 = 1", because the compiler
catches that. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
mod(2);
Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the
string.
Yet another way is to assign to a "foreach" loop VAR when VAR is
aliased to a constant in the look LIST:
$x = 1;
foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
$n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to
} # modify the 2
PerlIO::scalar will also produce this message as a warning if you
attempt to open a read-only scalar for writing.
Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
(F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and the
subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the array
backwards.
Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
(P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it
couldn't be created for some peculiar reason.
Module name must be constant
(F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a
"use".
Module name required with -%c option
(F) The "-M" or "-m" options say that Perl should load some module,
but you omitted the name of the module. Consult perlrun for full
details about "-M" and "-m".
More than one argument to '%s' open
(F) The "open" function has been asked to open multiple files. This
can happen if you are trying to open a pipe to a command that takes
a list of arguments, but have forgotten to specify a piped open
mode. See "open" in perlfunc for details.
mprotect for COW string %p %u failed with %d
(S) You compiled perl with -DPERL_DEBUG_READONLY_COW (see "Copy on
Write" in perlguts), but a shared string buffer could not be made
read-only.
mprotect for %p %u failed with %d
(S) You compiled perl with -DPERL_DEBUG_READONLY_OPS (see
perlhacktips), but an op tree could not be made read-only.
mprotect RW for COW string %p %u failed with %d
(S) You compiled perl with -DPERL_DEBUG_READONLY_COW (see "Copy on
Write" in perlguts), but a read-only shared string buffer could not
be made mutable.
mprotect RW for %p %u failed with %d
(S) You compiled perl with -DPERL_DEBUG_READONLY_OPS (see
perlhacktips), but a read-only op tree could not be made mutable
before freeing the ops.
msg%s not implemented
(F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system.
Multidimensional hash lookup is disabled
(F) You supplied a list of subscripts to a hash lookup under "no
feature "multidimensional";", eg:
$z = $foo{$x, $y};
which by default acts like:
$z = $foo{join($;, $x, $y)};
Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
(W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like $foo[1,2,3].
They're written like "$foo[1][2][3]", as in C.
Multiple slurpy parameters not allowed
(F) In subroutine signatures, a slurpy parameter ("@" or "%") must
be the last parameter, and there must not be more than one of them;
for example:
sub foo ($x, @y) {} # legal
sub foo ($x, @y, %) {} # invalid
'/' 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.
%s must not be a named sequence in transliteration operator
(F) Transliteration ("tr///" and "y///") transliterates individual
characters. But a named sequence by definition is more than an
individual character, and hence doing this operation on it doesn't
make sense.
"my sub" not yet implemented
(F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try
that yet.
"my" subroutine %s can't be in a package
(F) Lexically scoped subroutines aren't in a package, so it doesn't
make sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the
front.
"my %s" used in sort comparison
(W syntax) The package variables $a and $b are used for sort
comparisons. You used $a or $b in as an operand to the "<=>" or
"cmp" operator inside a sort comparison block, 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.
"my" variable %s can't be in a package
(F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't
make sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the
front. Use local() if you want to localize a package variable.
Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
(W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable
names. If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just
mention it again somehow to suppress the message. The "our"
declaration is also provided for this purpose.
NOTE: This warning detects package symbols that have been used only
once. This means lexical variables will never trigger this warning.
It also means that all of the package variables $c, @c, %c, as well
as *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. Symbols
beginning with an underscore and symbols using special identifiers
(q.v. perldata) are exempt from this warning.
Need exactly 3 octal digits in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) Within "(?[ ])", all constants interpreted as octal need to be
exactly 3 digits long. This helps catch some ambiguities. If your
constant is too short, add leading zeros, like
(?[ [ \078 ] ]) # Syntax error!
(?[ [ \0078 ] ]) # Works
(?[ [ \007 8 ] ]) # Clearer
The maximum number this construct can express is "\777". If you
need a larger one, you need to use \o{} instead. If you meant two
separate things, you need to separate them:
(?[ [ \7776 ] ]) # Syntax error!
(?[ [ \o{7776} ] ]) # One meaning
(?[ [ \777 6 ] ]) # Another meaning
(?[ [ \777 \006 ] ]) # Still another
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.
Negative repeat count does nothing
(W numeric) You tried to execute the "x" repetition operator fewer
than 0 times, which doesn't make sense.
Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses.
So things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows
whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, "*?", "+?", and "??"
appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See perlre.
%s never introduced
(S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went
out of scope before it could possibly have been used.
next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
(F) "next::method" needs to be called within the context of a real
method in a real package, and it could not find such a context. See
mro.
\N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...} in regex;
marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The new (as of Perl 5.12) meaning of "\N" as "[^\n]" is not
valid in a bracketed character class, for the same reason that "."
in a character class loses its specialness: it matches almost
everything, which is probably not what you want.
\N{} here is restricted to one character in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(F) Named Unicode character escapes ("\N{...}") may return a multi-
character sequence. Even though a character class is supposed to
match just one character of input, perl will match the whole thing
correctly, except under certain conditions. These currently are
When the class is inverted ("[^...]")
The mathematically logical behavior for what matches when
inverting is very different from what people expect, so we have
decided to forbid it.
The escape is the beginning or final end point of a range
Similarly unclear is what should be generated when the "\N{...}"
is used as one of the end points of the range, such as in
[\x{41}-\N{ARABIC SEQUENCE YEH WITH HAMZA ABOVE WITH AE}]
What is meant here is unclear, as the "\N{...}" escape is a
sequence of code points, so this is made an error.
In a regex set
The syntax "(?[ ])" in a regular expression yields a list of
single code points, none can be a sequence.
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 code specified for -%c
(F) Perl's -e and -E command-line options require an argument. If
you want to run an empty program, pass the empty string as a
separate argument or run a program consisting of a single 0 or 1:
perl -e ""
perl -e0
perl -e1
No comma allowed after %s
(F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is
not allowed to have a comma between that and the following
arguments. Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments.
One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a
constant to your name space with use or import while no such
importing took place, it may for example be that your operating
system does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did
use an explicit import list for the constants you expect to see;
please see "use" in perlfunc and "import" in perlfunc. While an
explicit import list would probably have caught this error earlier
it naturally does not remedy the fact that your operating system
still does not support that constant. Maybe you have a typo in the
constants of the symbol import list of use or import or in the
constant name at the line where this error was triggered?
No command into which to pipe on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it
doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
No DB::DB routine defined
(F) The currently executing code was compiled with the -d switch,
but for some reason the current debugger (e.g. perl5db.pl or a
"Devel::" module) didn't define a routine to be called at the
beginning of each statement.
No dbm on this machine
(P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine
should supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See
SDBM_File.
No DB::sub routine defined
(F) The currently executing code was compiled with the -d switch,
but for some reason the current debugger (e.g. perl5db.pl or a
"Devel::" module) didn't define a "DB::sub" routine to be called at
the beginning of each ordinary subroutine call.
No digits found for %s literal
(F) No hexadecimal digits were found following "0x" or no binary
digits were found following "0b".
No directory specified for -I
(F) The -I command-line switch requires a directory name as part of
the same argument. Use -Ilib, for instance. -I lib won't work.
No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but
can't find the name of the file to which to write data destined for
stderr.
No group ending character '%c' found in template
(F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its
matching counterpart. See "pack" in perlfunc.
No input file after < on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the
name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
No next::method '%s' found for %s
(F) "next::method" found no further instances of this method name in
the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want
it throwing an exception, use "maybe::next::method" or "next::can".
See mro.
Non-finite repeat count does nothing
(W numeric) You tried to execute the "x" repetition operator "Inf"
(or "-Inf") or "NaN" times, which doesn't make sense.
Non-hex character in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) In a regular expression, there was a non-hexadecimal character
where a hex one was expected, like
(?[ [ \xDG ] ])
(?[ [ \x{DEKA} ] ])
Non-hex character '%c' terminates \x early. Resolved as "%s"
(W digit) In parsing a hexadecimal numeric constant, a character was
unexpectedly encountered that isn't hexadecimal. The resulting
value is as indicated.
Note that, within braces, every character starting with the first
non-hexadecimal up to the ending brace is ignored.
Non-octal character in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) In a regular expression, there was a non-octal character where
an octal one was expected, like
(?[ [ \o{1278} ] ])
Non-octal character '%c' terminates \o early. Resolved as "%s"
(W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character was
unexpectedly encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value is
as indicated.
When not using "\o{...}", you wrote something like "\08", or "\179"
in a double-quotish string. The resolution is as indicated, with
all but the last digit treated as a single character, specified in
octal. The last digit is the next character in the string. To tell
Perl that this is indeed what you want, you can use the "\o{ }"
syntax, or use exactly three digits to specify the octal for the
character.
Note that, within braces, every character starting with the first
non-octal up to the ending brace is ignored.
"no" not allowed in expression
(F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and
returns no useful value. See perlmod.
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.
No output file after > on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so
it doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
No output file after > or >> on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line
redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but
can't find the name of the file to which to write data destined for
stdout.
No package name allowed for subroutine %s in "our"
No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
(F) Fully qualified subroutine and variable names are not allowed in
"our" declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under
existing rules. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
No Perl script found in input
(F) You called "perl -x", but no line was found in the file
beginning with #! and containing the word "perl".
No setregid available
(F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call
for your system.
No setreuid available
(F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call
for your system.
No such class %s
(F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state"
declaration, but this class doesn't exist at this point in your
program.
No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
(F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated
typed variable but that key is not allowed by the package of the
same type. The indicated package has restricted the set of allowed
keys using the fields pragma.
No such hook: %s
(F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl.
Currently, Perl accepts "__DIE__" and "__WARN__" as valid signal
hooks.
No such pipe open
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose()
tried to close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have
been caught earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
No such signal: SIG%s
(W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that
was not recognized. Say "kill -l" in your shell to see the valid
signal names on your system.
No Unicode property value wildcard matches:
(W regexp) You specified a wildcard for a Unicode property value,
but there is no property value in the current Unicode release that
matches it. Check your spelling.
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 GLOB reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that
is, a symbol table entry that looks like *foo), but found a
reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function
to find out what kind of ref it really was. See perlref.
Not a HASH reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but
found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See perlref.
'#' not allowed immediately following a sigil in a subroutine signature
(F) In a subroutine signature definition, a comment following a
sigil ("$", "@" or "%"), needs to be separated by whitespace or a
comma etc., in particular to avoid confusion with the $# variable.
For example:
# bad
sub f ($# ignore first arg
, $y) {}
# good
sub f ($, # ignore first arg
$y) {}
Not an ARRAY reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but
found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See perlref.
Not a SCALAR reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but
found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref()
function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See perlref.
Not a subroutine reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that
is, a subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead.
You can use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it
really was. See also perlref.
Not a subroutine reference in overload table
(F) An attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table
that doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See overload.
Not enough arguments for %s
(F) The function requires more arguments than you specified.
Not enough format arguments
(W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line
supplied. See perlform.
%s: not found
(A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
into Perl yourself.
no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
(S) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local
timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is
equivalent to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name
SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL to translate to the number of seconds
which need to be added to UTC to get local time.
NULL OP IN RUN
(S 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 regexp parameter
(P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd.
Number too long
(F) Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to
about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future versions
of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In the
meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of
"1_000_000").
Number with no digits
(F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like
a number. This happens, for example with "\o{}", with no number
between the braces.
Numeric format result too large
(F) The length of the result of a numeric format supplied to
sprintf() or printf() would have been too large for the underlying C
function to report. This limit is typically 2GB.
Numeric variables with more than one digit may not start with '0'
(F) The only numeric variable which is allowed to start with a 0 is
$0, and you mentioned a variable that starts with 0 that has more
than one digit. You probably want to remove the leading 0, or if the
intent was to express a variable name in octal you should convert to
decimal.
Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
(W portable) The octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1
(4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See
perlport for more on portability concerns.
Odd name/value argument for subroutine '%s'
(F) A subroutine using a slurpy hash parameter in its signature
received an odd number of arguments to populate the hash. It
requires the arguments to be paired, with the same number of keys as
values. The caller of the subroutine is presumably at fault.
The message attempts to include the name of the called subroutine.
If the subroutine has been aliased, the subroutine's original name
will be shown, regardless of what name the caller used.
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 arguments passed to "%s" constructor
(S) The constructor for the given class was called with an odd
number of arguments.
