.) You specified something that isn't a legal Unicode property name. Most Unicode properties are specified by C<\p{...}>. But if the name is a single character one, the braces may be omitted. =item 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<"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 C<"U"> format instead. =item 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<"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 C<"U"> format instead. =item 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}") =item 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, C-mode expects all values to fall in the interval [0, 255], so Perl behaved as if you meant: pack("U0W", $x & 255) =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack (W pack) You tried something like pack("u", "\x{1f3}b") where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided: pack("u", "\x{f3}b") =item Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack (W unpack) You tried something like unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b") where the format expects to process a sequence of bytes (character with a value below 256), but some of the characters had a higher value. Perl uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you had provided: unpack("s", "\x{f3}b") =item charnames alias definitions may not contain a sequence of multiple spaces; marked by S<<-- HERE> in %s (F) You defined a character name which had multiple space characters in a row. Change them to single spaces. Usually these names are defined in the C<:alias> import argument to C, but they could be defined by a translator installed into C<$^H{charnames}>. See L. =item chdir() on unopened filehandle %s (W unopened) You tried chdir() on a filehandle that was never opened. =item "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s" (W syntax) The C<\cI> 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. =item Class already has a superclass, cannot add another (F) You attempted to specify a second superclass for a C by using the C<:isa> attribute, when one is already specified. Unlike classes whose instances are created with C, classes created via the C keyword cannot have more than one superclass. =item 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 B permitted between the attribute name and its value; you must write this as class Example::Class :attr(VALUE) ... =item class is experimental (S experimental::class) This warning is emitted if you use the C keyword of C. This keyword is currently experimental and its behaviour may change in future releases of Perl. =item Class :isa attribute requires a class but "%s" is not one (F) When creating a subclass using the C C<:isa> attribute, the named superclass must also be a real class created using the C keyword. =item Cloning substitution context is unimplemented (F) Creating a new thread inside the C operator is not supported. =item 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. =item close() on unopened filehandle %s (W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened. =item 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. =item \C no longer supported in regex; marked by S<<-- 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(). =item Code missing after '/' (F) You had a (sub-)template that ends with a '/'. There must be another template code following the slash. See L. =item 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. =item 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. =item %s: Command not found (A) You've accidentally run your script through B 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 =item %s: command not found (A) You've accidentally run your script through B 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 =item %s: command not found: %s (A) You've accidentally run your script through B 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 =item Compilation failed in require (F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a C statement. Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately. =item 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 L. =item Constant(%s): Call to &{$^H{%s}} did not return a defined value (F) The subroutine registered to handle constant overloading (see L) or a custom charnames handler (see L) returned an undefined value. =item 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 L pragma? =item Constant is not %s reference (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the C 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 L and L. =item Constants from lexical variables potentially modified elsewhere are no longer permitted (F) You wrote something like my $var; $sub = sub () { $var }; but $var is referenced elsewhere and could be modified after the C _{expression is evaluated. Either it is explicitly modified elsewhere (C<$var = 3>) or it is passed to a subroutine or to an operator like C or C}) regexp modifiers. You can enable C for a lexical scope (even a whole file) with C. (In older versions: when C<$*> was set to a true value then all regular expressions behaved as if they were written using C.) Use of this variable will be a fatal error in Perl 5.30. =item $# is no longer supported as of Perl 5.30 (F) The special variable C<$#>, 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. =item '%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. =item '%s' is not an overloadable type (W overload) You tried to overload a constant type the overload package is unaware of. =item '%s' is not recognised as a builtin function (F) An attempt was made to C the L pragma module to create a lexical alias for an unknown function name. =item -i used with no filenames on the command line, reading from STDIN (S inplace) The C<-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 C<-i> from the command line. See L for more details. =item Junk on end of regexp in regex m/%s/ (P) The regular expression parser is confused. =item \K not permitted in lookahead/lookbehind in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ (F) Your regular expression used C<\K> in a lookahead or lookbehind assertion, which currently isn't permitted. This may change in the future, see L. =item 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 L. =item 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 L. =item 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 L. =item leaving effective %s failed (F) While under the C pragma, switching the real and effective uids or gids failed. =item 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 L. =item 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); =item 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 L 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. =item Lexing code internal error (%s) (F) Lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a detectable way. =item 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 L. =item List form of piped open not implemented (F) On some platforms, notably Windows, the three-or-more-arguments form of C does not support pipes, such as C. Use the two-argument C form instead. =item Literal vertical space in [] is illegal except under /x in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) (only under C> or within C<(?[...])>) Likely you forgot the C 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 =item %s: loadable library and perl binaries are mismatched (got %s handshake key %p, needed %p) (P) A dynamic loading library C<.so> or C<.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. =item 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 C<"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 C<"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 L 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 L returns non-zero for them. But a few locales have it return 0. Perl takes the first approach, not using C at all (see L), and this message is raised to notify you that you are getting Perl's approach, not the locale's. =item 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 L. =item 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 C<%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 L 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 C>, or on the first possibly-affected operation if the C> inherits a bad one. It is not raised for any operations from the L module. =item localtime(%f) failed (W overflow) You called C with a number that it could not handle: too large, too small, or NaN. The returned value is C. =item localtime(%f) too large (W overflow) You called C with a number that was larger than it can reliably handle and C probably returned the wrong date. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special not-a-number value). =item localtime(%f) too small (W overflow) You called C with a number that was smaller than it can reliably handle and C probably returned the wrong date. =item 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. =item 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 C<++> or C<--> is increased or decreased by quite different value than one, such as zero (I 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 L explicitly. =item 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.) =item lvalue attribute %s already-defined subroutine (W misc) Although L 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. =item lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined (W misc) Using the C<: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 C _{declaration before the definition. See also L. =item 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. =item Malformed integer in [] in pack (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits are permitted. See L. =item Malformed integer in [] in unpack (F) Between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count only digits are permitted. See L. =item 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 C 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 L. =item 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 (C), so the signature was instead interpreted as a bad prototype. =item 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, C<%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 C. If you use the C<:encoding(UTF-8)> PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use C<:utf8>, the flag is set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error message. See also L. =item Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N{%s} immediately after '%s' (F) The charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8. =item 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 C<%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. =item 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. =item 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. =item 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. =item 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. =item Mandatory parameter follows optional parameter (F) In a subroutine signature, you wrote something like "$a = undef, $b", 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. =item 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, C<\p{...}> or C<\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 L. 