PERLDIAG(1perl)
💖 NAME 💖
perldiag — various Perl diagnostics ✨
it's literally the master list of every message Perl might throw at you, bestie 🫶
🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸
okay so these messages come in tiers, and they're listed in increasing order of desperation 😭 which is honestly so real of them:
(W) A warning (optional).
(D) A deprecation (enabled by default).
(S) A severe warning (enabled by default).
(F) A fatal error (trappable).
(P) An internal error you should never see (trappable).
(X) A very fatal error (nontrappable).
(A) An alien error message (not generated by Perl).most of the messages from the first three buckets up there (W, D & S) can be controlled using the warnings pragma 💅
if a message can be controlled by the warnings pragma, its warning category is included with the classification letter in the description below. E.g. (W closed) means a warning in the closed category.
optional warnings are enabled by using the warnings pragma or the -w and -W switches. warnings may be captured by setting $SIG{__WARN__} to a reference to a routine that will be called on each warning instead of printing it. See perlvar.
severe warnings are always enabled, unless they are explicitly disabled with the warnings pragma or the -X switch. she does not play 🔥
trappable errors may be trapped using the eval operator. See "eval" in perlfunc. In almost all cases, warnings may be selectively disabled or promoted to fatal errors using the warnings pragma. See warnings.
the messages are in alphabetical order, without regard to upper or lower-case. some of these messages are generic. spots that vary are denoted with a %s or other printf-style escape. these escapes are ignored by the alphabetical order, as are all characters other than letters. to look up your message, just ignore anything that is not a letter 👑
__CLASS__ is experimental
(S experimental::class) — you used the __CLASS__ keyword of use feature 'class'. this keyword is currently experimental and its behaviour may change in future releases of Perl 🧪
accept() on closed socket %s
(W closed) — bestie you tried to do an accept on a closed socket 😭 did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?? See "accept" in perlfunc.
ADJUST is experimental
(S experimental::class) — you used the ADJUST keyword of use feature 'class'. currently experimental, and its behaviour may change in future releases of Perl 🧪
Aliasing via reference is experimental
(S experimental::refaliasing) — you used a reference constructor on the left-hand side of an assignment to alias one variable to another. literally just suppress the warning if you want to use the feature, but know that in doing so you are taking the risk of using an experimental feature which may change or be removed in a future Perl version 🫣
no warnings "experimental::refaliasing";
use feature "refaliasing";
\$x = \$y;all is experimental
(S experimental::keyword_all) — you used the all keyword of use feature 'keyword_all'. currently experimental, behaviour may change in future releases of Perl 🧪
'%c' allowed only after types %s in %s
(F) — the modifiers '!', '<' and '>' are allowed in pack() or unpack() only after certain types. See "pack" in perlfunc.
alpha->numify() is lossy
(W numeric) — an alpha version can not be numified without losing information 💀
Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
(W ambiguous) — a subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl keyword, and you used the name without qualification for calling one or the other. Perl decided to call the builtin because the subroutine is not imported.
to force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package. alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend that it's imported with the use subs pragma).
to silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the CORE:: prefix on the operator (e.g. CORE::log($x)) or declare the subroutine to be an object method (see "Subroutine Attributes" in perlsub or attributes).
Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
(F) — you wrote something like tr/a-z-0// which doesn't mean anything at all 🫠 to include a - character in a transliteration, put it either first or last. (in the past, tr/a-z-0// was synonymous with tr/a-y//, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
Ambiguous use of %s resolved as %s
(S ambiguous) — you said something that may not be interpreted the way you thought. normally it's pretty easy to disambiguate it by supplying a missing quote, operator, parenthesis pair or declaration 💅
Ambiguous use of -%s resolved as -&%s()
(S ambiguous) — you wrote something like -foo, which might be the string -foo, or a call to the function foo, negated. if you meant the string, just write -foo. if you meant the function call, write -foo().
Ambiguous use of %c resolved as operator %c
(S ambiguous) — %, &, and * are both infix operators (modulus, bitwise and, and multiplication) and initial special characters (denoting hashes, subroutines and typeglobs), and you said something like *foo * foo that might be interpreted as either of them. we assumed you meant the infix operator, but please try to make it more clear — in the example given, you might write *foo * foo() if you really meant to multiply a glob by the result of calling a function.