Class constructors accept named arguments as a list and expect pairs
of name followed by value as if you were initialising a hash.
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 export_lexically
(F) A call to "export_lexically" in builtin contained an odd number
of arguments. This is not permitted, because each name must be
paired with a valid reference value.
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.
Odd number of elements in hash field initialization
(W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialise a
hash field of an object. Hashes are initialised from a list of
key/value pairs so there must be a corresponding value to every key.
The final missing value will be filled in with undef instead.
Offset outside string
(W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation with
an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to
imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will
take place when going past the end of the string when either
sysread()ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened
for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behavior
with real files).
Old package separator "'" deprecated
(D deprecated::apostrophe_as_package_separator, syntax) You used the
old package separator "'" in a variable, subroutine or package name.
Support for the old package separator will be removed in Perl 5.42.
Old package separator used in string
(D deprecated::apostrophe_as_package_separator, syntax) You used the
old package separator, "'", in a variable named inside a double-
quoted string; e.g., "In $name's house". This is equivalent to "In
$name::s house". If you meant the former, put a backslash before the
apostrophe ("In $name\'s house").
Support for the old package separator will be removed in Perl 5.42.
Only scalar fields can take a :param attribute
(F) You tried to apply the ":param" attribute to an array or hash
field. Currently this is not permitted.
%s() on unopened %s
(W unopened) An I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was
never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a
socket() call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
-%s on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) You tried to invoke a file test operator on a
filehandle that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also "-X"
in perlfunc.
oops: oopsAV
(S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
oops: oopsHV
(S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
Operand with no preceding operator in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You wrote something like
(?[ \p{Digit} \p{Thai} ])
There are two operands, but no operator giving how you want to
combine them.
Operation "%s": no method found, %s
(F) An attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which
no handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in
terms of other handlers, there is no default handler for any
operation, unless the "fallback" overloading key is specified to be
true. See overload.
Operation "%s" returns its argument for non-Unicode code point 0x%X
(S non_unicode) You performed an operation requiring Unicode rules
on a code point that is not in Unicode, so what it should do is not
defined. Perl has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn you.
If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by "no
warnings 'non_unicode';".
Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
(S surrogate) You performed an operation requiring Unicode rules on
a Unicode surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use of surrogates for
anything but storing strings in UTF-16, but rules are (reluctantly)
defined for the surrogates, and they are to do nothing for this
operation. Because the use of surrogates can be dangerous, Perl
warns.
If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive
matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by "no
warnings 'surrogate';".
Operator or semicolon missing before %s
(S ambiguous) You used a variable or subroutine call where the
parser was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really
meant to use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect.
For example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you
said "*foo * 'foo'".
Optional parameter lacks default expression
(F) In a subroutine signature, you wrote something like "$x =",
making a named optional parameter without a default value. A
nameless optional parameter is permitted to have no default value,
but a named one must have a specific default. You probably want "$x
= undef".
"our" variable %s redeclared
(W shadow) You seem to have already declared the same global once
before in the current lexical scope.
Out of memory!
(X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
request. Perl has no option but to exit immediately.
At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your
process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use "limit" and "limit datasize
n" (where "n" is the number of kilobytes) to check the current
limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use "ulimit -a" and
"ulimit -d n", respectively.
Out of memory during %s extend
(X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string
beyond the largest possible memory allocation.
Out of memory during "large" request for %s
(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
request. However, the request was judged large enough (compile-time
default is 64K), so a possibility to shut down by trapping this
error is granted.
Out of memory during request for %s
(X)(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was
insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the
request.
The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it
depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not
trappable. However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents
of $^M as an emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In
this case the error is trappable once, and the error message will
include the line and file where the failed request happened.
Out of memory during ridiculously large request
(F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This
error is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program.
e.g., $arr[time] instead of $arr[$time].
Out of memory during vec in lvalue context
(F) An attempt was made to extend a string beyond the largest
possible memory allocation by assigning to vec() called with a large
second argument.
Out of memory for yacc stack
(F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could continue
parsing, but realloc() wouldn't give it more memory, virtual or
otherwise.
Out of memory in perl:%s
(X) A low-level memory allocation routine failed, indicating there
was insufficient remaining (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.
'.' outside of string in pack
(F) The argument to a '.' in your template tried to move the working
position to before the start of the packed string being built.
'@' outside of string in unpack
(F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
the string being unpacked. See "pack" in perlfunc.
'@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
(F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside
the string being unpacked. The string being unpacked was also
invalid UTF-8. See "pack" in perlfunc.
overload arg '%s' is invalid
(W overload) The overload pragma was passed an argument it did not
recognize. Did you mistype an operator?
Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
(F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator was
dereferenced, but the overloaded operation did not return a
reference. See overload.
Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
(F) An object with a "qr" overload was used as part of a match, but
the overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See
overload.
%s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
(W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a package-
specific handler. That name might have a meaning to Perl itself
some day, even though it doesn't yet. Perhaps you should use a
mixed-case attribute name, instead. See attributes.
pack/unpack repeat count overflow
(F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your
signed integers. See "pack" in perlfunc.
Pack template structure size is too large
(F) You called "pack" or "unpack" to operate on a structure, whose
computed size is too large to fit in memory. This usually happens
as a result of embedding a large number as the repeat count for an
item.
page overflow
(W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on
a page. See perlform.
panic: %s
(P) An internal error.
panic: attempt to call %s in %s
(P) One of the file test operators entered a code branch that calls
an ACL related-function, but that function is not available on this
platform. Earlier checks mean that it should not be possible to
enter this branch on this platform.
panic: child pseudo-process was never scheduled
(P) A child pseudo-process in the ithreads implementation on Windows
was not scheduled within the time period allowed and therefore was
not able to initialize properly.
panic: ck_grep, type=%u
(P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep.
panic: corrupt saved stack index %ld
(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: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
(P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an
"eval" failure was caught.
panic: frexp: %f
(P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f")
impossible.
panic: goto, type=%u, ix=%ld
(P) We popped the context stack to a context with the specified
label, and then discovered it wasn't a context we know how to do a
goto in.
panic: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
(P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries tried
repeatedly, but each time something re-created entries in the glob.
Most likely the glob contains an object with a reference back to the
glob and a destructor that adds a new object to the glob.
panic: INTERPCASEMOD, %s
(P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier.
panic: INTERPCONCAT, %s
(P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets.
panic: kid popen errno read
(F) A forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its
errno.
panic: leave_scope inconsistency %u
(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, %s
(P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc.
panic: memory wrap
(P) Something tried to allocate either more memory than possible or
a negative amount.
panic: newFORLOOP, %s
(P) The parser failed an internal consistency check while trying to
parse a "foreach" loop.
panic: pad_alloc, %p!=%p
(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was
allocating and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
panic: pad_free curpad, %p!=%p
(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was
allocating and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
panic: pad_free po
(P) A zero scratch pad offset was detected internally. An attempt
was made to free a target that had not been allocated to begin with.
panic: pad_reset curpad, %p!=%p
(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was
allocating and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
panic: pad_sv po
(P) A zero scratch pad offset was detected internally. Most likely
an operator needed a target but that target had not been allocated
for whatever reason.
panic: pad_swipe curpad, %p!=%p
(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was
allocating and freeing temporaries and lexicals from.
panic: pad_swipe po
(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally.
panic: pp_iter, type=%u
(P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame.
panic: pp_match%s
(P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid
operational data.
panic: realloc, %s
(P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc.
panic: reference miscount on nsv in sv_replace() (%d != 1)
(P) The internal sv_replace() function was handed a new SV with a
reference count other than 1.
panic: restartop in %s
(P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it),
and didn't supply the destination.
panic: return, type=%u
(P) We popped the context stack to a subroutine or eval context, and
then discovered it wasn't a subroutine or eval context.
panic: scan_num, %s
(P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number.
panic: Sequence (?{...}): no code block found in regex m/%s/
(P) While compiling a pattern that has embedded (?{}) or (??{}) code
blocks, perl couldn't locate the code block that should have already
been seen and compiled by perl before control passed to the regex
compiler.
panic: sv_chop %s
(P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within
the scalar's string buffer.
panic: sv_insert, midend=%p, bigend=%p
(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: unexpected constant lvalue entersub entry via type/targ %d:%d
(P) When compiling a subroutine call in lvalue context, Perl failed
an internal consistency check. It encountered a malformed op tree.
panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
(P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't
permitted at run time.
panic: unknown OA_*: %x
(P) The internal routine that handles arguments to &CORE::foo()
subroutine calls was unable to determine what type of arguments were
expected.
panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
(P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed to
even) byte length.
panic: utf16_to_utf8_reversed: odd bytelen
(P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8_reversed with an odd (as
opposed to even) byte length.
panic: yylex, %s
(P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier.
Parentheses missing around "%s" list
(W parenthesis) You said something like
my $foo, $bar = @_;
when you meant
my ($foo, $bar) = @_;
Remember that "my", "our", "local" and "state" bind tighter than
comma.
Parsing code internal error (%s)
(F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API
in a detectable way.
Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex
(F) You used a pattern that uses too many nested subpattern calls
without consuming any text. Restructure the pattern so text is
consumed before the nesting limit is exceeded.
"-p" destination: %s
(F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the "-p"
command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've
redirected it with select().)
Perl API version %s of %s does not match %s
(F) The XS module in question was compiled against a different
incompatible version of Perl than the one that has loaded the XS
module.
Perl folding rules are not up-to-date for 0x%X; please use the perlbug
utility to report; in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(S regexp) You used a regular expression with case-insensitive
matching, and there is a bug in Perl in which the built-in regular
expression folding rules are not accurate. This may lead to
incorrect results. Please report this as a bug to
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/new/choose>.
Perl_my_%s() not available
(F) Your platform has very uncommon byte-order and integer size, so
it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order
conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the
'<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See "pack" in perlfunc.
Perl %s required (did you mean %s?)--this is only %s, stopped
(F) The code you are trying to run has asked for a newer version of
Perl than you are running. Perhaps "use 5.10" was written instead
of "use 5.010" or "use v5.10". Without the leading "v", the number
is interpreted as a decimal, with every three digits after the
decimal point representing a part of the version number. So 5.10 is
equivalent to v5.100.
Perl %s required--this is only %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"
(X) See "PERL_SIGNALS" in perlrun for legal values.
Perls since %s too modern--this is %s, stopped
(F) The code you are trying to run claims it will not run on the
version of Perl you are using because it is too new. Maybe the code
needs to be updated, or maybe it is simply wrong and the version
check should just be removed.
perl: warning: Non hex character in '$ENV{PERL_HASH_SEED}', seed only
partially set
(S) PERL_HASH_SEED should match /^\s*(?:0x)?[0-9a-fA-F]+\s*\z/ but
it contained a non hex character. This could mean you are not using
the hash seed you think you are.
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
(S) The whole warning message will look something like:
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LC_ALL = "En_US",
LANG = (unset)
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above
the settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no
value. This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your
operating system supplier and/or system administrator have set up
the so-called locale system but Perl could not use those settings.
This was not dead serious, fortunately: there is a "default locale"
called "C" that Perl can and will use, and the script will be run.
Before you really fix the problem, however, you will get the same
error message each time you run Perl. How to really fix the problem
can be found in perllocale section LOCALE PROBLEMS.
perl: warning: strange setting in '$ENV{PERL_PERTURB_KEYS}': '%s'
(S) Perl was run with the environment variable PERL_PERTURB_KEYS
defined but containing an unexpected value. The legal values of
this setting are as follows.
Numeric | String | Result
--------+---------------+-----------------------------------------
0 | NO | Disables key traversal randomization
1 | RANDOM | Enables full key traversal randomization
2 | DETERMINISTIC | Enables repeatable key traversal
| | randomization
Both numeric and string values are accepted, but note that string
values are case sensitive. The default for this setting is "RANDOM"
or 1.
pid %x not a child
(W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for
a process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While
this is fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you
intended.
'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
(F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The
<-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
discovered. Note that the POSIX character classes do not have the
"is" prefix the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words,
it's "[[:print:]]", not "isprint". See perlre.
POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
(F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike
the BSD version, which takes a pid.