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 C<\p{ASCII_Hex_Digit}> only can match the 22 characters C<[0-9A-Fa-f]>, so obviously all other code points, Unicode or not, won't match it. (And C<\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 C warnings category fatal; if you agree with Perl's decision, you may wish to turn off this category. See L for more information. =item %s matches null string many times in regex; marked by S<<-- 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 S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See L. =item 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 L.) =item "%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". =item '%' 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 L. =item 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 L. =item method is experimental (S experimental::class) This warning is emitted if you use the C keyword of C. This keyword is currently experimental and its behaviour may change in future releases of Perl. =item Method %s not permitted See L. =item Method %s redefined (W redefine) You redefined a method. To suppress this warning, say { no warnings 'redefine'; *name = method { ... }; } =item 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. =item Mismatched brackets in template (F) A pack template could not be parsed because pairs of C<[...]> or C<(...)> could not be matched up. See L. =item Misplaced _ in number (W syntax) An underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not separate two digits. =item Missing argument for %n in %s (F) A C<%n> was used in a format string with no corresponding argument for perl to write the current string length to. =item 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 L function. =item Missing argument to -%c (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch must follow immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces. =item Missing braces on \N{} =item Missing braces on \N{} in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal C<\N{charname}> within double-quotish context. This can also happen when there is a space (or comment) between the C<\N> and the C<{> in a regex with the C modifier. This modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately follow the C<\N>. =item Missing braces on \o{} (F) A C<\o> must be followed immediately by a C<{> in double-quotish context. =item 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. =item Missing command in piped open (W pipe) You used the C or C construction, but the command was missing or blank. =item Missing control char name in \c (F) A double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control character name. =item Missing ']' in prototype for %s : %s (W illegalproto) A grouping was started with C<[> but never closed with C<]>. =item Missing name in "%s sub" (F) The syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that they have a name with which they can be found. =item Missing $ on loop variable (F) Apparently you've been programming in B too much. Variables are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it can vary from one line to the next. =item (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. =item Missing or undefined argument to %s (F) You tried to call C or C 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 L and L. =item Missing or undefined argument to %s via %{^HOOK}{require__before} (F) A C<%{^HOOK}{require__before}> hook rewrote the name of the file being compiled with C or C with an empty string an undefined value which is forbidden. See L and L. =item Missing right brace on \%c{} in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) Missing right brace in C<\x{...}>, C<\p{...}>, C<\P{...}>, or C<\N{...}>. =item Missing right brace on \N{} =item Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N (F) C<\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 C<\N{ASTERISK}> is another way of writing C<*>, valid in both double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns, it doesn't have the meaning an unescaped C<*> does. Starting in Perl 5.12.0, C<\N> also can have an additional meaning (only) in patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short for C<[^\n]>, and like C<.> but is not affected by the C} regex modifier.) This can lead to some ambiguities. When C<\N> is not followed immediately by a left brace, Perl assumes the C<[^\n]> meaning. Also, if the braces form a valid quantifier such as C<\N{3}> or C<\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 C<\N{> and a matching C<}>, Perl assumes that a character name is desired. However, if there is no matching C<}>, Perl doesn't know if it was mistakenly omitted, or if C<[^\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: C<\N\{> =item 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. =item (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. =item 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 C loop I when I is aliased to a constant in the look I: $x = 1; foreach my $n ($x, 2) { $n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to } # modify the 2 L will also produce this message as a warning if you attempt to open a read-only scalar for writing. =item 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. =item 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. =item Module name must be constant (F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a "use". =item Module name required with -%c option (F) The C<-M> or C<-m> options say that Perl should load some module, but you omitted the name of the module. Consult L for full details about C<-M> and C<-m>. =item More than one argument to '%s' open (F) The C 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 L for details. =item mprotect for COW string %p %u failed with %d (S) You compiled perl with B<-D>PERL_DEBUG_READONLY_COW (see L), but a shared string buffer could not be made read-only. =item mprotect for %p %u failed with %d (S) You compiled perl with B<-D>PERL_DEBUG_READONLY_OPS (see L), but an op tree could not be made read-only. =item mprotect RW for COW string %p %u failed with %d (S) You compiled perl with B<-D>PERL_DEBUG_READONLY_COW (see L), but a read-only shared string buffer could not be made mutable. =item mprotect RW for %p %u failed with %d (S) You compiled perl with B<-D>PERL_DEBUG_READONLY_OPS (see L), but a read-only op tree could not be made mutable before freeing the ops. =item msg%s not implemented (F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system. =item Multidimensional hash lookup is disabled (F) You supplied a list of subscripts to a hash lookup under C<< no feature "multidimensional"; >>, eg: $z = $foo{$x, $y}; which by default acts like: $z = $foo{join($;, $x, $y)}; =item Multidimensional syntax %s not supported (W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like C<$foo[1,2,3]>. They're written like C<$foo[1][2][3]>, as in C. =item Multiple slurpy parameters not allowed (F) In subroutine signatures, a slurpy parameter (C<@> or C<%>) must be the last parameter, and there must not be more than one of them; for example: sub foo ($a, @b) {} # legal sub foo ($a, @b, %) {} # invalid =item '/' 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 L. =item %s must not be a named sequence in transliteration operator (F) Transliteration (C and C) 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. =item "my sub" not yet implemented (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try that yet. =item "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. =item "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 C<< <=> >> or C 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. =item "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. =item 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 C 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. L) are exempt from this warning. =item Need exactly 3 octal digits in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) Within S>, 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 C<\777>. If you need a larger one, you need to use L<\o{}|perlrebackslash/Octal escapes> 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 =item Negative '/' count in unpack (F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was negative. See L. =item 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. =item Negative offset to vec in lvalue context (F) When C is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be greater than or equal to zero. =item Negative repeat count does nothing (W numeric) You tried to execute the L|perlop/Multiplicative Operators> repetition operator fewer than 0 times, which doesn't make sense. =item Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, C<*?>, C<+?>, and C appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See L. =item %s never introduced (S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of scope before it could possibly have been used. =item next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method (F) C needs to be called within the context of a real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context. See L. =item \N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...} in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) The new (as of Perl 5.12) meaning of C<\N> as C<[^\n]> is not valid in a bracketed character class, for the same reason that C<.> in a character class loses its specialness: it matches almost everything, which is probably not what you want. =item \N{} here is restricted to one character in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ (F) Named Unicode character escapes (C<\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 =over 4 =item When the class is inverted (C<[^...]>) The mathematically logical behavior for what matches when inverting is very different from what people expect, so we have decided to forbid it. =item The escape is the beginning or final end point of a range Similarly unclear is what should be generated when the C<\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 C<\N{...}> escape is a sequence of code points, so this is made an error. =item In a regex set The syntax S> in a regular expression yields a list of single code points, none can be a sequence. =back =item 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 L. =item No code specified for -%c (F) Perl's B<-e> and B<-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 =item 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 B or B 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 L and L. 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 B or B or in the constant name at the line where this error was triggered? =item 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. =item No DB::DB routine defined (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F or a C module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each statement. =item 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 L. =item No DB::sub routine defined (F) The currently executing code was compiled with the B<-d> switch, but for some reason the current debugger (e.g. F or a C module) didn't define a C routine to be called at the beginning of each ordinary subroutine call. =item No digits found for %s literal (F) No hexadecimal digits were found following C<0x> or no binary digits were found following C<0b>. =item No directory specified for -I (F) The B<-I> command-line switch requires a directory name as part of the I argument. Use B<-Ilib>, for instance. B<-I lib> won't work. =item 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. =item No group ending character '%c' found in template (F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its matching counterpart. See L. =item 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. =item No next::method '%s' found for %s (F) C 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 C or C. See L. =item Non-finite repeat count does nothing (W numeric) You tried to execute the L|perlop/Multiplicative Operators> repetition operator C (or C<-Inf>) or C times, which doesn't make sense. =item Non-hex character in regex; marked by S<<-- 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} ] ]) =item 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. =item Non-octal character in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) In a regular expression, there was a non-octal character where an octal one was expected, like (?