Ambiguous use of %c{%s} resolved to %c%s
(W ambiguous) — you wrote something like @{foo}, which might be asking for the variable @foo, or it might be calling a function named foo and dereferencing it as an array reference. if you wanted the variable, you can just write @foo. if you wanted to call the function, write "@{foo()}" ... or you could just not have a variable and a function with the same name, and save yourself a lot of trouble 🙈
Ambiguous use of %c{%s[...]} resolved to %c%s[...] / Ambiguous use of %c{%s{...}} resolved to %c%s{...}
(W ambiguous) — you wrote something like ${foo[2]} (where foo represents the name of a Perl keyword), which might be looking for element number 2 of the array named @foo, in which case please write $foo[2], or you might have meant to pass an anonymous arrayref to the function named foo, and then do a scalar deref on the value it returns. if you meant that, write ${foo([2])}.
in regular expressions, the ${foo[2]} syntax is sometimes necessary to disambiguate between array subscripts and character classes. /$length[2345]/, for instance, will be interpreted as $length followed by the character class [2345]. if an array subscript is what you want, you can avoid the warning by changing /${length[2345]}/ to the unsightly /${\$length[2345]}/, by renaming your array to something that does not coincide with a built-in keyword, or by simply turning off warnings with no warnings 'ambiguous';.
'|' and '<' may not both be specified on command line
(F) — an error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and found that STDIN was a pipe, and that you also tried to redirect STDIN using <. only one STDIN stream to a customer, please 🫶
'|' and '>' may not both be specified on command line
(F) — an error peculiar to VMS. Perl does its own command line redirection, and thinks you tried to redirect stdout both to a file and into a pipe to another command. you need to choose one or the other, though nothing's stopping you from piping into a program or Perl script which 'splits' output into two streams, such as
open(OUT,">$ARGV[0]") or die "Can't write to $ARGV[0]: $!";
while (<STDIN>) {
print;
print OUT;
}
close OUT;any is experimental
(S experimental::keyword_any) — you used the any keyword of use feature 'keyword_any'. currently experimental, and its behaviour may change in future releases of Perl 🧪
Applying %s to %s will act on scalar(%s)
(W misc) — the pattern match (//), substitution (s///), and transliteration (tr///) operators work on scalar values. if you apply one of them to an array or a hash, it will convert the array or hash to a scalar value (the length of an array, or the population info of a hash) and then work on that scalar value. this is probably not what you meant to do 😬 see "grep" in perlfunc and "map" in perlfunc for alternatives.
Arg too short for msgsnd
(F) — msgsnd() requires a string at least as long as sizeof(long).
Argument "%s" isn't numeric%s
(W numeric) — the indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator that expected a numeric value instead. if you're fortunate the message will identify which operator was so unfortunate 💅
note that for the "Inf" and "NaN" (infinity and not-a-number) the definition of "numeric" is somewhat unusual: the strings themselves (like "Inf") are considered numeric, and anything following them is considered non-numeric.
Argument list not closed for PerlIO layer "%s"
(W layer) — when pushing a layer with arguments onto the Perl I/O system you forgot the ) that closes the argument list. (layers take care of transforming data between external and internal representations.) Perl stopped parsing the layer list at this point and did not attempt to push this layer. if your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
Argument "%s" treated as 0 in increment (++)
(W numeric) — the indicated string was fed as an argument to the ++ operator which expects either a number or a string matching /^[a-zA-Z]*[0-9]*\z/. see "Auto-increment and Auto-decrement" in perlop for details.
Array passed to stat will be coerced to a scalar%s
(W syntax) — you called stat() on an array, but the array will be coerced to a scalar — the number of elements in the array 👀
A signature parameter must start with '$', '@' or '%'
(F) — each subroutine signature parameter declaration must start with a valid sigil; for example:
sub foo ($x, $, $y = 1, @z) {}A named signature parameter must start with '$'
(F) Every named parameter you declare in a subroutine signature has to start with a scalar-variable sigil, bestie. Like:
sub foo (:$x, :$y, :$z) {}Also — and this is the tea — array and hash variables are not allowed as named parameters. Nope. Not a vibe. 🚫
A slurpy parameter may not have a default value
(F) Only scalar subroutine signature parameters get to have a default value, queen. Only scalars. Check it:
sub foo ($x = 1) {} # legal
sub foo (@x = (1)) {} # invalid
sub foo (%x = (a => b)) {} # invalidSo like… a slurpy with a default is giving nothing but chaos. 💀
assertion botched: %s
(X) The malloc package that ships with Perl had an internal failure. It's giving "I tripped over my own feet" energy. 😭
Assertion %s failed: file "%s", line %d
(X) A general assertion failed, bestie. The file in question must be examined. Like, go look at it. Now. 🔍
Assigned value is not a reference
(F) You tried to assign something that wasn't a reference to an lvalue reference (e.g., \$x = $y). If your actual goal was to make $x an alias to $y, then the slay move is \$x = \$y. 💅
Assigned value is not %s reference
(F) You tried to assign a reference to a reference constructor, but the two references weren't the same type. You literally cannot alias a scalar to an array, or an array to a hash — the two types have to match, periodt.