POSIX syntax [%c %c] belongs inside character classes%s in regex; marked
by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) Perl thinks that you intended to write a POSIX character
class, but didn't use enough brackets. These POSIX class constructs
[: :], [= =], and [. .] go inside character classes, the [] are
part of the construct, for example: "qr/[012[:alpha:]345]/". What
the regular expression pattern compiled to is probably not what you
were intending. For example, "qr/[:alpha:]/" compiles to a regular
bracketed character class consisting of the four characters ":",
"a", "l", "h", and "p". To specify the POSIX class, it should have
been written "qr/[[:alpha:]]/".
Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently implemented; they are
simply placeholders for future extensions and will cause fatal
errors. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression
the problem was discovered. See perlre.
If the specification of the class was not completely valid, the
message indicates that.
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
whereabouts in the regular expression 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
whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
See perlre.
Possible attempt to put comments in qw() list
(W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; as with
literal strings, comment characters are not ignored, but are instead
treated as literal data. (You may have used different delimiters
than the parentheses shown here; braces are also frequently used.)
You probably wrote something like this:
@list = qw(
a # a comment
b # another comment
);
when you should have written this:
@list = qw(
a
b
);
If you really want comments, build your list the old-fashioned way,
with quotes and commas:
@list = (
'a', # a comment
'b', # another comment
);
Possible attempt to separate words with commas
(W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; therefore
commas aren't needed to separate the items. (You may have used
different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces are
also frequently used.)
You probably wrote something like this:
qw! a, b, c !;
which puts literal commas into some of the list items. Write it
without commas if you don't want them to appear in your data:
qw! a b c !;
Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
(F) An ioctl() or fcntl() returned more than Perl was bargaining
for. Perl guesses a reasonable buffer size, but puts a sentinel
byte at the end of the buffer just in case. This sentinel byte got
clobbered, and Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See
"ioctl" in perlfunc.
Possible precedence issue with control flow operator (%s)
(W syntax) There is a possible problem with the mixing of a control
flow operator (e.g. "return") and a low-precedence operator like
"or". Consider:
sub { return $x or $y; }
This is parsed as:
sub { (return $x) or $y; }
Which is effectively just:
sub { return $x; }
Either use parentheses or the high-precedence variant of the
operator.
Note this may be also triggered for constructs like:
sub { 1 if die; }
Possible precedence problem on bitwise %s operator
(W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in
conjunction with a numeric comparison operator, like this :
if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }
This expression is actually equivalent to "$x & ($y == 0)", due to
the higher precedence of "==". This is probably not what you want.
(If you really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better,
put the parentheses explicitly and write "$x & ($y == 0)").
Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
(W ambiguous) You said something like "m/$\/" in a regex. The regex
"m/foo$\s+bar/m" translates to: match the word 'foo', the output
record separator (see "$\" in perlvar) and the letter 's' (one time
or more) followed by the word 'bar'.
If this is what you intended then you can silence the warning by
using "m/${\}/" (for example: "m/foo${\}s+bar/").
If instead you intended to match the word 'foo' at the end of the
line followed by whitespace and the word 'bar' on the next line then
you can use "m/$(?)\/" (for example: "m/foo$(?)\s+bar/").
Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
(W ambiguous) You said something like '@foo' in a double-quoted
string but there was no array @foo in scope at the time. If you
wanted a literal @foo, then write it as \@foo; otherwise find out
what happened to the array you apparently lost track of.
Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
(S precedence) The old irregular construct
open FOO || die;
is now misinterpreted as
open(FOO || die);
because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary
and list operators. (The old open was a little of both.) You must
put parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator
instead of "||".
Premature end of script headers
See "500 Server error".
printf() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed
sometime before now. Check your control flow.
print() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed
sometime before now. Check your control flow.
Process terminated by SIG%s
(W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while
*nix applications die in silence. It is considered a feature of the
OS/2 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers,
see "Signals" in perlipc. See also "Process terminated by
SIGTERM/SIGINT" in perlos2.
Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
(W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is
useless, since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments.
Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
(S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had
previously been declared or defined with a different function
prototype.
Prototype not terminated
(F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype
definition.
Prototype '%s' overridden by attribute 'prototype(%s)' in %s
(W prototype) A prototype was declared in both the parentheses after
the sub name and via the prototype attribute. The prototype in
parentheses is useless, since it will be replaced by the prototype
from the attribute before it's ever used.
%s on BEGIN block ignored
(W syntax) "BEGIN" blocks are executed immediately after they are
parsed and then thrown away. Any prototypes or attributes are
therefore meaningless and are ignored. You should remove them from
the "BEGIN" block. Note this also means you cannot create a
constant called "BEGIN".
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 whereabouts in the
regular expression the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values
of the {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the
regular expression the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Quantifier {n,m} with n > m can't match in regex
Quantifier {n,m} with n > m can't match in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(W regexp) Minima should be less than or equal to maxima. If you
really want your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}.
Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression in regex m/%s/
(W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier in a place
where it makes no sense, such as on a zero-width assertion. Try
putting the quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example,
the way to match "abc" provided that it is followed by three
repetitions of "xyz" is "/abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/", not
"/abc(?=xyz){3}/".
Range iterator outside integer range
(F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator
".." are outside the range which can be represented by integers
internally. One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical
string increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.
Ranges of ASCII printables should be some subset of "0-9", "A-Z", or
"a-z" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) (only under "use re 'strict'" or within "(?[...])")
Stricter rules help to find typos and other errors. Perhaps you
didn't even intend a range here, if the "-" was meant to be some
other character, or should have been escaped (like "\-"). If you
did intend a range, the one that was used is not portable between
ASCII and EBCDIC platforms, and doesn't have an obvious meaning to a
casual reader.
[3-7] # OK; Obvious and portable
[d-g] # OK; Obvious and portable
[A-Y] # OK; Obvious and portable
[A-z] # WRONG; Not portable; not clear what is meant
[a-Z] # WRONG; Not portable; not clear what is meant
[%-.] # WRONG; Not portable; not clear what is meant
[\x41-Z] # WRONG; Not portable; not obvious to non-geek
(You can force portability by specifying a Unicode range, which
means that the endpoints are specified by "\N{...}", but the meaning
may still not be obvious.) The stricter rules require that ranges
that start or stop with an ASCII character that is not a control
have all their endpoints be the literal character, and not some
escape sequence (like "\x41"), and the ranges must be all digits, or
all uppercase letters, or all lowercase letters.
Ranges of digits should be from the same group in regex; marked by
<-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) (only under "use re 'strict'" or within "(?[...])")
Stricter rules help to find typos and other errors. You included a
range, and at least one of the end points is a decimal digit. Under
the stricter rules, when this happens, both end points should be
digits in the same group of 10 consecutive digits.
readdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
(W io) The dirhandle you're reading from is either closed or not
really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
readline() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed
sometime before now. Check your control flow.
readline() on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) The filehandle you're reading from was never opened.
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.
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
(S debugging) You can't use the -D option unless the code to produce
the desired output is compiled into Perl, which entails some
overhead, which is why it's currently left out of your copy.
Recursive call to Perl_load_module in PerlIO_find_layer
(P) It is currently not permitted to load modules when creating a
filehandle inside an %INC hook. This can happen with "open my $fh,
'<', \$scalar", which implicitly loads PerlIO::scalar. Try loading
PerlIO::scalar explicitly first.
Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s'
(F) While calculating the method resolution order (MRO) of a
package, Perl believes it found an infinite loop in the @ISA
hierarchy. This is a crude check that bails out after 100 levels of
@ISA depth.
Redundant argument in %s
(W redundant) You called a function with more arguments than other
arguments you supplied indicated would be needed. Currently only
emitted when a printf-type format required fewer arguments than were
supplied, but might be used in the future for e.g. "pack" in
perlfunc.
refcnt_dec: fd %d%s
refcnt: fd %d%s
refcnt_inc: fd %d%s
(P) Perl's I/O implementation failed an internal consistency check.
If you see this message, something is very wrong.
Reference found where even-sized list expected
(W misc) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you meant
to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value pairs.
%hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
%hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
%hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
%hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
Reference is already weak
(W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already
weak. Doing so has no effect.
Reference is not weak
(W misc) You have attempted to unweaken a reference that is not
weak. Doing so has no effect.
Reference to invalid group 0 in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You used "\g0" or similar in a regular expression. You may
refer to capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers
(normal backreferences) or with strictly negative integers (relative
backreferences). Using 0 does not make sense.
Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You used something like "\7" in your regular expression, but
there are not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the
expression. If you wanted to have the character with ordinal 7
inserted into the regular expression, prepend zeroes to make it
three digits long: "\007"
The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem
was discovered.
Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(F) You used something like "\k'NAME'" or "\k<NAME>" in your regular
expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing
parentheses such as "(?'NAME'...)" or "(?<NAME>...)". Check if the
name has been spelled correctly both in the backreference and the
declaration.
The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem
was discovered.
Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by <-- HERE
in m/%s/
(F) You used something like "\g{-7}" in your regular expression, but
there are not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in
the expression before where the "\g{-7}" was located.
The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem
was discovered.
regexp memory corruption
(P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular
expression compiler gave it.
Regexp modifier "/%c" may appear a maximum of twice
Regexp modifier "%c" may appear a maximum of twice in regex; marked by
<-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The regular expression pattern had too many occurrences of the
specified modifier. Remove the extraneous ones.
Regexp modifier "%c" may not appear after the "-" in regex; marked by
<-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) Turning off the given modifier has the side effect of turning on
another one. Perl currently doesn't allow this. Reword the regular
expression to use the modifier you want to turn on (and place it
before the minus), instead of the one you want to turn off.
Regexp modifier "/%c" may not appear twice
Regexp modifier "%c" may not appear twice in regex; marked by <-- HERE
in m/%s/
(F) The regular expression pattern had too many occurrences of the
specified modifier. Remove the extraneous ones.
Regexp modifiers "/%c" and "/%c" are mutually exclusive
Regexp modifiers "%c" and "%c" are mutually exclusive in regex; marked
by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The regular expression pattern had more than one of these
mutually exclusive modifiers. Retain only the modifier that is
supposed to be there.
Regexp out of space in regex m/%s/
(P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught
it earlier.
Repeated format line will never terminate (~~ and @#)
(F) Your format contains the ~~ repeat-until-blank sequence and a
numeric field that will never go blank so that the repetition never
terminates. You might use ^# instead. See perlform.
Replacement list is longer than search list
(W misc) You have used a replacement list that is longer than the
search list. So the additional elements in the replacement list are
meaningless.
Required parameter '%s' is missing for %s constructor
(F) You called the constructor for a class that has a required named
parameter, but did not pass that parameter at all.
'(*%s' requires a terminating ':' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You used a construct that needs a colon and pattern argument.
Supply these or check that you are using the right construct.
'%s' resolved to '\o{%s}%d'
As of Perl 5.32, this message is no longer generated. Instead, see
"Non-octal character '%c' terminates \o early. Resolved as "%s"".
(W misc, regexp) You wrote something like "\08", or "\179" in a
double-quotish string. All but the last digit is treated as a
single character, specified in octal. The last digit is the next
character in the string. To tell Perl that this is indeed what you
want, you can use the "\o{ }" syntax, or use exactly three digits to
specify the octal for the character.
Reversed %s= operator
(W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must
always come last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary
operators.
rewinddir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
(W io) The dirhandle you tried to do a rewinddir() on is either
closed or not really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
Scalars leaked: %d
(S internal) Something went wrong in Perl's internal bookkeeping of
scalars: not all scalar variables were deallocated by the time Perl
exited. What this usually indicates is a memory leak, which is of
course bad, especially if the Perl program is intended to be long-
running.
Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s]
(W syntax) You've used an array slice (indicated by @) to select a
single element of an array. Generally it's better to ask for a
scalar value (indicated by $). The difference is that $foo[&bar]
always behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when
evaluating its argument, while @foo[&bar] behaves like a list when
you assign to it, and provides a list context to its subscript,
which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the array
element as a list, you need to look into how references work,
because Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists
for you. See perlref.
Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s}
(W syntax) You've used a hash slice (indicated by @) to select a
single element of a hash. Generally it's better to ask for a scalar
value (indicated by $). The difference is that $foo{&bar} always
behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating
its argument, while @foo{&bar} behaves like a list when you assign
to it, and provides a list context to its subscript, which can do
weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
On the other hand, if you were actually hoping to treat the hash
element as a list, you need to look into how references work,
because Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists
for you. See perlref.