[ [ \o{1278} ] ]) =item 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 C<\o{...}>, you wrote something like C<\08>, or C<\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 C<\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. =item "no" not allowed in expression (F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns no useful value. See L. =item 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 L. =item 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. =item 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. =item No package name allowed for subroutine %s in "our" =item 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. =item No Perl script found in input (F) You called C, but no line was found in the file beginning with #! and containing the word "perl". =item No setregid available (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for your system. =item No setreuid available (F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for your system. =item 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. =item 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 L pragma. =item No such hook: %s (F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl. Currently, Perl accepts C<__DIE__> and C<__WARN__> as valid signal hooks. =item 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. =item No such signal: SIG%s (W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was not recognized. Say C in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system. =item 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. =item 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 L. =item Not a GLOB reference (F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a symbol table entry that looks like C<*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 L. =item 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 L. =item '#' not allowed immediately following a sigil in a subroutine signature (F) In a subroutine signature definition, a comment following a sigil (C<$>, C<@> or C<%>), needs to be separated by whitespace or a comma etc., in particular to avoid confusion with the C<$#> variable. For example: # bad sub f ($# ignore first arg , $b) {} # good sub f ($, # ignore first arg $b) {} =item 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 L. =item 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 L. =item 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 L. =item 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 L. =item Not enough arguments for %s (F) The function requires more arguments than you specified. =item Not enough format arguments (W syntax) A format specified more picture fields than the next line supplied. See L. =item %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. =item 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 F to translate to the number of seconds which need to be added to UTC to get local time. =item NULL OP IN RUN (S debugging) Some internal routine called run() with a null opcode pointer. =item 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 L. =item NULL regexp parameter (P) The internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd. =item 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"). =item Number with no digits (F) Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like a number. This happens, for example with C<\o{}>, with no number between the braces. =item 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. =item 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 C<$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. =item 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 L for more on portability concerns. =item 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. =item 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. =item 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. =item Odd number of elements in export_lexically (F) A call to L contained an odd number of arguments. This is not permitted, because each name must be paired with a valid reference value. =item 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. =item 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. =item Offset outside string (F)(W layer) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will take place when going past the end of the string when either Cing 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). =item Old package separator "'" deprecated (W 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. =item Old package separator used in string (W deprecated::apostrophe_as_package_separator, syntax) You used the old package separator, "'", in a variable named inside a double-quoted string; e.g., C<"In $name's house">. This is equivalent to C<"In $name::s house">. If you meant the former, put a backslash before the apostrophe (C<"In $name\'s house">). Support for the old package separator will be removed in Perl 5.42. =item Only scalar fields can take a :param attribute (F) You tried to apply the C<:param> attribute to an array or hash field. Currently this is not permitted. =item %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. =item -%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 L. =item oops: oopsAV (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up. =item oops: oopsHV (S internal) An internal warning that the grammar is screwed up. =item Operand with no preceding operator in regex; marked by S<<-- 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. =item 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 C overloading key is specified to be true. See L. =item 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 C. =item 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 C. =item 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'". =item Optional parameter lacks default expression (F) In a subroutine signature, you wrote something like "$a =", 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 "$a = undef". =item "our" variable %s redeclared (W shadow) You seem to have already declared the same global once before in the current lexical scope. =item Out of memory! (X) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has no option but to exit immediately. At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use C and C (where C is the number of kilobytes) to check the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use C and C, respectively. =item Out of memory during %s extend (X) An attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond the largest possible memory allocation. =item Out of memory during "large" request for %s (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However, the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted. =item Out of memory during request for %s (X)(F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable. However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of C<$^M> as an emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error is trappable I, and the error message will include the line and file where the failed request happened. =item 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., C<$arr[time]> instead of C<$arr[$time]>. =item 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. =item '.' 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. =item '@' outside of string in unpack (F) You had a template that specified an absolute position outside the string being unpacked. See L. =item '@' 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 L. =item overload arg '%s' is invalid (W overload) The L pragma was passed an argument it did not recognize. Did you mistype an operator? =item 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 L. =item Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP (F) An object with a C overload was used as part of a match, but the overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. See L. =item %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 L. =item pack/unpack repeat count overflow (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your signed integers. See L. =item page overflow (W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a page. See L. =item panic: %s (P) An internal error. =item 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. =item 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. =item panic: ck_grep, type=%u (P) Failed an internal consistency check trying to compile a grep. =item panic: corrupt saved stack index %ld (P) The savestack was requested to restore more localized values than there are in the savestack. =item panic: del_backref (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak reference. =item panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d (P) While attempting folding constants an exception other than an C failure was caught. =item panic: frexp: %f (P) The library function frexp() failed, making printf("%f") impossible. =item 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. =item 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. =item panic: INTERPCASEMOD, %s (P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier. =item panic: INTERPCONCAT, %s (P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets. =item panic: kid popen errno read (F) A forked child returned an incomprehensible message about its errno. =item 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. =item panic: magic_killbackrefs (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak references to an object. =item panic: malloc, %s (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc. =item panic: memory wrap (P) Something tried to allocate either more memory than possible or a negative amount. =item panic: newFORLOOP, %s (P) The parser failed an internal consistency check while trying to parse a C loop. =item panic: pad_alloc, %p!=%p (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating and freeing temporaries and lexicals from. =item panic: pad_free curpad, %p!=%p (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating and freeing temporaries and lexicals from. =item 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. =item panic: pad_reset curpad, %p!=%p (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating and freeing temporaries and lexicals from. =item 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. =item panic: pad_swipe curpad, %p!