\$x = \@y; # error
\@x = \%y; # error
$y = [];
\$x = $y; # error; did you mean \$y?Assigning non-zero to $[ is no longer possible
(F) When the "array_base" feature is disabled (e.g., and under use v5.16;, and as of Perl 5.30), the special variable $[ — which is, lowkey, deprecated — is now a fixed zero value. She's frozen. Not moving. 🧊
Assignment to both a list and a scalar
(F) If you assign to a conditional operator, arguments 2 and 3 must either both be scalars or both be lists. Otherwise Perl literally does not know which context to hand to the right side. Pick a lane, bestie. 🛣️
Assuming NOT a POSIX class since %s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) You had something like these:
[[:alnum]]
[[:digit:xyz]They look like they were maybe meant to be the POSIX classes [:alnum:] or [:digit:]. If so, they should be written like:
[[:alnum:]]
[[:digit:]xyz]Since these aren't legal POSIX class specifications but are legal bracketed character classes, Perl treats them as the latter. In that first example, it matches the characters ":", "[", "a", "l", "m", "n", and "u". Anyway, iconic of them. ✨
If these weren't meant to be POSIX classes, this warning message is spurious, and can be suppressed by reordering things, such as
[[al:num]]or
[[:munla]]<> at require-statement should be quotes
(F) You wrote require <file> when you should have written require 'file'. Quotes, babe. Quotes. 🎀
Attempt to access disallowed key '%s' in a restricted hash
(F) The failing code tried to get or set a key that is not in the current set of allowed keys of a restricted hash. That key is not on the guest list. 🚫🎟️
Attempt to bless into a freed package
(F) You wrote bless $foo with one argument after somehow causing the current package to be freed. Perl cannot figure out what to do, so it throws up its hands in despair. Same, honestly. 🙈
Attempt to bless into a class
(F) You're trying to call bless with a package name that's a new-style "class". This is not necessary — instances created by the constructor are already in the correct class. And instances cannot be created by other means, such as bless. So like… put it down. 🫶
Attempt to bless into a reference
(F) The CLASSNAME argument to the bless() operator is supposed to be the name of the package to bless the resulting object into. Instead you supplied a reference to something. Maybe you wrote
bless $self, $proto;when you actually intended
bless $self, ref($proto) || $proto;If you genuinely want to bless into the stringified version of the reference you supplied, you need to stringify it yourself, for example by:
bless $self, "$proto";Attempt to clear deleted array
(S debugging) An array was assigned to while it was being freed. Freed values are not supposed to be visible to Perl code — that's the rule. This can also happen if XS code calls av_clear from a custom magic callback on the array. Ngl, spooky. 👻
Attempt to delete disallowed key '%s' from a restricted hash
(F) The failing code attempted to delete, from a restricted hash, a key that isn't in its key set. Not on the list, not getting deleted. 🚫
Attempt to delete readonly key '%s' from a restricted hash
(F) The failing code attempted to delete a key whose value has been declared readonly, from a restricted hash. She said no. Respect it. ✋
Attempt to free non-arena SV: 0x%x
(S internal) All SV objects are supposed to be allocated from arenas that get garbage collected on exit. An SV was discovered hanging out outside any of those arenas. Ma'am, you don't belong here. 😭
Attempt to free nonexistent shared string '%s'%s
(S internal) Perl keeps a reference-counted internal table of strings to optimize the storage and access of hash keys and other strings. This one means someone tried to decrement the reference count of a string that can no longer be found in the table. Missing. Gone. No cap. 💀
Attempt to free temp prematurely: SV 0x%x
(S debugging) Mortalized values are supposed to be freed by the free_tmps() routine. This means something else is freeing the SV before free_tmps() gets its chance, which means free_tmps() will be freeing an unreferenced scalar when it does try to free it. Rude, honestly. 🙄
Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointers
(S internal) The reference counts got screwed up on symbol aliases. That's it. That's the whole entry. 💅
Attempt to free unreferenced scalar: SV 0x%x
(S internal) Perl went to decrement the reference count of a scalar to see if it would hit 0, and discovered it had already gone to 0 earlier, and should have been freed, and in fact probably was freed. This could mean SvREFCNT_dec() was called too many times, or SvREFCNT_inc() was called too few times, or the SV was mortalized when it shouldn't have been, or memory has been corrupted. So… a whole menu of possibilities. 🍓
Attempt to pack pointer to temporary value
(W pack) You tried to pass a temporary value — like the result of a function, or a computed expression — to the "p" pack() template. That means the result contains a pointer to a location that could become invalid anytime, even before the end of the current statement. Use literals or global values as arguments to the "p" pack() template to dodge this warning. Preventative slay. 🛡️
Attempt to reload %s aborted.