Search pattern not terminated
(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{}
construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
Missing the leading "$" from a variable $m may cause this error.
Note that since Perl 5.10.0 a // can also be the defined-or
construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code
written in Perl 5.10.0 or later that uses the // as the defined-or
can be misparsed by pre-5.10.0 Perls as a non-terminated search
pattern.
seekdir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
(W io) The dirhandle you are doing a seekdir() on is either closed
or not really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
%sseek() on unopened filehandle
(W unopened) You tried to use the seek() or sysseek() function on a
filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed.
select not implemented
(F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call.
Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported
(F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in the
current implementation.
Semicolon seems to be missing
(W semicolon) A nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing
semicolon, or possibly some other missing operator, such as a comma.
semi-panic: attempt to dup freed string
(S internal) The internal newSVsv() routine was called to duplicate
a scalar that had previously been marked as free.
sem%s not implemented
(F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system.
send() on closed socket %s
(W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime
before now. Check your control flow.
Sequence "\c{" invalid
(F) These three characters may not appear in sequence in a double-
quotish context. This message is raised only on non-ASCII platforms
(a different error message is output on ASCII ones). If you were
intending to specify a control character with this sequence, you'll
have to use a different way to specify it.
Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The
<-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
discovered. See perlre.
Sequence (?%c...) 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
whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
See perlre.
Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense.
The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem
was discovered. This may happen when using the "(?^...)" construct
to tell Perl to use the default regular expression modifiers, and
you redundantly specify a default modifier. For other causes, see
perlre.
Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex m/%s/
(F) A regular expression comment must be terminated by a closing
parenthesis. Embedded parentheses aren't allowed. See perlre.
Sequence (?&... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) A named reference of the form "(?&...)" was missing the final
closing parenthesis after the name. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts
in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
Sequence (?%c... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) A named group of the form "(?'...')" or "(?<...>)" was missing
the final closing quote or angle bracket. The <-- HERE shows
whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
Sequence (%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) A lookahead assertion "(?=...)" or "(?!...)" or lookbehind
assertion "(?<=...)" or "(?<!...)" was missing the final closing
parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular
expression the problem was discovered.
Sequence (?(%c... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) A named reference of the form "(?('...')...)" or "(?(<...>)...)"
was missing the final closing quote or angle bracket after the name.
The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem
was discovered.
Sequence (?... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) There was no matching closing parenthesis for the '('. The
<-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was
discovered.
Sequence \%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument following
the escape sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly
written.
Sequence (?{...}) not terminated with ')'
(F) The end of the perl code contained within the {...} must be
followed immediately by a ')'.
Sequence (?P>... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) A named reference of the form "(?P>...)" was missing the final
closing parenthesis after the name. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts
in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
Sequence (?P<... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) A named group of the form "(?P<...>')" was missing the final
closing angle bracket. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the
regular expression the problem was discovered.
Sequence ?P=... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) A named reference of the form "(?P=...)" was missing the final
closing parenthesis after the name. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts
in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
Sequence (?R) not terminated in regex m/%s/
(F) An "(?R)" or "(?0)" sequence in a regular expression was missing
the final parenthesis.
500 Server error
(A) This is the error message generally seen in a browser window
when trying to run a CGI program (including SSI) over the web. The
actual error text varies widely from server to server. The most
frequently-seen variants are "500 Server error", "Method (something)
not permitted", "Document contains no data", "Premature end of
script headers", and "Did not produce a valid header".
This is a CGI error, not a Perl error.
You need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by
the user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the
user account you tested it under), does not rely on any environment
variables (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and
isn't in a location where the CGI server can't find it, basically,
more or less. Please see the following for more information:
https://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/
You should also look at perlfaq9.
setegid() not implemented
(F) You tried to assign to $), and your operating system doesn't
support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least
Configure didn't think so.
seteuid() not implemented
(F) You tried to assign to $>, and your operating system doesn't
support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least
Configure didn't think so.
setpgrp can't take arguments
(F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no
arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and
process group ID.
setrgid() not implemented
(F) You tried to assign to $(, and your operating system doesn't
support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least
Configure didn't think so.
setruid() not implemented
(F) You tried to assign to $<, and your operating system doesn't
support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least
Configure didn't think so.
setsockopt() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to set a socket option on a closed socket. Did
you forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See
"setsockopt" in perlfunc.
Setting $/ to a reference to %s is forbidden
(F) You assigned a reference to a scalar to $/ where the referenced
item is not a positive integer. In older perls this appeared to
work the same as setting it to "undef" but was in fact internally
different, less efficient and with very bad luck could have resulted
in your file being split by a stringified form of the reference.
In Perl 5.20.0 this was changed so that it would be exactly the same
as setting $/ to undef, with the exception that this warning would
be thrown.
You are recommended to change your code to set $/ to "undef"
explicitly if you wish to slurp the file. As of Perl 5.28 assigning
$/ to a reference to an integer which isn't positive is a fatal
error.
Setting $/ to %s reference is forbidden
(F) You tried to assign a reference to a non integer to $/. In
older Perls this would have behaved similarly to setting it to a
reference to a positive integer, where the integer was the address
of the reference. As of Perl 5.20.0 this is a fatal error, to allow
future versions of Perl to use non-integer refs for more interesting
purposes.
shm%s not implemented
(F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system.
!=~ should be !~
(W syntax) The non-matching operator is !~, not !=~. !=~ will be
interpreted as the != (numeric not equal) and ~ (1's complement)
operators: probably not what you intended.
/%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
(W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected to find a
string, as in the first argument to "join". Perl will treat the
true or false result of matching the pattern against $_ as the
string, which is probably not what you had in mind.
shutdown() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a
bit superfluous.
SIG%s handler "%s" not defined
(W signal) The signal handler named in %SIG doesn't, in fact, exist.
Perhaps you put it into the wrong package?
Slab leaked from cv %p
(S) If you see this message, then something is seriously wrong with
the internal bookkeeping of op trees. An op tree needed to be freed
after a compilation error, but could not be found, so it was leaked
instead.
sleep(%u) too large
(W overflow) You called "sleep" with a number that was larger than
it can reliably handle and "sleep" probably slept for less time than
requested.
Slurpy parameter not last
(F) In a subroutine signature, you put something after a slurpy
(array or hash) parameter. The slurpy parameter takes all the
available arguments, so there can't be any left to fill later
parameters.
Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks encapsulation
(F) You should not use the "~~" operator on an object that does not
overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's underlying structure
for the smart match.
Smartmatch is deprecated
(D deprecated::smartmatch) This warning is emitted if you use the
smartmatch ("~~") operator. This is a deprecated feature.
Particularly, its behavior is noticed for being unnecessarily
complex and unintuitive, and it will be removed in Perl 5.42.
Sorry, hash keys must be smaller than 2**31 bytes
(F) You tried to create a hash containing a very large key, where
"very large" means that it needs at least 2 gigabytes to store.
Unfortunately, Perl doesn't yet handle such large hash keys. You
should reconsider your design to avoid hashing such a long string
directly.
sort is now a reserved word
(F) An ancient error message that almost nobody ever runs into
anymore. But before sort was a keyword, people sometimes used it as
a filehandle.
Source filters apply only to byte streams
(F) You tried to activate a source filter (usually by loading a
source filter module) within a string passed to "eval". This is not
permitted under the "unicode_eval" feature. Consider using
"evalbytes" instead. See feature.
splice() offset past end of array
(W misc) You attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of
the array passed to splice(). Splicing will instead commence at the
end of the array, rather than past it. If this isn't what you want,
try explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array =
$offset. See "splice" in perlfunc.
Split loop
(P) The split was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a split shouldn't
iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what
happened.) See "split" in perlfunc.
Statement unlikely to be reached
(W exec) You did an exec() with some statement after it other than a
die(). This is almost always an error, because exec() never returns
unless there was a failure. You probably wanted to use system()
instead, which does return. To suppress this warning, put the
exec() in a block by itself.
"state" subroutine %s can't be in a package
(F) Lexically scoped subroutines aren't in a package, so it doesn't
make sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the
front.
"state %s" used in sort comparison
(W syntax) The package variables $a and $b are used for sort
comparisons. You used $a or $b in as an operand to the "<=>" or
"cmp" operator inside a sort comparison block, and the variable had
earlier been declared as a lexical variable. Either qualify the
sort variable with the package name, or rename the lexical variable.
"state" variable %s can't be in a package
(F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't
make sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the
front. Use local() if you want to localize a package variable.
stat() on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle
that was either never opened or has since been closed.
Strings with code points over 0xFF may not be mapped into in-memory file
handles
(W utf8) You tried to open a reference to a scalar for read or
append where the scalar contained code points over 0xFF. In-memory
files model on-disk files and can only contain bytes.
Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
(P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by
importation stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but
explicit calls to "can" may break this.
Subroutine attributes must come before the signature
(F) When subroutine signatures are enabled, any subroutine
attributes must come before the signature. Note that this order was
the opposite in versions 5.22..5.26. So:
sub foo :lvalue ($x, $y) { ... } # 5.20 and 5.28 +
sub foo ($x, $y) :lvalue { ... } # 5.22 .. 5.26
Subroutine "&%s" is not available
(W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is
attempting to capture an outer lexical subroutine that is not
currently available. This can happen for one of two reasons.
First, the lexical subroutine may be declared in an outer anonymous
subroutine that has not yet been created. (Remember that named subs
are created at compile time, while anonymous subs are created at
run-time.) For example,
sub { my sub a {...} sub f { \&a } }
At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current "a" sub,
since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely,
the following won't give a warning since the anonymous subroutine
has by now been created and is live:
sub { my sub a {...} eval 'sub f { \&a }' }->();
The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a lexical
subroutine that has gone out of scope, for example,
sub f {
my sub a {...}
sub { eval '\&a' }
}
f()->();
Here, when the '\&a' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not
currently being executed, so its &a is not available for capture.
"%s" subroutine &%s masks earlier declaration in same %s
(W shadow) A "my" or "state" subroutine has been redeclared in the
current scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to
the previous instance. This is almost always a typographical error.
Note that the earlier subroutine will still exist until the end of
the scope or until all closure references to it are destroyed.
Subroutine %s redefined
(W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning,
say
{
no warnings 'redefine';
eval "sub name { ... }";
}
Subroutine "%s" will not stay shared
(W closure) An inner (nested) named subroutine is referencing a "my"
subroutine defined in an outer named subroutine.
When the inner subroutine is called, it will see the value of the
outer subroutine's lexical subroutine as it was before and during
the *first* call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the
first call to the outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer
subroutines will no longer share a common value for the lexical
subroutine. In other words, it will no longer be shared. This will
especially make a difference if the lexical subroutines accesses
lexical variables declared in its surrounding scope.
This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
anonymous, using the "sub {}" syntax. When inner anonymous subs
that reference lexical subroutines in outer subroutines are created,
they are automatically rebound to the current values of such lexical
subs.
Substitution loop
(P) The substitution was looping infinitely. (Obviously, a
substitution shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters
of input, which is what happened.) See the discussion of
substitution in "Regexp Quote-Like Operators" in perlop.
Substitution pattern not terminated
(F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or
s{}{} construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting
level. Missing the leading "$" from variable $s may cause this
error.
Substitution replacement not terminated
(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{}
construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level.
Missing the leading "$" from variable $s may cause this error.
substr outside of string
(W substr)(F) You tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside
of a string. That is, the absolute value of the offset was larger
than the length of the string. See "substr" in perlfunc. This
warning is fatal if substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left
hand side of an assignment or as a subroutine argument for example).
sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
(P) Perl tried to force the upgrade of an SV to a type which was
actually inferior to its current type.
Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by
<-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) A (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most
two branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one
or both to contain alternation, such as using "this|that|other",
enclose it in clustering parentheses:
(?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)
The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem
was discovered. See perlre.
Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause)
construct is not known. The condition must be one of the following:
(1) (2) ... true if 1st, 2nd, etc., capture matched
(<NAME>) ('NAME') true if named capture matched
(?=...) (?<=...) true if subpattern matches
(?!...) (?<!...) true if subpattern fails to match
(?{ CODE }) true if code returns a true value
(R) true if evaluating inside recursion
(R1) (R2) ... true if directly inside capture group 1, 2, etc.