=%p (P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating and freeing temporaries and lexicals from. =item panic: pad_swipe po (P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally. =item panic: pp_iter, type=%u (P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame. =item panic: pp_match%s (P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational data. =item panic: realloc, %s (P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc. =item 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. =item panic: restartop in %s (P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it), and didn't supply the destination. =item 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. =item panic: scan_num, %s (P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number. =item 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. =item panic: sv_chop %s (P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that is not within the scalar's string buffer. =item panic: sv_insert, midend=%p, bigend=%p (P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there was string. =item panic: top_env (P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that. =item 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. =item 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. =item panic: unknown OA_*: %x (P) The internal routine that handles arguments to C<&CORE::foo()> subroutine calls was unable to determine what type of arguments were expected. =item panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen (P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed to even) byte length. =item 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. =item panic: yylex, %s (P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier. =item 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. =item Parsing code internal error (%s) (F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API in a detectable way. =item 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. =item C<-p> destination: %s (F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the C<-p> command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've redirected it with select().) =item 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. =item Perl folding rules are not up-to-date for 0x%X; please use the perlbug utility to report; in regex; marked by S<<-- 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 L. =item 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 L. =item 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 C was written instead of C or C. Without the leading C, 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. =item 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 L. =item PERL_SH_DIR too long (F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the C-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in L. =item PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s" (X) See L for legal values. =item 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. =item 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. =item 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 L section B. =item 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. =item 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. =item 'P' must have an explicit size in unpack (F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*". =item POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. Note that the POSIX character classes do B have the C prefix the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's C<[[:print:]]>, not C. See L. =item 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. =item POSIX syntax [%c %c] belongs inside character classes%s in regex; marked by S<<-- 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 I character classes, the [] are part of the construct, for example: C. What the regular expression pattern compiled to is probably not what you were intending. For example, C compiles to a regular bracketed character class consisting of the four characters C<":">, C<"a">, C<"l">, C<"h">, and C<"p">. To specify the POSIX class, it should have been written C. Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently implemented; they are simply placeholders for future extensions and will cause fatal errors. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See L. If the specification of the class was not completely valid, the message indicates that. =item POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by S<<-- 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 S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See L. =item POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by S<<-- 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 S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See L. =item 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 ); =item 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 !; =item 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 L. =item Possible precedence issue with control flow operator (W syntax) There is a possible problem with the mixing of a control flow operator (e.g. C) and a low-precedence operator like C. Consider: sub { return $a or $b; } This is parsed as: sub { (return $a) or $b; } Which is effectively just: sub { return $a; } Either use parentheses or the high-precedence variant of the operator. Note this may be also triggered for constructs like: sub { 1 if die; } =item Possible precedence problem on bitwise %s operator (W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator in conjunction with a numeric comparison operator, like this : if ($x & $y == 0) { ... } This expression is actually equivalent to C<$x & ($y == 0)>, due to the higher precedence of C<==>. This is probably not what you want. (If you really meant to write this, disable the warning, or, better, put the parentheses explicitly and write C<$x & ($y == 0)>). =item Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex (W ambiguous) You said something like C in a regex. The regex C translates to: match the word 'foo', the output record separator (see L) 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 C (for example: C). 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 C (for example: C). =item Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string (W ambiguous) You said something like '@foo' in a double-quoted string but there was no array C<@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. =item 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 "||". =item Premature end of script headers See L. =item printf() on closed filehandle %s (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now. Check your control flow. =item print() on closed filehandle %s (W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime before now. Check your control flow. =item 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 L. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT" in L. =item 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. =item Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s (S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been declared or defined with a different function prototype. =item Prototype not terminated (F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype definition. =item 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. =item %s on BEGIN block ignored (W syntax) C 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 C block. Note this also means you cannot create a constant called C. =item Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you meant it literally. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See L. =item Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by S<<-- 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 S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See L. =item Quantifier {n,m} with n > m can't match in regex =item Quantifier {n,m} with n > m can't match in regex; marked by S<<-- 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}. =item 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 C, not C. =item 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. =item Ranges of ASCII printables should be some subset of "0-9", "A-Z", or "a-z" in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (W regexp) (only under C> or within C<(?[...])>) Stricter rules help to find typos and other errors. Perhaps you didn't even intend a range here, if the C<"-"> was meant to be some other character, or should have been escaped (like C<"\-">). 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 L|perlrecharclass/Character Ranges>, 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 C<"\x41">), and the ranges must be all digits, or all uppercase letters, or all lowercase letters. =item Ranges of digits should be from the same group in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (W regexp) (only under C> or within C<(?[...])>) 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. =item 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. =item readline() on closed filehandle %s (W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime before now. Check your control flow. =item readline() on unopened filehandle %s (W unopened) The filehandle you're reading from was never opened. Check your control flow. =item read() on closed filehandle %s (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle. =item read() on unopened filehandle %s (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened. =item realloc() of freed memory ignored (S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had already been freed. =item Recompile perl with B<-D>DEBUGGING to use B<-D> switch (S debugging) You can't use the B<-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. =item 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 C, which implicitly loads PerlIO::scalar. Try loading PerlIO::scalar explicitly first. =item 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 C<@ISA> hierarchy. This is a crude check that bails out after 100 levels of C<@ISA> depth. =item 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. L. =item refcnt_dec: fd %d%s =item refcnt: fd %d%s =item 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. =item 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 B. %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 =item Reference is already weak (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that is already weak. Doing so has no effect. =item Reference is not weak (W misc) You have attempted to unweaken a reference that is not weak. Doing so has no effect. =item Reference to invalid group 0 in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) You used C<\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. =item Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) You used something like C<\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: C<\007> The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. =item Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) You used something like C<\k'NAME'> or C<< \k >> in your regular expression, but there is no corresponding named capturing parentheses such as C<(?'NAME'...)> or C<< (?...) >>. Check if the name has been spelled correctly both in the backreference and the declaration. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. =item Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) You used something like C<\g{-7}> in your regular expression, but there are not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the expression before where the C<\g{-7}> was located. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. =item regexp memory corruption (P) The regular expression engine got confused by what the regular expression compiler gave it. =item Regexp modifier "/%c" may appear a maximum of twice =item Regexp modifier "%c" may appear a maximum of twice in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) The regular expression pattern had too many occurrences of the specified modifier. Remove the extraneous ones. =item 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. =item Regexp modifier "/%c" may not appear twice =item 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. =item Regexp modifiers "/%c" and "/%c" are mutually exclusive =item Regexp modifiers "%c" and "%c" are mutually exclusive in regex; marked by S<<-- 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. =item Regexp out of space in regex m/%s/ (P) A "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it earlier. =item 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 L. =item 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. =item 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. =item '(*%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. =item '%s' resolved to '\o{%s}%d' As of Perl 5.32, this message is no longer generated. Instead, see L. (W misc, regexp) You wrote something like C<\08>, or C<\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 C<\o{ }> syntax, or use exactly three digits to specify the octal for the character. =item Reversed %s= operator (W syntax) You wrote your assignment operator backwards. The = must always come last, to avoid ambiguity with subsequent unary operators. =item 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. =item 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. =item 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 $). The difference is that C<$foo[&bar]> always behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@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 L. =item 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 $). The difference is that C<$foo{&bar}> always behaves like a scalar, both when assigning to it and when evaluating its argument, while C<@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 L. =item 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 C<$> from a variable C<$m> may cause this error. Note that since Perl 5.10.0 a // can also be the I construct, not just the empty search pattern. Therefore code written in Perl 5.10.0 or later that uses the // as the I can be misparsed by pre-5.10.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern. =item 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. =item %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. =item select not implemented (F) This machine doesn't implement the select() system call. =item Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported (F) Self-ties are of arrays and hashes are not supported in the current implementation. =item 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. =item 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. =item sem%s not implemented (F) You don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system. =item send() on closed socket %s (W closed) The socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime before now. Check your control flow. =item 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. =item Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) A regular expression ended with an incomplete extension (?. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See L. =item Sequence (?%c...) not implemented in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) A proposed regular expression extension has the character reserved but has not yet been written. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See L. =item Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) You used a regular expression extension that doesn't make sense. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. This may happen when using the C<(?^...)> construct to tell Perl to use the default regular expression modifiers, and you redundantly specify a default modifier. For other causes, see L. =item 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 L. =item Sequence (?&... not terminated in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) A named reference of the form C<(?&...)> was missing the final closing parenthesis after the name. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. =item Sequence (?%c... not terminated in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) A named group of the form C<(?'...')> or C<< (?<...>) >> was missing the final closing quote or angle bracket. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. =item Sequence (%s... not terminated in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) A lookahead assertion C<(?=...)> or C<(?!...)> or lookbehind assertion C<< (?<=...) >> or C<< (?> was missing the final closing parenthesis. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. =item Sequence (?(%c... not terminated in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) A named reference of the form C<(?('...')...)> or C<< (?(<...>)...) >> was missing the final closing quote or angle bracket after the name. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. =item Sequence (?... not terminated in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) There was no matching closing parenthesis for the '('. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. =item Sequence \%s... not terminated in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) The regular expression expects a mandatory argument following the escape sequence and this has been omitted or incorrectly written. =item Sequence (?{...}) not terminated with ')' (F) The end of the perl code contained within the {...} must be followed immediately by a ')'. =item Sequence (?PE... not terminated in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) A named reference of the form C<(?PE...)> was missing the final closing parenthesis after the name. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. =item Sequence (?PE... not terminated in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) A named group of the form C<(?PE...E')> was missing the final closing angle bracket. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. =item Sequence ?P=... not terminated in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) A named reference of the form C<(?P=...)> was missing the final closing parenthesis after the name. The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. =item Sequence (?R) not terminated in regex m/%s/ (F) An C<(?R)> or C<(?0)> sequence in a regular expression was missing the final parenthesis. =item Z<>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". B. 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 L. =item setegid() not implemented (F) You tried to assign to C<$)>, and your operating system doesn't support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't think so. =item seteuid() not implemented (F) You tried to assign to C<< $> >>, and your operating system doesn't support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't think so. =item setpgrp can't take arguments (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process group ID. =item setrgid() not implemented (F) You tried to assign to C<$(>, and your operating system doesn't support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't think so. =item setruid() not implemented (F) You tried to assign to C<$<>, and your operating system doesn't support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't think so. =item 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 L. =item Setting $/ to a reference to %s is forbidden (F) You assigned a reference to a scalar to C<$/> where the referenced item is not a positive integer. In older perls this B to work the same as setting it to C 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 B the same as setting C<$/> to undef, with the exception that this warning would be thrown. You are recommended to change your code to set C<$/> to C explicitly if you wish to slurp the file. As of Perl 5.28 assigning C<$/> to a reference to an integer which isn't positive is a fatal error. =item Setting $/ to %s reference is forbidden (F) You tried to assign a reference to a non integer to C<$/>. 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. =item shm%s not implemented (F) You don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system. =item !=~ 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. =item /%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 C. 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. =item shutdown() on closed socket %s (W closed) You tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. Seems a bit superfluous. =item 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? =item 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. =item sleep(%u) too large (W overflow) You called C with a number that was larger than it can reliably handle and C probably slept for less time than requested. =item 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. =item Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks encapsulation (F) You should not use the C<~~> operator on an object that does not overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's underlying structure for the smart match. =item Smartmatch is deprecated (D deprecated::smartmatch) This warning is emitted if you use the smartmatch (C<~~>) 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. =item 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. =item 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. =item 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 C. This is not permitted under the C feature. Consider using C instead. See L. =item 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 L. =item 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 L. =item 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. =item "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. =item "state %s" used in sort comparison (W syntax) The package variables $a and $b are used for sort comparisons. You used $a or $b in as an operand to the C<< <=> >> or C operator inside a sort comparison block, and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable. Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the lexical variable. =item "state" variable %s can't be in a package (F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so it doesn't make sense to try to declare one with a package qualifier on the front. Use local() if you want to localize a package variable. =item stat() on unopened filehandle %s (W unopened) You tried to use the stat() function on a filehandle that was either never opened or has since been closed. =item Strings with code points over 0xFF may not be mapped into in-memory file handles (W utf8) You tried to open a reference to a scalar for read or append where the scalar contained code points over 0xFF. In-memory files model on-disk files and can only contain bytes. =item Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s" (P) Overloading resolution over @ISA tree may be broken by importation stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to C may break this. =item Subroutine attributes must come before the signature (F) When subroutine signatures are enabled, any subroutine attributes must come before the signature. Note that this order was the opposite in versions 5.22..5.26. So: sub foo :lvalue ($a, $b) { ... } # 5.20 and 5.28 + sub foo ($a, $b) :lvalue { ... } # 5.22 .. 5.26 =item 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. =item "%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. =item Subroutine %s redefined (W redefine) You redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say { no warnings 'redefine'; eval "sub name { ... }"; } =item Subroutine "%s" will not stay shared (W closure) An inner (nested) I 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 C _{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. =item 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 L. =item 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 C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error. =item Substitution replacement not terminated (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{} construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level. Missing the leading C<$> from variable C<$s> may cause this error. =item 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 L. 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). =item 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. =item Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by S<<-- 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 C, enclose it in clustering parentheses: (?