(F) You tried to load a file with use or require that failed to compile once already. Perl will not try to compile this file again unless you delete its entry from %INC. See "require" in perlfunc and "%INC" in perlvar. Once bitten, twice shy, periodt. 💅
Attempt to set length of freed array
(W misc) You tried to set the length of an array that's been freed. You can do this by storing a reference to the scalar representing the last index of an array and later assigning through that reference. For example
$r = do {my @a; \$#a};
$$r = 503Yeah bestie, that's a whole yikes. 😬
Attempt to use reference as lvalue in substr
(W substr) You supplied a reference as the first argument to substr() used as an lvalue, which is pretty strange. Perhaps you forgot to dereference it first? See "substr" in perlfunc. 🌸
Attribute prototype(%s) discards earlier prototype attribute in same sub
(W misc) A sub was declared as sub foo : prototype(A) : prototype(B) {}, for example. Since each sub can only have one prototype, the earlier declaration(s) are discarded while the last one is applied. Last one wins, sorry to the others. 👑
av_reify called on tied array
(S debugging) This means something went wrong and Perl got very confused about @_ or @DB::args being tied. Confusion central. 🌀
Bad arg length for %s, is %u, should be %d
(F) You passed a buffer of the wrong size to one of msgctl(), semctl() or shmctl(). In C parlance, the correct sizes are, respectively, sizeof(struct msqid_ds *), sizeof(struct semid_ds *), and sizeof(struct shmid_ds *). Get the size right, babe. 📏
Bad evalled substitution pattern
(F) You've used the "/e" switch to evaluate the replacement for a substitution, but perl found a syntax error in the code to evaluate — most likely an unexpected right brace '}'. That curly brace said "not today". 🙈
Bad filehandle: %s
(F) A symbol was passed to something wanting a filehandle, but the symbol has no filehandle associated with it. Perhaps you didn't do an open(), or you did it in another package. Classic. 😭
Bad free() ignored
(S malloc) An internal routine called free() on something that had never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by setting environment variable "PERL_BADFREE" to 0.
This message can be seen quite often with DB_File on systems with "hard" dynamic linking, like "AIX" and "OS/2". It is a bug of "Berkeley DB" which is left unnoticed if "DB" uses forgiving system malloc(). So like, not your fault, but here we are. 🫠
Bad infix plugin result (%zd) - did not consume entire identifier <%s>
(F) A plugin using the "PL_infix_plugin" mechanism to parse an infix keyword consumed part of a named identifier operator name but did not consume all of it. This is not permitted, because it leads to fragile parsing results. Half-eaten identifier = not the vibe. 🚫
Badly placed ()'s
(A) You've accidentally run your script through csh instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself. We've all been there, bestie. 💀
Bad name after %s
(F) You started to name a symbol by using a package prefix, and then didn't finish the symbol. In particular, you can't interpolate outside of quotes, so
$var = 'myvar';
$sym = mypack::$var;is not the same as
$var = 'myvar';
$sym = "mypack::$var";Quotes are doing the heavy lifting here and they deserve credit. 🎀
Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'
(F) An extension using the keyword plugin mechanism violated the plugin API. The rules are the rules. 📜
Bad realloc() ignored
(S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had never been malloc()ed in the first place. Mandatory, but can be disabled by setting the environment variable "PERL_BADFREE" to 1.