(R&NAME) true if directly inside named capture
(DEFINE) always false; for defining named subpatterns
The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem
was discovered. See perlre.
Switch (?(condition)... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(F) You omitted to close a (?(condition)...) block somewhere in the
pattern. Add a closing parenthesis in the appropriate position.
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.
syntax error
(F) Probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
A keyword is misspelled.
A semicolon is missing.
A comma is missing.
An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
An opening or closing brace is missing.
A closing quote is missing.
Often there will be another error message associated with the syntax
error giving more information. (Sometimes it helps to turn on -w.)
The error message itself often tells you where it was in the line
when it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several
tokens before this, because Perl is good at understanding random
input. Occasionally the line number may be misleading, and once in
a blue moon the only way to figure out what's triggering the error
is to call "perl -c" repeatedly, chopping away half the program each
time to see if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version
of 20 questions.
syntax error at line %d: '%s' unexpected
(A) You've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell
instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script
into Perl yourself.
syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
(F) This error is likely to occur if you run a perl5 script through
a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are "use
strict" or "my $var" or "our $var".
Syntax error in (?[...]) in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) Perl could not figure out what you meant inside this construct;
this notifies you that it is giving up trying.
%s syntax OK
(F) The final summary message when a "perl -c" succeeds.
sysread() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle.
sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never
opened.
System V %s is not implemented on this machine
(F) You tried to do something with a function beginning with "sem",
"shm", or "msg" but that System V IPC is not implemented in your
machine. In some machines the functionality can exist but be
unconfigured. Consult your system support.
syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed
sometime before now. Check your control flow.
"-T" and "-B" not implemented on filehandles
(F) Perl can't peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it
doesn't know about your kind of stdio. You'll have to use a
filename instead.
Target of goto is too deeply nested
(F) You tried to use "goto" to reach a label that was too deeply
nested for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing.
telldir() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s
(W io) The dirhandle you tried to telldir() is either closed or not
really a dirhandle. Check your control flow.
tell() on unopened filehandle
(W unopened) You tried to use the tell() function on a filehandle
that was either never opened or has since been closed.
The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia.
(F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine,
probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they
think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that
they will continue to pretend that it is. And if you quote me on
that, I will deny it.
The experimental declared_refs feature is not enabled
(F) To declare references to variables, as in "my \%x", you must
first enable the feature:
no warnings "experimental::declared_refs";
use feature "declared_refs";
The %s function is unimplemented
(F) The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture,
according to the probings of Configure.
The private_use feature is experimental
(S experimental::private_use) This feature is actually a hook for
future use.
The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
(F) It makes no sense to test the current stat buffer for symbolic
linkhood if the last stat that wrote to the stat buffer already went
past the symlink to get to the real file. Use an actual filename
instead.
The Unicode property wildcards feature is experimental
(S experimental::uniprop_wildcards) This feature is experimental and
its behavior may in any future release of perl. See "Wildcards in
Property Values" in perlunicode.
The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
(F) This attribute was never supported on "my" or "sub"
declarations.
This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
(W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS. You tried to change or
delete an element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your
copy of Perl wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv()
function. You'll need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or
redefine PERL_ENV_TABLES (see perlvms) so that the environ array
isn't the target of the change to %ENV which produced the warning.
This Perl has not been built with support for randomized hash key
traversal but something called Perl_hv_rand_set().
(F) Something has attempted to use an internal API call which
depends on Perl being compiled with the default support for
randomized hash key traversal, but this Perl has been compiled
without it. You should report this warning to the relevant upstream
party, or recompile perl with default options.
This use of my() in false conditional is no longer allowed
(F) You used a declaration similar to "my $x if 0". There has been
a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable not to be
cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false
conditional. Some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind
of static variable. Since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want
people relying on this behavior. You can achieve a similar static
effect by declaring the variable in a separate block outside the
function, eg
sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }
becomes
{ my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }
Beginning with perl 5.10.0, you can also use "state" variables to
have lexicals that are initialized only once (see feature):
sub f { state $x; return $x++ }
This use of my() in a false conditional was deprecated beginning in
Perl 5.10 and became a fatal error in Perl 5.30.
Timeout waiting for another thread to define \p{%s}
(F) The first time a user-defined property ("User-Defined Character
Properties" in perlunicode) is used, its definition is looked up and
converted into an internal form for more efficient handling in
subsequent uses. There could be a race if two or more threads tried
to do this processing nearly simultaneously. Instead, a critical
section is created around this task, locking out all but one thread
from doing it. This message indicates that the thread that is doing
the conversion is taking an unexpectedly long time. The timeout
exists solely to prevent deadlock; it's long enough that the system
was likely thrashing and about to crash. There is no real remedy
but rebooting.
times not implemented
(F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I
suspect you're not running on Unix.
"-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
(X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
-T option (or the -t option), but Perl was not invoked with -T in
its command line. This is an error because, by the time Perl
discovers a -T in a script, it's too late to properly taint
everything from the environment. So Perl gives up.
If the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #!
mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed
by editing the #! line so that the -%c option is a part of Perl's
first argument: e.g. change "perl -n -%c" to "perl -%c -n".
If the Perl script is being executed as "perl scriptname", then the
-%c option must appear on the command line: "perl -%c scriptname".
To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
(F) You tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst,
uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you
specified an illegal mapping. See "User-Defined Character
Properties" in perlunicode.
Too deeply nested ()-groups
(F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep
nesting level.
Too few args to syscall
(F) There has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify
the system call to call, silly dilly.
Too few arguments for subroutine '%s' (got %d; expected %d)
(F) A subroutine using a signature fewer arguments than required by
the signature. The caller of the subroutine is presumably at fault.
The message attempts to include the name of the called subroutine.
If the subroutine has been aliased, the subroutine's original name
will be shown, regardless of what name the caller used. It will also
indicate the number of arguments given and the number expected.
Too few arguments for subroutine '%s' (got %d; expected at least %d)
Similar to the previous message but for subroutines that accept a
variable number of arguments.
Too late for "-%s" option
(X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the
-M, -m or -C option.
In the case of -M and -m, this is an error because those options are
not intended for use inside scripts. Use the "use" pragma instead.
The -C option only works if it is specified on the command line as
well (with the same sequence of letters or numbers following).
Either specify this option on the command line, or, if your system
supports it, make your script executable and run it directly instead
of passing it to perl.
Too late to run %s block
(W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time
proper, when the opportunity to run them has already passed.
Perhaps you are loading a file with "require" or "do" when you
should be using "use" instead. Or perhaps you should put the
"require" or "do" inside a BEGIN block.
Too many args to syscall
(F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall().
Too many arguments for %s
(F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified.
Too many arguments for subroutine '%s' (got %d; expected %d)
(F) A subroutine using a signature received more arguments than
permitted by the signature. The caller of the subroutine is
presumably at fault.
The message attempts to include the name of the called subroutine.
If the subroutine has been aliased, the subroutine's original name
will be shown, regardless of what name the caller used. It will also
indicate the number of arguments given and the number expected.
Too many arguments for subroutine '%s' (got %d; expected at most %d)
Similar to the previous message but for subroutines that accept a
variable number of arguments.
Too many nested open parens in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You have exceeded the number of open "(" parentheses that
haven't been matched by corresponding closing ones. This limit
prevents eating up too much memory. It is initially set to 1000,
but may be changed by setting "${^RE_COMPILE_RECURSION_LIMIT}" to
some other value. This may need to be done in a BEGIN block before
the regular expression pattern is compiled.
Too many nested BEGIN blocks, maximum of %d allowed
(F) You have executed code that nests too many BEGIN blocks inside
of each other, either explicitly as BEGIN{} or implicitly as use
statements. This limit defaults to a rather high number which
should not be exceeded in normal circumstances, and triggering
likely indicates something is very wrong in your code. For instance
infinite recursion of eval and BEGIN blocks is known to trigger this
error.
If you know that you have good reason to exceed the limit you can
change it by setting "${^MAX_NESTED_EVAL_BEGIN_BLOCKS}" to a
different value from the default of 1000.
Too many capture groups (limit is %d) in regex m/%s/
(F) You have too many capture groups in your regex pattern. You need
to rework your pattern to use less capture groups.
Too many )'s
(A) You've accidentally run your script through csh instead of Perl.
Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
Too many ('s
(A) You've accidentally run your script through csh instead of Perl.
Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
(F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash.
Backslash it. See perlre.
Transliteration pattern not terminated
(F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or
tr[][] or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading "$" from
variables $tr or $y may cause this error.
Transliteration replacement not terminated
(F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][],
y/// or y[][] construct.
Treating %s::INIT block as BEGIN block as workaround
(S) A package is using an old version of "Module::Install::DSL" to
install, which makes unsafe assumptions about when INIT blocks will
be called. Because "Module::Install::DSL" is used to install other
modules and is difficult to upgrade we have a special workaround in
place to deal with this. Unless you are a maintainer of an affected
module you can ignore this warning. We emit it only as a sanity
check.
'%s' trapped by operation mask
(F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which
it's disallowed. See Safe.
truncate not implemented
(F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that
Configure knows about.
try/catch/finally is experimental
(S experimental::try) This warning is emitted if you use the "try"
and "catch" syntax with a "finally" block. This syntax is currently
experimental and its behaviour may change in future releases of
Perl.
Type of arg %d to &CORE::%s must be %s
(F) The subroutine in question in the CORE package requires its
argument to be a hard reference to data of the specified type.
Overloading is ignored, so a reference to an object that is not the
specified type, but nonetheless has overloading to handle it, will
still not be accepted.
Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
(F) This function requires the argument in that position to be of a
certain type. Arrays must be @NAME or "@{EXPR}". Hashes must be
%NAME or "%{EXPR}". No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the
{EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See perlref.
umask not implemented
(F) Your machine doesn't implement the umask function and you tried
to use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700).
UNIVERSAL does not export anything
(F) You asked UNIVERSAL to export something, but UNIVERSAL is the
base class for all classes and contains no exportable symbols.
Unbalanced context: %d more PUSHes than POPs
(S internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
many execution contexts were entered and left.
Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
(S internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
many values were temporarily localized.
Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
(S internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
many blocks were entered and left.
Unbalanced string table refcount: (%d) for "%s"
(S internal) On exit, Perl found some strings remaining in the
shared string table used for copy on write and for hash keys. The
entries should have been freed, so this indicates a bug somewhere.
Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
(S internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how
many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
Undefined format "%s" called
(F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really
in another package? See perlform.
Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
(F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist.
Perhaps it's in a different package? See "sort" in perlfunc.
Undefined subroutine &%s called
(F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it
has since been undefined.
Undefined subroutine called
(F) The anonymous subroutine you're trying to call hasn't been
defined, or if it was, it has since been undefined.
Undefined subroutine in sort
(F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't
seem to have been defined yet. See "sort" in perlfunc.
Undefined top format "%s" called
(F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really
in another package? See perlform.
Undefined value assigned to typeglob
(W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la "*foo =
undef". This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean
"undef *foo".
%s: Undefined variable
(A) You've accidentally run your script through csh instead of Perl.
Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
Unescaped left brace in regex is illegal here in regex; marked by
<-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The simple rule to remember, if you want to match a literal "{"
character (U+007B "LEFT CURLY BRACKET") in a regular expression
pattern, is to escape each literal instance of it in some way.
Generally easiest is to precede it with a backslash, like "\{" or
enclose it in square brackets ("[{]"). If the pattern delimiters
are also braces, any matching right brace ("}") should also be
escaped to avoid confusing the parser, for example,
qr{abc\{def\}ghi}
Forcing literal "{" characters to be escaped enables the Perl
language to be extended in various ways in future releases. To
avoid needlessly breaking existing code, the restriction is not
enforced in contexts where there are unlikely to ever be extensions
that could conflict with the use there of "{" as a literal. Those
that are not potentially ambiguous do not warn; those that are do
raise a non-deprecation warning.
The contexts where no warnings or errors are raised are:
• as the first character in a pattern, or following "^" indicating
to anchor the match to the beginning of a line.
• as the first character following a "|" indicating alternation.