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause) The S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See L. =item Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by S<<-- 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') true if named capture matched (?=...) (?<=...) true if subpattern matches (?!...) (? shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See L. =item Switch (?(condition)... not terminated in regex; marked by S<<-- 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 L. =item switching effective %s is not implemented (F) While under the C pragma, we cannot switch the real and effective uids or gids. =item 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 B<-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 C repeatedly, chopping away half the program each time to see if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of S<20 questions>. =item 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. =item 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". =item 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. =item %s syntax OK (F) The final summary message when a C succeeds. =item sysread() on closed filehandle %s (W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle. =item sysread() on unopened filehandle %s (W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened. =item 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. =item syswrite() on closed filehandle %s (W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now. Check your control flow. =item C<-T> and C<-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. =item Target of goto is too deeply nested (F) You tried to use C to reach a label that was too deeply nested for Perl to reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing. =item 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. =item 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. =item 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. =item The experimental declared_refs feature is not enabled (F) To declare references to variables, as in C, you must first enable the feature: no warnings "experimental::declared_refs"; use feature "declared_refs"; =item The %s function is unimplemented (F) The function indicated isn't implemented on this architecture, according to the probings of Configure. =item The private_use feature is experimental (S experimental::private_use) This feature is actually a hook for future use. =item 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. =item 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 L. =item The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables (F) This attribute was never supported on C or C declarations. =item This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s) =item 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 F (see L) so that the environ array isn't the target of the change to %ENV which produced the warning. =item 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. =item This use of my() in false conditional is no longer allowed (F) You used a declaration similar to C. 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 C variables to have lexicals that are initialized only once (see L): sub f { state $x; return $x++ } This use of C in a false conditional was deprecated beginning in Perl 5.10 and became a fatal error in Perl 5.30. =item Timeout waiting for another thread to define \p{%s} (F) The first time a user-defined property (L) 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. =item times not implemented (F) Your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I suspect you're not running on Unix. =item "-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 B<-T> option (or the B<-t> option), but Perl was not invoked with B<-T> in its command line. This is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a B<-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 B<-%c> option is a part of Perl's first argument: e.g. change C to C. If the Perl script is being executed as C, then the B<-%c> option must appear on the command line: C. =item 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 L. =item Too deeply nested ()-groups (F) Your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level. =item 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. =item 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. =item 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. =item Too late for "-%s" option (X) The #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the B<-M>, B<-m> or B<-C> option. In the case of B<-M> and B<-m>, this is an error because those options are not intended for use inside scripts. Use the C pragma instead. The B<-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. =item 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 C or C when you should be using C instead. Or perhaps you should put the C or C inside a BEGIN block. =item Too many args to syscall (F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall(). =item Too many arguments for %s (F) The function requires fewer arguments than you specified. =item 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. =item 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. =item Too many nested open parens in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ (F) You have exceeded the number of open C<"("> 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 C<${^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. =item 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 C<${^MAX_NESTED_EVAL_BEGIN_BLOCKS}> to a different value from the default of 1000. =item Too many capture groups (limit is %d) in regex m/%s/ (F) You have too many capture groups in your regex pattern. You need to rework your pattern to use less capture groups. =item Too many )'s (A) You've accidentally run your script through B instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself. =item Too many ('s (A) You've accidentally run your script through B instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself. =item Trailing \ in regex m/%s/ (F) The regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash. Backslash it. See L. =item Transliteration pattern not terminated (F) The lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][] or y/// or y[][] construct. Missing the leading C<$> from variables C<$tr> or C<$y> may cause this error. =item Transliteration replacement not terminated (F) The lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][], y/// or y[][] construct. =item Treating %s::INIT block as BEGIN block as workaround (S) A package is using an old version of C to install, which makes unsafe assumptions about when INIT blocks will be called. Because C 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. =item '%s' trapped by operation mask (F) You tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment in which it's disallowed. See L. =item truncate not implemented (F) Your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that Configure knows about. =item try/catch is experimental (S experimental::try) This warning is emitted if you use the C and C syntax. This syntax is currently experimental and its behaviour may change in future releases of Perl. =item try/catch/finally is experimental (S experimental::try) This warning is emitted if you use the C and C syntax with a C block. This syntax is currently experimental and its behaviour may change in future releases of Perl. =item 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. =item 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 C<@{EXPR}>. Hashes must be %NAME or C<%{EXPR}>. No implicit dereferencing is allowed--use the {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. See L. =item 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). =item 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. =item Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores (S internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many values were temporarily localized. =item Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs (S internal) The exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many blocks were entered and left. =item 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. =item 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. =item Undefined format "%s" called (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in another package? See L. =item Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called (F) The sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's in a different package? See L. =item Undefined subroutine &%s called (F) The subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has since been undefined. =item 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. =item Undefined subroutine in sort (F) The sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem to have been defined yet. See L. =item Undefined top format "%s" called (F) The format indicated doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps it's really in another package? See L. =item Undefined value assigned to typeglob (W misc) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la C<*foo = undef>. This does nothing. It's possible that you really mean C. =item %s: Undefined variable (A) You've accidentally run your script through B instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself. =item Unescaped left brace in regex is illegal here in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) The simple rule to remember, if you want to match a literal C<"{"> character (U+007B C) 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 C<"\{"> or enclose it in square brackets (C<"[{]">). If the pattern delimiters are also braces, any matching right brace (C<"}">) should also be escaped to avoid confusing the parser, for example, qr{abc\{def\}ghi} Forcing literal C<"{"> 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 C<"{"> 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: =over 4 =item * as the first character in a pattern, or following C<"^"> indicating to anchor the match to the beginning of a line. =item * as the first character following a C<"|"> indicating alternation. =item * as the first character in a parenthesized grouping like /foo({bar)/ /foo(?:{bar)/ =item * as the first character following a quantifier /\s*{/ =back =for comment The text of the message above is mostly duplicated below (with changes) to allow splain (and 'use diagnostics') to work. Since one is fatal, and one not, they can't be combined as one message. Perhaps perldiag could be enhanced to handle this case. =item Unescaped left brace in regex is passed through in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (W regexp) The simple rule to remember, if you want to match a literal C<"{"> character (U+007B C) 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 C<"\{"> or enclose it in square brackets (C<"[{]">). If the pattern delimiters are also braces, any matching right brace (C<"}">) should also be escaped to avoid confusing the parser, for example, qr{abc\{def\}ghi} Forcing literal C<"{"> 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 C<"{"> 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: =over 4 =item * as the first character in a pattern, or following C<"^"> indicating to anchor the match to the beginning of a line. =item * as the first character following a C<"|"> indicating alternation. =item * as the first character in a parenthesized grouping like /foo({bar)/ /foo(?:{bar)/ =item * as the first character following a quantifier /\s*{/ =back =item Unescaped literal '%c' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ (W regexp) (only under C>) Within the scope of C> in a regular expression pattern, you included an unescaped C<}> or C<]> 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 C<)> 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 C>, 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 C<[}]>). If you meant it as closing a corresponding C<[> or C<{>, you'll need to look back through the pattern to find out why that isn't happening. =item 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. =item Unexpected binary operator '%c' with no preceding operand in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) You had something like this: (?