Bad symbol for %s
(P) An internal request asked to add an entry of the named type to something that wasn't a symbol table entry. Nope, wrong spot. 🚫
Bad symbol for scalar
(P) An internal request asked to add a scalar entry to something that wasn't a symbol table entry. Same energy as above, different entry type. She said "wrong address". 💅
Bareword found in conditional 💅
(W bareword) — okay so bestie, the compiler was like “I wanted a conditional here but you gave me a bareword instead” 😭. This usually means your || or && got slurped into the last argument of whatever came before, like:
open FOO || die;It could also be a typo’d constant that got treated as a bareword:
use constant TYPO => 1;
if (TYOP) { print "foo" }The strict pragma is lowkey your bestie for dodging these errors, no cap. ✨
Bareword in require contains "%s" / Bareword in require maps to disallowed filename "%s" / Bareword in require maps to empty filename 🦋
(F) — the bareword form of require got a filename that could not have come from a valid bareword the parser allows. You literally shouldn’t be able to trigger this from Perl code, but XS code might throw it if it hands an invalid module name to Perl_load_module. iykyk. 💀
Bareword in require must not start with a double-colon: "%s" 🎀
(F) — in require Bare::Word, the bareword can’t start with a double-colon. So write require ::Foo::Bar as require Foo::Bar instead. periodt. 💅
Bareword "%s" not allowed while "strict subs" in use 🌸
(F) — with strict subs active, a bareword is only allowed as a subroutine identifier, inside curly brackets, or to the left of the => symbol. Maybe you need to predeclare that subroutine? just saying. 🫶
Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package 💖
(W bareword) — you used a qualified bareword like Foo::, but the compiler didn’t see any other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps you need to predeclare the package? not me guessing but ok. ✨
Bareword filehandle "%s" not allowed under 'no feature "bareword_filehandles"' 👑
(F) — you tried to use a bareword filehandle with the bareword_filehandles feature turned off. The only built-in handles that work with it off are STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR, ARGV, ARGVOUT and DATA. that’s it bestie. 💅
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted 💀
(F) — an untrapped exception got raised while running a BEGIN subroutine. Compilation stops immediately and the interpreter exits. no cap, it’s over. 😭
BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted 🦋
(F) — Perl found a BEGIN {} subroutine (or a use directive, which implies a BEGIN {}) after one or more compilation errors had already happened. Since the intended environment for the BEGIN {} couldn’t be guaranteed (because of those errors), and since later code probably depends on it working right, Perl just gave up. fair tbh. 💅
%d better written as $%d 🌈
(W syntax) — outside of patterns, backreferences live on as variables. Using backslashes is grandfathered on the right-hand side of a substitution, but stylistically it’s better to use the variable form because other Perl programmers will expect it, and it works better if there are more than 9 backreferences. ok so be the main character and use $%d. 💖
Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-portable ⭐
(W portable) — the binary number you specified is larger than 2**32-1 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See perlport for more on portability concerns. ngl, portability is giving… complicated. 🫶
bind() on closed socket %s 🔥
(W closed) — you tried to do a bind on a closed socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See "bind" in perlfunc. bestie, check your flow. 💅
binmode() on closed filehandle %s 🎀
(W unopened) — you tried binmode() on a filehandle that was never opened. Check your control flow and number of arguments. it’s giving… unopened. 💀
Bit vector size > 32 non-portable 🌸
(W portable) — using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is non-portable. that’s it, that’s the tweet. ✨
Bizarre copy of %s 💖
(P) — Perl detected an attempt to copy an internal value that is not copiable. lowkey bizarre. 🦋
Bizarre SvTYPE [%d] 💅
(P) — when starting a new thread or returning values from a thread, Perl encountered an invalid data type. not the vibe. 😭
Both or neither range ends should be Unicode in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ 👑
(W regexp) — (only under use re 'strict' or within (?[...]))