• as the first character in a parenthesized grouping like
/foo({bar)/
/foo(?:{bar)/
• as the first character following a quantifier
/\s*{/
Unescaped left brace in regex is passed through in regex; marked by
<-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) The simple rule to remember, if you want to match a
literal "{" character (U+007B "LEFT CURLY BRACKET") in a regular
expression pattern, is to escape each literal instance of it in some
way. Generally easiest is to precede it with a backslash, like "\{"
or enclose it in square brackets ("[{]"). If the pattern delimiters
are also braces, any matching right brace ("}") should also be
escaped to avoid confusing the parser, for example,
qr{abc\{def\}ghi}
Forcing literal "{" characters to be escaped enables the Perl
language to be extended in various ways in future releases. To
avoid needlessly breaking existing code, the restriction is not
enforced in contexts where there are unlikely to ever be extensions
that could conflict with the use there of "{" as a literal. Those
that are not potentially ambiguous do not warn; those that are raise
this warning. This makes sure that an inadvertent typo doesn't
silently cause the pattern to compile to something unintended.
The contexts where no warnings or errors are raised are:
• as the first character in a pattern, or following "^" indicating
to anchor the match to the beginning of a line.
• as the first character following a "|" indicating alternation.
• as the first character in a parenthesized grouping like
/foo({bar)/
/foo(?:{bar)/
• as the first character following a quantifier
/\s*{/
Unescaped literal '%c' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) (only under "use re 'strict'")
Within the scope of "use re 'strict'" in a regular expression
pattern, you included an unescaped "}" or "]" which was interpreted
literally. These two characters are sometimes metacharacters, and
sometimes literals, depending on what precedes them in the pattern.
This is unlike the similar ")" which is always a metacharacter
unless escaped.
This action at a distance, perhaps a large distance, can lead to
Perl silently misinterpreting what you meant, so when you specify
that you want extra checking by "use re 'strict'", this warning is
generated. If you meant the character as a literal, simply confirm
that to Perl by preceding the character with a backslash, or make it
into a bracketed character class (like "[}]"). If you meant it as
closing a corresponding "[" or "{", you'll need to look back through
the pattern to find out why that isn't happening.
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.
Unexpected binary operator '%c' with no preceding operand in regex;
marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You had something like this:
(?[ | \p{Digit} ])
where the "|" is a binary operator with an operand on the right, but
no operand on the left.
Unexpected character in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You had something like this:
(?[ z ])
Within "(?[ ])", no literal characters are allowed unless they are
within an inner pair of square brackets, like
(?[ [ z ] ])
Another possibility is that you forgot a backslash. Perl isn't
smart enough to figure out what you really meant.
Unexpected characters while parsing class :isa attribute: %s
(F) You tried to specify something other than a single class name
with an optional trailing verison number as the value for a "class"
":isa" attribute. This confused the parser.
Unexpected exit %u
(S) exit() was called or the script otherwise finished gracefully
when "PERL_EXIT_WARN" was set in "PL_exit_flags".
Unexpected exit failure %d
(S) An uncaught die() was called when "PERL_EXIT_WARN" was set in
"PL_exit_flags".
Unexpected ')' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You had something like this:
(?[ ( \p{Digit} + ) ])
The ")" is out-of-place. Something apparently was supposed to be
combined with the digits, or the "+" shouldn't be there, or
something like that. Perl can't figure out what was intended.
Unexpected ']' with no following ')' in (?[... in regex; marked by <--
HERE in m/%s/
(F) While parsing an extended character class a ']' character was
encountered at a point in the definition where the only legal use of
']' is to close the character class definition as part of a '])',
you may have forgotten the close paren, or otherwise confused the
parser.
Unexpected '(' with no preceding operator in regex; marked by <-- HERE
in m/%s/
(F) You had something like this:
(?[ \p{Digit} ( \p{Lao} + \p{Thai} ) ])
There should be an operator before the "(", as there's no indication
as to how the digits are to be combined with the characters in the
Lao and Thai scripts.
Unicode non-character U+%X is not recommended for open interchange
(S nonchar) Certain codepoints, such as U+FFFE and U+FFFF, are
defined by the Unicode standard to be non-characters. Those are
legal codepoints, but are reserved for internal use; so,
applications shouldn't attempt to exchange them. An application may
not be expecting any of these characters at all, and receiving them
may lead to bugs. If you know what you are doing you can turn off
this warning by "no warnings 'nonchar';".
This is not really a "severe" error, but it is supposed to be raised
by default even if warnings are not enabled, and currently the only
way to do that in Perl is to mark it as serious.
Unicode property wildcard not terminated
(F) A Unicode property wildcard looks like a delimited regular
expression pattern (all within the braces of the enclosing
"\p{...}". The closing delimtter to match the opening one was not
found. If the opening one is escaped by preceding it with a
backslash, the closing one must also be so escaped.
Unicode string properties are not implemented in (?[...]) in regex;
marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) A Unicode string property is one which expands to a sequence of
multiple characters. An example is "\p{name=KATAKANA LETTER AINU
P}", which consists of the sequence "\N{KATAKANA LETTER SMALL H}"
followed by "\N{COMBINING KATAKANA-HIRAGANA SEMI-VOICED SOUND
MARK}". Extended character classes, "(?[...])" currently cannot
handle these.
Unicode surrogate U+%X is illegal in UTF-8
(S surrogate) You had a UTF-16 surrogate in a context where they are
not considered acceptable. These code points, between U+D800 and
U+DFFF (inclusive), are used by Unicode only for UTF-16. However,
Perl internally allows all unsigned integer code points (up to the
size limit available on your platform), including surrogates. But
these can cause problems when being input or output, which is likely
where this message came from. If you really really know what you
are doing you can turn off this warning by "no warnings
'surrogate';".
Unimplemented
(F) In Perl 5.12 and above, you have executed an ellipsis statement.
This is a bare "...;", meant to be used to allow you to outline code
that is to be written, but is not complete, similar to the
following:
sub not_done_yet {
my($self, $arg1, $arg2) = @_;
...
}
If not_done_yet() is called, Perl will die with an "Unimplemented"
error at the line containing "...".
Unknown charname '%s'
(F) The name you used inside "\N{}" is unknown to Perl. Check the
spelling. You can say "use charnames ":loose"" to not have to be so
precise about spaces, hyphens, and capitalization on standard
Unicode names. (Any custom aliases that have been created must be
specified exactly, regardless of whether ":loose" is used or not.)
This error may also happen if the "\N{}" is not in the scope of the
corresponding "use charnames".
Unknown '(*...)' construct '%s' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The "(*" was followed by something that the regular expression
compiler does not recognize. Check your spelling.
Unknown error
(P) Perl was about to print an error message in $@, but the $@
variable did not exist, even after an attempt to create it.
Unknown locale category %d
Unknown locale category %d; can't set it to %s
(W locale) You used a locale category that perl doesn't recognize,
so it cannot carry out your request. Check that you are using a
valid category. If so, see "Multi-threaded" in perllocale for
advice on reporting this as a bug, and for modifying perl locally to
accommodate your needs.
Unknown open() mode '%s'
(F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list
of valid modes: "<", ">", ">>", "+<", "+>", "+>>", "-|", "|-", "<&",
">&".
Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
(W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl
I/O system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external
and internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as
"mmap", are not supported in all environments. If your program
didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the
result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV
before iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the
stream of data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps
trying to subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.
Unknown regexp modifier "/%s"
(F) Alphanumerics immediately following the closing delimiter of a
regular expression pattern are interpreted by Perl as modifier flags
for the regex. One of the ones you specified is invalid. One way
this can happen is if you didn't put in white space between the end
of the regex and a following alphanumeric operator:
if ($x =~ /foo/and $bar == 3) { ... }
The "a" is a valid modifier flag, but the "n" is not, and raises
this error. Likely what was meant instead was:
if ($x =~ /foo/ and $bar == 3) { ... }
Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
(W) You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
Unknown switch condition (?(...)) in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause)
construct is not known. The condition must be one of the following:
(1) (2) ... true if 1st, 2nd, etc., capture matched
(<NAME>) ('NAME') true if named capture matched
(?=...) (?<=...) true if subpattern matches
(*pla:...) (*plb:...) true if subpattern matches; also
(*positive_lookahead:...)
(*positive_lookbehind:...)
(*nla:...) (*nlb:...) true if subpattern fails to match; also
(*negative_lookahead:...)
(*negative_lookbehind:...)
(?{ CODE }) true if code returns a true value
(R) true if evaluating inside recursion
(R1) (R2) ... true if directly inside capture group 1, 2,
etc.
(R&NAME) true if directly inside named capture
(DEFINE) always false; for defining named subpatterns
The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem
was discovered. See perlre.
Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
(F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See perlrun
documentation of the "-C" switch for the list of known options.
Unknown Unicode option value %d
(F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See perlrun
documentation of the "-C" switch for the list of known options.
Unknown user-defined property name \p{%s}
(F) You specified to use a property within the "\p{...}" which was a
syntactically valid user-defined property, but no definition was
found for it by the time one was required to proceed. Check your
spelling. See "User-Defined Character Properties" in perlunicode.
Unknown verb pattern '%s' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You either made a typo or have incorrectly put a "*" quantifier
after an open brace in your pattern. Check the pattern and review
perlre for details on legal verb patterns.
Unknown warnings category '%s'
(F) An error issued by the "warnings" pragma. You specified a
warnings category that is unknown to perl at this point.
Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a
module (e.g. "use warnings 'File::Find'"), you must have loaded this
module first.
Unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The brackets around a character class must match. If you wish
to include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or
put it first. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular
expression the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
Unmatched ) in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) Unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular
expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding
the matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the
regular expression the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Unmatched right %s bracket
(F) The lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than
opening ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket.
As a general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near
the place you were last editing.
Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
(W reserved) You used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a
reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or
capitalize it somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might
also declare it as a subroutine.
Unrecognized character %s; marked by <-- HERE after %s near column %d
(F) The Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified
character in your Perl script (or eval) near the specified column.
Perhaps you tried to run a compressed script, a binary program, or
a directory as a Perl program.
Unrecognized class attribute %s
(F) You attempted to add a named attribute to a "class" definition,
but perl does not recognise the name of the requested attribute.
Unrecognized escape \%c in character class in regex; marked by <-- HERE
in m/%s/
(F) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
recognized by Perl inside character classes. This is a fatal error
when the character class is used within "(?[ ])".
Unrecognized escape \%c in character class passed through in regex;
marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
recognized by Perl inside character classes. The character was
understood literally, but this may change in a future version of
Perl. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the
escape was discovered.
Unrecognized escape \%c passed through
(W misc) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
recognized by Perl. The character was understood literally, but
this may change in a future version of Perl.
Unrecognized escape \%s passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination which is not
recognized by Perl. The character(s) were understood literally, but
this may change in a future version of Perl. The <-- HERE shows
whereabouts in the regular expression the escape was discovered.
Unrecognized field attribute %s
(F) You attempted to add a named attribute to a "field" definition,
but perl does not recognise the name of the requested attribute.
Unrecognised parameters for "%s" constructor: %s
(F) You called new on a class but supplied a parameter name that
didn't match a class field name.
Unrecognized signal name "%s"
(F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not
recognized. Say "kill -l" in your shell to see the valid signal
names on your system.
Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
(F) You specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. (If
you think you didn't do that, check the #! line to see if it's
supplying the bad switch on your behalf.)
Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
(W newline) A file operation was attempted on a filename, and that
operation failed, PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline,
PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. See "chomp" in
perlfunc.
Unsupported directory function "%s" called
(F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir().
Unsupported function %s
(F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function,
apparently. At least, Configure doesn't think so.
Unsupported function fork
(F) Your version of executable does not support forking.
Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different
flavors of Perl executables, some of which may support fork, some
not. Try changing the name you call Perl by to "perl_", "perl__",
and so on.
Unsupported script encoding %s
(F) Your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM)
which declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot read.
Unsupported socket function "%s" called
(F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or
at least that's what Configure thought.
Unterminated '(*...' argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You used a pattern of the form "(*...:...)" but did not
terminate the pattern with a ")". Fix the pattern and retry.
Unterminated attribute list
(F) The lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the
start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a
block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous
attribute too soon. See attributes.
Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
(F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis character while
parsing an attribute list, but the matching closing (right)
parenthesis character was not found. You may need to add (or
remove) a backslash character to get your parentheses to balance.
See attributes.
Unterminated compressed integer
(F) An argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER
compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer.