[ | \p{Digit} ]) where the C<"|"> is a binary operator with an operand on the right, but no operand on the left. =item Unexpected character in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) You had something like this: (?[ z ]) Within C<(?[ ])>, 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. =item 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 C C<:isa> attribute. This confused the parser. =item Unexpected exit %u (S) exit() was called or the script otherwise finished gracefully when C was set in C. =item Unexpected exit failure %d (S) An uncaught die() was called when C was set in C. =item Unexpected ')' in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) You had something like this: (?[ ( \p{Digit} + ) ]) The C<")"> is out-of-place. Something apparently was supposed to be combined with the digits, or the C<"+"> shouldn't be there, or something like that. Perl can't figure out what was intended. =item 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. =item Unexpected '(' with no preceding operator in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) You had something like this: (?[ \p{Digit} ( \p{Lao} + \p{Thai} ) ]) There should be an operator before the C<"(">, as there's no indication as to how the digits are to be combined with the characters in the Lao and Thai scripts. =item 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 C. 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. =item Unicode property wildcard not terminated (F) A Unicode property wildcard looks like a delimited regular expression pattern (all within the braces of the enclosing C<\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. =item 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 C<\p{name=KATAKANA LETTER AINU P}>, which is comprised of the sequence C<\N{KATAKANA LETTER SMALL H}> followed by C<\N{COMBINING KATAKANA-HIRAGANA SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK}>. Extended character classes, C<(?[...])> currently cannot handle these. =item 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 C. =item Unimplemented (F) In Perl 5.12 and above, you have executed an L. This is a bare C<...;>, 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, $arg2) = @_; ... } If C is called, Perl will die with an C error at the line containing C<...>. =item Unknown charname '%s' (F) The name you used inside C<\N{}> is unknown to Perl. Check the spelling. You can say C to not have to be so precise about spaces, hyphens, and capitalization on standard Unicode names. (Any custom aliases that have been created must be specified exactly, regardless of whether C<:loose> is used or not.) This error may also happen if the C<\N{}> is not in the scope of the corresponding C>. =item Unknown '(*...)' construct '%s' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ (F) The C<(*> was followed by something that the regular expression compiler does not recognize. Check your spelling. =item Unknown error (P) Perl was about to print an error message in C<$@>, but the C<$@> variable did not exist, even after an attempt to create it. =item Unknown locale category %d =item Unknown locale category %d; can't set it to %s (W locale) You used a locale category that perl doesn't recognize, so it cannot carry out your request. Check that you are using a valid category. If so, see L for advice on reporting this as a bug, and for modifying perl locally to accommodate your needs. =item Unknown open() mode '%s' (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not among the list of valid modes: C<< < >>, C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>, C<< +< >>, C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, C<-|>, C<|->, C<< <& >>, C<< >& >>. =item Unknown PerlIO layer "%s" (W layer) An attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and internal representations.) Note that some layers, such as C, are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO. =item Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s (P) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes. =item Unknown regexp modifier "/%s" (F) Alphanumerics immediately following the closing delimiter of a regular expression pattern are interpreted by Perl as modifier flags for the regex. One of the ones you specified is invalid. One way this can happen is if you didn't put in white space between the end of the regex and a following alphanumeric operator: if ($a =~ /foo/and $bar == 3) { ... } The C<"a"> is a valid modifier flag, but the C<"n"> is not, and raises this error. Likely what was meant instead was: if ($a =~ /foo/ and $bar == 3) { ... } =item Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s) (W) You tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma. =item Unknown switch condition (?(...)) in regex; marked by S<<-- 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') 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 S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See L. =item Unknown Unicode option letter '%c' (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See Llist]> documentation of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options. =item Unknown Unicode option value %d (F) You specified an unknown Unicode option. See Llist]> documentation of the C<-C> switch for the list of known options. =item Unknown user-defined property name \p{%s} (F) You specified to use a property within the C<\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 L. =item Unknown verb pattern '%s' in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) You either made a typo or have incorrectly put a C<*> quantifier after an open brace in your pattern. Check the pattern and review L for details on legal verb patterns. =item Unknown warnings category '%s' (F) An error issued by the C 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. C), you must have loaded this module first. =item Unmatched [ in regex; marked by S<<-- 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 S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See L. =item Unmatched ( in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ =item Unmatched ) in regex; marked by S<<-- 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 S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See L. =item 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. =item 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. =item Unrecognized character %s; marked by S<<-- 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. =item Unrecognized class attribute %s (F) You attempted to add a named attribute to a C definition, but perl does not recognise the name of the requested attribute. =item Unrecognized escape \%c in character class in regex; marked by S<<-- 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 C<(?[ ])>. =item Unrecognized escape \%c in character class passed through in regex; marked by S<<-- 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 S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the escape was discovered. =item 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. =item Unrecognized escape \%s passed through in regex; marked by S<<-- 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 S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the escape was discovered. =item Unrecognized field attribute %s (F) You attempted to add a named attribute to a C definition, but perl does not recognise the name of the requested attribute. =item Unrecognized signal name "%s" (F) You specified a signal name to the kill() function that was not recognized. Say C in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system. =item 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.) =item 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 L. =item Unsupported directory function "%s" called (F) Your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir(). =item Unsupported function %s (F) This machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently. At least, Configure doesn't think so. =item 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 C, C, and so on. =item 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. =item Unsupported socket function "%s" called (F) Your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism, or at least that's what Configure thought. =item Unterminated '(*...' argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*...:...)> but did not terminate the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry. =item 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 L. =item 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 L. =item 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 L. =item Unterminated '(*...' construct in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*...)> but did not terminate the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry. =item 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" =item Unterminated \g... pattern in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ =item Unterminated \g{...} pattern in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) In a regular expression, you had a C<\g> that wasn't followed by a proper group reference. In the case of C<\g{>, the closing brace is missing; otherwise the C<\g> must be followed by an integer. Fix the pattern and retry. =item 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". =item Unterminated verb pattern argument in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB:ARG)> but did not terminate the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry. =item Unterminated verb pattern in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (F) You used a pattern of the form C<(*VERB)> but did not terminate the pattern with a C<)>. Fix the pattern and retry. =item untie attempted while %d inner references still exist (W untie) A copy of the object returned from C (or C) was still valid when C was called. =item Usage: POSIX::%s(%s) (F) You called a POSIX function with incorrect arguments. See L for more information. =item Usage: Win32::%s(%s) (F) You called a Win32 function with incorrect arguments. See L for more information. =item $[ used in %s (did you mean $] ?) (W syntax) You used C<$[> in a comparison, such as: if ($[ > 5.006) { ... } You probably meant to use C<$]> instead. C<$[> is the base for indexing arrays. C<$]> is the Perl version number in decimal. =item Use "%s" instead of "%s" (F) The second listed construct is no longer legal. Use the first one instead. =item 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. =item Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex; marked by S<<-- 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 S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See L. =item Useless localization of %s (W syntax) The localization of lvalues such as C 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. =item Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex; marked by S<<-- 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 S<<-- HERE> shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See L. =item Useless use of attribute "const" (W misc) The C attribute has no effect except on anonymous closure prototypes. You applied it to a subroutine via L. This is only useful inside an attribute handler for an anonymous subroutine. =item 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 L for more information about the /d modifier. =item Useless use of \E (W misc) You have a \E in a double-quotish string without a C<\U>, C<\L> or C<\Q> preceding it. =item Useless use of greediness modifier '%c' in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (W regexp) You specified something like these: qr/a{3}?/ qr/b{1,1}+/ The C<"?"> and C<"+"> 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. =item 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. =item 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 L 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. =item Useless use of (?-p) in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (W regexp) The C}