See "pack" in perlfunc.
Unterminated '(*...' construct in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You used a pattern of the form "(*...)" but did not terminate
the pattern with a ")". Fix the pattern and retry.
Unterminated delimiter for here document
(F) This message occurs when a here document label has an initial
quotation mark but the final quotation mark is missing. Perhaps you
wrote:
<<"foo
instead of:
<<"foo"
Unterminated \g... pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
Unterminated \g{...} pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) In a regular expression, you had a "\g" that wasn't followed by
a proper group reference. In the case of "\g{", the closing brace
is missing; otherwise the "\g" must be followed by an integer. Fix
the pattern and retry.
Unterminated <> operator
(F) The lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was
expecting a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle
bracket, and not finding it. Chances are you left some needed
parentheses out earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less
than".
Unterminated verb pattern argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You used a pattern of the form "(*VERB:ARG)" but did not
terminate the pattern with a ")". Fix the pattern and retry.
Unterminated verb pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You used a pattern of the form "(*VERB)" but did not terminate
the pattern with a ")". Fix the pattern and retry.
untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
(W untie) A copy of the object returned from "tie" (or "tied") was
still valid when "untie" was called.
Usage: POSIX::%s(%s)
(F) You called a POSIX function with incorrect arguments. See
"FUNCTIONS" in POSIX for more information.
Usage: Win32::%s(%s)
(F) You called a Win32 function with incorrect arguments. See Win32
for more information.
$[ used in %s (did you mean $] ?)
(W syntax) You used $[ in a comparison, such as:
if ($[ > 5.006) {
...
}
You probably meant to use $] instead. $[ is the base for indexing
arrays. $] is the Perl version number in decimal.
Use "%s" instead of "%s"
(F) The second listed construct is no longer legal. Use the first
one instead.
Useless assignment to a temporary
(W misc) You assigned to an lvalue subroutine, but what the
subroutine returned was a temporary scalar about to be discarded, so
the assignment had no effect.
Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has
no meaning unless removed from the entire regexp:
if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }
must be written as
if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }
The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem
was discovered. See perlre.
Useless localization of %s
(W syntax) The localization of lvalues such as local($x=10) is
legal, but in fact the local() currently has no effect. This may
change at some point in the future, but in the meantime such code is
discouraged.
Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) You have used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has
no meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }
must be written as
if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }
The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem
was discovered. See perlre.
Useless use of attribute "const"
(W misc) The "const" attribute has no effect except on anonymous
closure prototypes. You applied it to a subroutine via
attributes.pm. This is only useful inside an attribute handler for
an anonymous subroutine.
Useless use of /d modifier in transliteration operator
(W misc) You have used the /d modifier where the searchlist has the
same length as the replacelist. See perlop for more information
about the /d modifier.
Useless use of \E
(W misc) You have a \E in a double-quotish string without a "\U",
"\L" or "\Q" preceding it.
Useless use of greediness modifier '%c' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in
m/%s/
(W regexp) You specified something like these:
qr/a{3}?/
qr/b{1,1}+/
The "?" and "+" don't have any effect, as they modify whether to
match more or fewer when there is a choice, and by specifying to
match exactly a given number, there is no room left for a choice.
Useless use of %s in scalar context
(W scalar) You did something whose only interesting return value is
a list without a side effect in scalar context, which does not
accept a list.
For example
my $x = sort @y;
This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away.
Useless use of %s in void context
(W void) You did something without a side effect in a context that
does nothing with the return value, such as a statement that doesn't
return a value from a block, or the left side of a scalar comma
operator. Very often this points not to stupidity on your part, but
a failure of Perl to parse your program the way you thought it
would. For example, you'd get this if you mixed up your C
precedence with Python precedence and said
$one, $two = 1, 2;
when you meant to say
($one, $two) = (1, 2);
Another common error is to use ordinary parentheses to construct a
list reference when you should be using square or curly brackets,
for example, if you say
$array = (1,2);
when you should have said
$array = [1,2];
The square brackets explicitly turn a list value into a scalar
value, while parentheses do not. So when a parenthesized list is
evaluated in a scalar context, the comma is treated like C's comma
operator, which throws away the left argument, which is not what you
want. See perlref for more on this.
This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0
or 1 since they are often used in statements like
1 while sub_with_side_effects();
String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned
about.
Useless use of (?-p) in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) The "p" modifier cannot be turned off once set. Trying
to do so is futile.
Useless use of "re" pragma
(W) You did "use re;" without any arguments. That isn't very
useful.
Useless use of %s with no values
(W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no
arguments apart from the array, like push(@x) or unshift(@foo).
That won't usually have any effect on the array, so is completely
useless. It's possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could
have some effect if the array is tied to a class which implements a
PUSH method. If so, you can write it as "push(@tied_array,())" to
avoid this warning.
"use" not allowed in expression
(F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time,
and returns no useful value. See perlmod.
Use of @_ in %s with signatured subroutine is experimental
(S experimental::args_array_with_signatures) An expression involving
the @_ arguments array was found in a subroutine that uses a
signature. This is experimental because the interaction between the
arguments array and parameter handling via signatures is not
guaranteed to remain stable in any future version of Perl, and such
code should be avoided.
Use of bare << to mean <<"" is forbidden
(F) You are now required to use the explicitly quoted form if you
wish to use an empty line as the terminator of the here-document.
Use of a bare terminator was deprecated in Perl 5.000, and is a
fatal error as of Perl 5.28.
Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///
(W regexp) You used the /c modifier in a substitution. The /c
modifier is not presently meaningful in substitutions.
Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
(W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't
use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is
used. (This may change in the future.)
Use of code point 0x%s is not allowed; the permissible max is 0x%X
Use of code point 0x%s is not allowed; the permissible max is 0x%X in
regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You used a code point that is not allowed, because it is too
large. Unicode only allows code points up to 0x10FFFF, but Perl
allows much larger ones. Earlier versions of Perl allowed code
points above IV_MAX (0x7FFFFFF on 32-bit platforms,
0x7FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF on 64-bit platforms), however, this could
possibly break the perl interpreter in some constructs, including
causing it to hang in a few cases.
If your code is to run on various platforms, keep in mind that the
upper limit depends on the platform. It is much larger on 64-bit
word sizes than 32-bit ones.
The use of out of range code points was deprecated in Perl 5.24, and
became a fatal error in Perl 5.28.
Use of each() on hash after insertion without resetting hash iterator
results in undefined behavior
(S internal) The behavior of each() after insertion is undefined; it
may skip items, or visit items more than once. Consider using
keys() instead of each().
Use of := for an empty attribute list is not allowed
(F) The construction "my $x := 42" used to parse as equivalent to
"my $x : = 42" (applying an empty attribute list to $x). This
construct was deprecated in 5.12.0, and has now been made a syntax
error, so ":=" can be reclaimed as a new operator in the future.
If you need an empty attribute list, for example in a code
generator, add a space before the "=".
Use of %s for non-UTF-8 locale is wrong. Assuming a UTF-8 locale
(W locale) You are matching a regular expression using locale
rules, and the specified construct was encountered. This construct
is only valid for UTF-8 locales, which the current locale isn't.
This doesn't make sense. Perl will continue, assuming a Unicode
(UTF-8) locale, but the results are likely to be wrong.
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 /g modifier is meaningless in split
(W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a "split"
operator. Since "split" always tries to match the pattern
repeatedly, the "/g" has no effect.
Use of "goto" to jump into a construct is deprecated
(D deprecated::goto_construct) Using "goto" to jump from an outer
scope into an inner scope is deprecated and will be removed
completely in Perl 5.42.
This was deprecated in Perl 5.12.
Use of '%s' in \p{} or \P{} is deprecated because: %s
(D deprecated::unicode_property_name) Certain properties are
deprecated by Unicode, and may eventually be removed from the
Standard, at which time Perl will follow along. In the meantime,
this message is raised to notify you.
Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s::%s() is no longer allowed
(F) As an accidental feature, "AUTOLOAD" subroutines were 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 was deprecated in Perl 5.004, and was made fatal in Perl 5.28.
Use of %s in printf format not supported
(F) You attempted to use a feature of printf that is accessible from
only C. This usually means there's a better way to do it in Perl.
Use of '%s' is deprecated as a string delimiter
(D deprecated::delimiter_will_be_paired) You used the given
character as a starting delimiter of a string outside the scope of
"use feature 'extra_paired_delimiters'". This character is the
mirror image of another Unicode character; within the scope of that
feature, the two are considered a pair for delimitting strings. It
is planned to make that feature the default, at which point this
usage would become illegal; hence this warning.
For now, you may live with this warning, or turn it off, but this
code will no longer compile in a future version of Perl. Or you can
turn on "use feature 'extra_paired_delimiters'" and use the
character that is the mirror image of this one for the closing
string delimiter.
Use of '%s' is experimental as a string delimiter
(S experimental::extra_paired_delimiters) This warning is emitted
if you use as a string delimiter one of the non-ASCII mirror image
ones enabled by "use feature 'extra_paired_delimiters'". Simply
suppress the warning if you want to use the feature, but know that
in doing so you are taking the risk of using an experimental feature
which may change or be removed in a future Perl version:
Use of %s is not allowed in Unicode property wildcard subpatterns in
regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You were using a wildcard subpattern a Unicode property value,
and the subpattern contained something that is illegal. Not all
regular expression capabilities are legal in such subpatterns, and
this is one. Rewrite your subppattern to not use the offending
construct. See "Wildcards in Property Values" in perlunicode.
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 reference "%s" as array index
(W misc) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this
probably isn't what you mean, because references in numerical
context tend to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer
error.
If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so:
$array[0+$ref]. This warning is not given for overloaded objects,
however, because you can overload the numification and
stringification operators and then you presumably know what you are
doing.
Use of strings with code points over 0xFF as arguments to %s operator is
not allowed
(F) You tried to use one of the string bitwise operators ("&" or "|"
or "^" or "~") on a string containing a code point over 0xFF. The
string bitwise operators treat their operands as strings of bytes,
and values beyond 0xFF are nonsensical in this context.
Certain instances became fatal in Perl 5.28; others in perl 5.32.
Use of strings with code points over 0xFF as arguments to vec is
forbidden
(F) You tried to use "vec" on a string containing a code point over
0xFF, which is nonsensical here.
This became fatal in Perl 5.32.
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 unassigned code point or non-standalone grapheme for a delimiter
is not allowed
(F) A grapheme is what appears to a native-speaker of a language to
be a character. In Unicode (and hence Perl) a grapheme may actually
be several adjacent characters that together form a complete
grapheme. For example, there can be a base character, like "R" and
an accent, like a circumflex "^", that appear when displayed to be a
single character with the circumflex hovering over the "R". Perl
currently allows things like that circumflex to be delimiters of
strings, patterns, etc. When displayed, the circumflex would look
like it belongs to the character just to the left of it. In order
to move the language to be able to accept graphemes as delimiters,
we cannot allow the use of delimiters which aren't graphemes by
themselves. Also, a delimiter must already be assigned (or known to
be never going to be assigned) to try to future-proof code, for
otherwise code that works today would fail to compile if the
currently unassigned delimiter ends up being something that isn't a
stand-alone grapheme. Because Unicode is never going to assign non-
character code points, nor code points that are above the legal
Unicode maximum, those can be delimiters, and their use is legal.
Use of uninitialized value%s
(W uninitialized) An undefined value was used as if it were already
defined. It was interpreted as a "" or a 0, but maybe it was a
mistake. To suppress this warning assign a defined value to your
variables.
To help you figure out what was undefined, perl will try to tell you
the name of the variable (if any) that was undefined. In some cases
it cannot do this, so it also tells you what operation you used the
undefined value in. Note, however, that perl optimizes your program
and the operation displayed in the warning may not necessarily
appear literally in your program. For example, "that $foo" is
usually optimized into ""that " . $foo", and the warning will refer
to the "concatenation (.)" operator, even though there is no "." in
your program.
"use re 'strict'" is experimental
(S experimental::re_strict) The things that are different when a
regular expression pattern is compiled under 'strict' are subject to
change in future Perl releases in incompatible ways. This means
that a pattern that compiles today may not in a future Perl release.