modifier cannot be turned off once set. Trying to do so is futile. =item Useless use of "re" pragma (W) You did C without any arguments. That isn't very useful. =item Useless use of %s with no values (W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments apart from the array, like C or C. 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 C to avoid this warning. =item "use" not allowed in expression (F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns no useful value. See L. =item Use of @_ in %s with signatured subroutine is experimental (S experimental::args_array_with_signatures) An expression involving the C<@_> 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. =item 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. =item 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. =item 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.) =item Use of code point 0x%s is not allowed; the permissible max is 0x%X =item 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. =item Use of each() on hash after insertion without resetting hash iterator results in undefined behavior (S internal) The behavior of C after insertion is undefined; it may skip items, or visit items more than once. Consider using C instead of C. =item Use of := for an empty attribute list is not allowed (F) The construction C used to parse as equivalent to C (applying an empty attribute list to C<$x>). This construct was deprecated in 5.12.0, and has now been made a syntax error, so C<:=> 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 C<=>. =item 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. =item 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. =item Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split (W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a C operator. Since C always tries to match the pattern repeatedly, the C has no effect. =item Use of "goto" to jump into a construct is deprecated (D deprecated::goto_construct) Using C to jump from an outer scope into an inner scope is deprecated and should be avoided. This was deprecated in Perl 5.12. =item 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. =item Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s::%s() is no longer allowed (F) As an accidental feature, C subroutines were looked up as methods (using the C<@ISA> hierarchy), even when the subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g. C), not as methods (e.g. C<< Foo->bar() >> or C<< $obj->bar() >>). This was deprecated in Perl 5.004, and was made fatal in Perl 5.28. =item 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. =item 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 S>. 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 S> and use the character that is the mirror image of this one for the closing string delimiter. =item 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 S>. 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: =item Use of %s is not allowed in Unicode property wildcard subpatterns in regex; marked by S<<-- 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 L. =item 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 C. Use a filename instead. =item 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: C<$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. =item 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 (C<&> or C<|> or C<^> or C<~>) 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. =item Use of strings with code points over 0xFF as arguments to vec is forbidden (F) You tried to use L|perlfunc/vec EXPR,OFFSET,BITS> on a string containing a code point over 0xFF, which is nonsensical here. This became fatal in Perl 5.32. =item Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated (W taint, deprecated) You have supplied C or C 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 L. =item 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, I. 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 L, nor L, those can be delimiters, and their use is legal. =item 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, C<"that $foo"> is usually optimized into C<"that " . $foo>, and the warning will refer to the C operator, even though there is no C<.> in your program. =item "use re 'strict'" is experimental (S experimental::re_strict) The things that are different when a regular expression pattern is compiled under C<'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. =item Use \x{...} for more than two hex characters in regex; marked by S<<-- 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. =item Using just the first character returned by \N{} in character class in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (W regexp) Named Unicode character escapes C<(\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 (C<[^...]>), 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. =item Using just the single character results returned by \p{} in (?[...]) in regex; marked by S<<-- 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 C<\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. =item Using /u for '%s' instead of /%s in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/ (W regexp) You used a Unicode boundary (C<\b{...}> or C<\B{...}>) in a portion of a regular expression where the character set modifiers C or C 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. =item Using !~ with %s doesn't make sense (F) Using the C operator with C, C or C 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.) =item 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 C. =item Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined() (W misc) In a conditional expression, you used , <*> (glob), C, or C 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 C operator. =item 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. =item Variable "%s" is not available (W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is attempting to capture an outer lexical that is not currently available. This can happen for one of two reasons. First, the outer lexical may be declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that has not yet been created. (Remember that named subs are created at compile time, while anonymous subs are created at run-time.) For example, sub { my $a; sub f { $a } } At the time that f is created, it can't capture the current value of $a, since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely, the following won't give a warning since the anonymous subroutine has by now been created and is live: sub { my $a; eval 'sub f { $a }' }->(); The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a variable that has gone out of scope, for example, sub f { my $a; sub { eval '$a' } } f()->(); Here, when the '$a' in the eval is being compiled, f() is not currently being executed, so its $a is not available for capture. =item 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. =item Variable length lookbehind not implemented in regex m/%s/ (F) B 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 C<\K> regex construct as a way to get the equivalent functionality. See L<(?<=pattern) and \K in perlre|perlre/\K>. Starting in Perl 5.18, there are non-obvious Unicode rules under C that can match variably, but which you might not think could. For example, the substring C<"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 (? 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 C to all regular expressions compiled within its scope. See L. =item 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 L<< documentation of Positive Lookbehind in perlre|perlre/"C<(?<=I)>" >> for details. You may silence this warning with the following: no warnings 'experimental::vlb'; =item 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 L<< documentation of Negative Lookbehind in perlre|perlre/"C<(?)>" >> for details. You may silence this warning with the following: no warnings 'experimental::vlb'; =item "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s (W shadow) A "my", "our" or "state" variable has been redeclared in the current scope or statement, effectively eliminating all access to the previous instance. This is almost always a typographical error. Note that the earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope or until all closure references to it are destroyed. =item Variable syntax (A) You've accidentally run your script through B instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself. =item Variable "%s" will not stay shared (W closure) An inner (nested) I 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 C syntax. When inner anonymous subs that reference variables in outer subroutines are created, they are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables. =item vector argument not supported with alpha versions (S printf) The %vd (s)printf format does not support version objects with alpha parts. =item Verb pattern '%s' has a mandatory argument in regex; marked by S<<-- 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. =item Verb pattern '%s' may not have an argument in regex; marked by S<<-- 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. =item Version control conflict marker (F) The parser found a line starting with C<<<<<<>, CEEEEEE>, or C<=======>. These may be left by a version control system to mark conflicts after a failed merge operation. =item Version number must be a constant number (P) The attempt to translate a C statement into its equivalent C block found an internal inconsistency with the version number. =item Version string '%s' contains invalid data; ignoring: '%s' (W misc) The version string contains invalid characters at the end, which are being ignored. =item Warning: something's wrong (W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of C) or you called it with no args and C<$@> was empty. =item 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. =item Warning: unable to close filehandle properly: %s =item 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 C 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. B, so the common idiom shown above was liable to cause B. =item 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. =item when is deprecated (D deprecated::smartmatch) C 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 L. =item 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 C<:utf8> layer, I, S>. Another way to turn off the warning is to add S> but that is often closer to cheating. In general, you are supposed to explicitly mark the filehandle with an encoding, see L and L. 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. =item Wide character (U+%X) in %s (W locale) While in a single-byte locale (I, 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). =item Within []-length '%c' not allowed (F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by C<[TEMPLATE]> only if C