This warning is to alert you to that risk.
use VERSION is not permitted while another use VERSION of 5.39 or above
is in scope
(F) Once you have a "use VERSION" declaration that calls for a Perl
version of at least 5.39, you cannot have a subsequent one while the
first is visible, even if it requests a later version.
use VERSION of 5.39 or above is not permitted while another use VERSION
is in scope
(F) Once you have a "use VERSION" declaration in scope, you cannot
have a subsequent one that calls for a Perl version of at least 5.39
while the first is visible.
Use \x{...} for more than two hex characters in regex; marked by
<-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) In a regular expression, you said something like
(?[ [ \xBEEF ] ])
Perl isn't sure if you meant this
(?[ [ \x{BEEF} ] ])
or if you meant this
(?[ [ \x{BE} E F ] ])
You need to add either braces or blanks to disambiguate.
Using just the first character returned by \N{} in character class in
regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) Named Unicode character escapes "(\N{...})" may return a
multi-character sequence. Even though a character class is supposed
to match just one character of input, perl will match the whole
thing correctly, except when the class is inverted ("[^...]"), or
the escape is the beginning or final end point of a range. For
these, what should happen isn't clear at all. In these
circumstances, Perl discards all but the first character of the
returned sequence, which is not likely what you want.
Using just the single character results returned by \p{} in (?[...]) in
regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) Extended character classes currently cannot handle
operands that evaluate to more than one character. These are
removed from the results of the expansion of the "\p{}".
This situation can happen, for example, in
(?[ \p{name=/KATAKANA/} ])
"KATAKANA LETTER AINU P" is a legal Unicode name (technically a
"named sequence"), but it is actually two characters. The above
expression with match only the Unicode names containing KATAKANA
that represent single characters.
Using /u for '%s' instead of /%s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) You used a Unicode boundary ("\b{...}" or "\B{...}") in a
portion of a regular expression where the character set modifiers
"/a" or "/aa" are in effect. These two modifiers indicate an ASCII
interpretation, and this doesn't make sense for a Unicode
definition. The generated regular expression will compile so that
the boundary uses all of Unicode. No other portion of the regular
expression is affected.
Using !~ with %s doesn't make sense
(F) Using the "!~" operator with "s///r", "tr///r" or "y///r" is
currently reserved for future use, as the exact behavior has not
been decided. (Simply returning the boolean opposite of the
modified string is usually not particularly useful.)
UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
(S surrogate) You had a UTF-16 surrogate in a context where they are
not considered acceptable. These code points, between U+D800 and
U+DFFF (inclusive), are used by Unicode only for UTF-16. However,
Perl internally allows all unsigned integer code points (up to the
size limit available on your platform), including surrogates. But
these can cause problems when being input or output, which is likely
where this message came from. If you really really know what you
are doing you can turn off this warning by "no warnings
'surrogate';".
Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
(W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob),
each(), or readdir() as a boolean value. Each of these constructs
can return a value of "0"; that would make the conditional
expression false, which is probably not what you intended. When
using these constructs in conditional expressions, test their values
with the "defined" operator.
Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
(W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of
an %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant
string longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been
truncated to 1024 characters.
Variable "%s" is not available
(W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is
attempting to capture an outer lexical that is not currently
available. This can happen for one of two reasons. First, the
outer lexical may be declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that
has not yet been created. (Remember that named subs are created at
compile time, while anonymous subs are created at run-time.) For
example,
sub { my $x; sub f { $x } }
At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current value of
$x, since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet.
Conversely, the following won't give a warning since the anonymous
subroutine has by now been created and is live:
sub { my $x; eval 'sub f { $x }' }->();
The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a variable that
has gone out of scope, for example,
sub f {
my $x;
sub { eval '$x' }
}
f()->();
Here, when the '$x' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not
currently being executed, so its $x is not available for capture.
Variable "%s" is not imported%s
(S misc) With "use strict" in effect, you referred to a global
variable that you apparently thought was imported from another
module, because something else of the same name (usually a
subroutine) is exported by that module. It usually means you put
the wrong funny character on the front of your variable. It is also
possible you used an "our" variable whose scope has ended.
Variable length lookbehind not implemented in regex m/%s/
(F) This message no longer should be raised as of Perl 5.30. It is
retained in this document as a convenience for people using an
earlier Perl version.
In Perl 5.30 and earlier, lookbehind is allowed only for
subexpressions whose length is fixed and known at compile time. For
positive lookbehind, you can use the "\K" regex construct as a way
to get the equivalent functionality. See (?<=pattern) and \K in
perlre.
Starting in Perl 5.18, there are non-obvious Unicode rules under
"/i" that can match variably, but which you might not think could.
For example, the substring "ss" can match the single character LATIN
SMALL LETTER SHARP S. Here's a complete list of the current ones
affecting ASCII characters:
ASCII
sequence Matches single letter under /i
FF U+FB00 LATIN SMALL LIGATURE FF
FFI U+FB03 LATIN SMALL LIGATURE FFI
FFL U+FB04 LATIN SMALL LIGATURE FFL
FI U+FB01 LATIN SMALL LIGATURE FI
FL U+FB02 LATIN SMALL LIGATURE FL
SS U+00DF LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S
U+1E9E LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S
ST U+FB06 LATIN SMALL LIGATURE ST
U+FB05 LATIN SMALL LIGATURE LONG S T
This list is subject to change, but is quite unlikely to. Each
ASCII sequence can be any combination of upper- and lowercase.
You can avoid this by using a bracketed character class in the
lookbehind assertion, like
(?<![sS]t)
(?<![fF]f[iI])
This fools Perl into not matching the ligatures.
Another option for Perls starting with 5.16, if you only care about
ASCII matches, is to add the "/aa" modifier to the regex. This will
exclude all these non-obvious matches, thus getting rid of this
message. You can also say
use if $] ge 5.016, re => '/aa';
to apply "/aa" to all regular expressions compiled within its scope.
See re.
Variable length positive lookbehind with capturing is experimental in
regex m/%s/
(W) Variable length positive lookbehind with capturing is not well
defined. This warning alerts you to the fact that you are using a
construct which may change in a future version of perl. See the
documentation of Positive Lookbehind in perlre for details. You may
silence this warning with the following:
no warnings 'experimental::vlb';
Variable length negative lookbehind with capturing is experimental in
regex m/%s/
(W) Variable length negative lookbehind with capturing is not well
defined. This warning alerts you to the fact that you are using a
construct which may change in a future version of perl. See the
documentation of Negative Lookbehind in perlre for details. You may
silence this warning with the following:
no warnings 'experimental::vlb';
"%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
(W shadow) A "my", "our", "state" or "field" variable has been
redeclared in the current scope or statement, effectively
eliminating all access to the previous instance. This is almost
always a typographical error. Note that the earlier variable will
still exist until the end of the scope or until all closure
references to it are destroyed.
Variable syntax
(A) You've accidentally run your script through csh instead of Perl.
Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
Variable "%s" will not stay shared
(W closure) An inner (nested) named subroutine is referencing a
lexical variable defined in an outer named subroutine.
When the inner subroutine is called, it will see the value of the
outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the *first*
call to the outer subroutine; in this case, after the first call to
the outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines
will no longer share a common value for the variable. In other
words, the variable will no longer be shared.
This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine
anonymous, using the "sub {}" syntax. When inner anonymous subs
that reference variables in outer subroutines are created, they are
automatically rebound to the current values of such variables.
vector argument not supported with alpha versions
(S printf) The %vd (s)printf format does not support version objects
with alpha parts.
Verb pattern '%s' has a mandatory argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE
in m/%s/
(F) You used a verb pattern that requires an argument. Supply an
argument or check that you are using the right verb.
Verb pattern '%s' may not have an argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE
in m/%s/
(F) You used a verb pattern that is not allowed an argument. Remove
the argument or check that you are using the right verb.
Version control conflict marker
(F) The parser found a line starting with "<<<<<<<", ">>>>>>>", or
"=======". These may be left by a version control system to mark
conflicts after a failed merge operation.
Version number must be a constant number
(P) The attempt to translate a "use Module n.n LIST" statement into
its equivalent "BEGIN" block found an internal inconsistency with
the version number.
Version string '%s' contains invalid data; ignoring: '%s'
(W misc) The version string contains invalid characters at the end,
which are being ignored.
Warning: something's wrong
(W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of "warn """)
or you called it with no args and $@ was empty.
Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
(S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication
on the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of
disk space.
Warning: unable to close filehandle properly: %s
Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly: %s
(S io) There were errors during the implicit close() done on a
filehandle when its reference count reached zero while it was still
open, e.g.:
{
open my $fh, '>', $file or die "open: '$file': $!\n";
print $fh $data or die "print: $!";
} # implicit close here
Because various errors may only be detected by close() (e.g.
buffering could allow the "print" in this example to return true
even when the disk is full), it is dangerous to ignore its result.
So when it happens implicitly, perl will signal errors by warning.
Prior to version 5.22.0, perl ignored such errors, so the common
idiom shown above was liable to cause silent data loss.
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.
when is deprecated
(D deprecated::smartmatch) "when" depends on smartmatch, which is
deprecated. Additionally, it has several special cases that may not
be immediately obvious, and it will be removed in Perl 5.42. See
the explanation under "Experimental Details on given and when" in
perlsyn.
Wide character in %s
(S utf8) Perl met a wide character (ordinal >255) when it wasn't
expecting one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print).
If this warning does come from I/O, the easiest way to quiet it is
simply to add the ":utf8" layer, 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.
If the warning comes from other than I/O, this diagnostic probably
indicates that incorrect results are being obtained. You should
examine your code to determine how a wide character is getting to an
operation that doesn't handle them.
Wide character (U+%X) in %s
(W locale) While in a single-byte locale (i.e., a non-UTF-8 one), a
multi-byte character was encountered. Perl considers this
character to be the specified Unicode code point. Combining
non-UTF-8 locales and Unicode is dangerous. Almost certainly some
characters will have two different representations. For example, in
the ISO 8859-7 (Greek) locale, the code point 0xC3 represents a
Capital Gamma. But so also does 0x393. This will make string
comparisons unreliable.
You likely need to figure out how this multi-byte character got
mixed up with your single-byte locale (or perhaps you thought you
had a UTF-8 locale, but Perl disagrees).
Within []-length '%c' not allowed
(F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by
"[TEMPLATE]" only if "TEMPLATE" always matches the same amount of
packed bytes that can be determined from the template alone. This
is not possible if it contains any of the codes @, /, U, u, w or a
*-length. Redesign the template.
While trying to resolve method call %s->%s() can not locate package "%s"
yet it is mentioned in @%s::ISA (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
(W syntax) It is possible that the @ISA contains a misspelled or
never loaded package name, which can result in perl choosing an
unexpected parent class's method to resolve the method call. If this
is deliberate you can do something like
@Missing::Package::ISA = ();
to silence the warnings, otherwise you should correct the package
name, or ensure that the package is loaded prior to the method call.
%s() with negative argument
(S misc) Certain operations make no sense with negative arguments.
Warning is given and the operation is not done.
write() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed
sometime before now. Check your control flow.
%s "\x%X" does not map to Unicode
(S utf8) 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 an unpack template that specified a relative position
after the end of the string being unpacked. See "pack" in perlfunc.
YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!
(F) And you probably never will, because you probably don't have the
sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip
about what you want. There is a vulnerability anywhere that you
have a set-id script, and to close it you need to remove the set-id
bit from the script that you're attempting to run. To actually run
the script set-id, your best bet is to put a set-id C wrapper around
your script.
You need to quote "%s"
(W syntax) You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name:
$SIG{...} = foo;
However, this will not make "sub foo" the signal handler. Instead,
Perl will call the subroutine when the assignment is executed and
use the returned value as the signal handler, which is probably not
what you want. (If it is what you want, put "()" after the
subroutine name to avoid the warning.)
To register the subroutine as the signal handler, take a reference
to it:
$SIG{...} = \&foo;
Your random numbers are not that random
(F) When trying to initialize the random seed for hashes, Perl could
not get any randomness out of your system. This usually indicates
Something Very Wrong.
Zero length \N{} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) Named Unicode character escapes ("\N{...}") may return a zero-
length sequence. Such an escape was used in an extended character
class, i.e. "(?[...])", or under "use re 'strict'", which is not
permitted. Check that the correct escape has been used, and the
correct charnames handler is in scope. The <-- HERE shows
whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
SEE ALSO
warnings, diagnostics.
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