In a bracketed character class in a regular expression pattern, you had a range with exactly one end specified using \N{}, and the other end specified using a non-portable mechanism. Perl treats the range as a Unicode range, meaning all the characters in it are considered to be the Unicode characters, and which may be different code points on some platforms Perl runs on. For example, [\N{U+06}-\x08] is treated as if you had said [\N{U+06}-\N{U+08}], that is it matches the characters whose code points in Unicode are 6, 7, and 8. But that \x08 might indicate you meant something different, so the warning gets raised. fr fr, be careful. 🌈
Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s 🦋
(W internal) — a warning peculiar to VMS. While Perl was preparing to iterate over %ENV, it encountered a logical name or symbol definition which was too long, so it was truncated to the string shown. VMS said no. 💀
Built-in function '%s' is experimental 💅
(S experimental::builtin) — a call is being made to a function in the builtin:: namespace, which is currently experimental. The existence or nature of the function may be subject to change in a future version of Perl. experimental, so don’t get too attached. 😭
builtin::import can only be called at compile time 🎀
(F) — the import method of the builtin package was invoked when no code is currently being compiled. Since this method is used to introduce new lexical subroutines into the scope currently being compiled, this is not going to have any effect. nothing happened, bestie. 💅
builtin::inf not implemented 🌸
(F) — your machine doesn’t support infinity as a numeric value (probably because it’s a VAX). 💀
builtin::nan not implemented 💖
(F) — your machine doesn’t support NaN ("not a number") as a numeric value (probably because it’s a VAX). also VAX. 🫶
Builtin version bundle "%s" is not supported by Perl ⭐
(F) — you attempted to use builtin :ver for a version number that is either older than 5.39 (when the ability was added), or newer than the current perl version. pick a valid version, bestie. 💅
Callback called exit 🔥
(F) — a subroutine invoked from an external package via call_sv() exited by calling exit. not the move. 😭
%s() attempted on invalid dirhandle %s 🌈
(W io) — you called readdir(), telldir(), seekdir(), rewinddir() or closedir() on a handle that has not been opened, or is now closed. A handle must be successfully opened with opendir() to be used with these functions. Check your control flow. it’s giving… invalid dirhandle. 💅
%s() attempted on handle %s opened with open() 🎀
(W io) — you called readdir(), telldir(), seekdir(), rewinddir() or closedir() on a handle that was opened with open(). If you want to use these functions to traverse the contents of a directory, you need to open the handle with opendir(). wrong handle type, bestie. 💀
%s() called too early to check prototype 🌸
(W prototype) — you’ve called a function that has a prototype before the parser saw a definition or declaration for it, and Perl couldn’t check that the call conforms to the prototype. You need to either add an early prototype declaration for the subroutine in question, or move the subroutine definition ahead of the call to get proper prototype checking. Alternatively, if you are certain that you’re calling the function correctly, you may put an ampersand before the name to avoid the warning. See perlsub. iykyk. ✨
Cannot apply a :writer attribute to a non-scalar field 💅
(F) — an attempt was made to use the :writer attribute on a field that is not a scalar (i.e. an array or hash). At the present version, these are only permitted on scalar fields. You will have to manually create a writer accessor method yourself. no auto-writer for you, bestie. 💀
Cannot assign :param(%s) to field %s because that name is already in use 🦋
(F) — an attempt was made to apply a parameter name to a field, when the name is already being used by another field in the same class, or one of its parent classes. This would cause a name clash so is not allowed. name collision, not the vibe. 😭
Cannot chr %f 💖
(F) — you passed an invalid number (like an infinity or not-a-number) to chr. chr said no. 💅
Cannot complete in-place edit of %s: %s 🎀
(F) — your perl script appears to have changed directory while performing an in-place edit of a file specified by a relative path, and your system doesn’t include the directory relative POSIX functions needed to handle that. awks. 🌸
Cannot compress %f in pack ⭐
(F) — you tried compressing an infinity or not-a-number as an unsigned integer with BER, which makes no sense. literally no sense. 💀
Cannot compress integer in pack 🔥
(F) — an argument to pack("w",...) was too large to compress. The BER compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers, and you attempted to compress a very large number (> 1e308). See "pack" in perlfunc. too big, bestie. 😭
Cannot compress negative numbers in pack 🌈
(F) — an argument to pack("w",...) was negative. The BER compressed integer format can only be used with positive integers. See "pack" in perlfunc. positive vibes only. 💅
Cannot convert a reference to %s to typeglob 💖
(F) — you manipulated Perl’s symbol table directly, stored a reference in it, then tried to access that symbol via conventional Perl syntax. The access triggers Perl to autovivify that typeglob, but there is no legal conversion from that type of reference to a typeglob. typeglob said nope. 🦋
Cannot copy to %s 💅
(P) — Perl detected an attempt to copy a value to an internal type that cannot be directly assigned to. cannot copy, periodt. ✨
Cannot create class %s as it already has a non-empty @ISA 👑
(F) — an attempt was made to create a class out of a package that already has an @ISA array, and the array is not empty. This is not permitted, as it would lead to a class with inconsistent inheritance. inconsistent inheritance is not the vibe. 💀
Cannot create an object of incomplete class "%s" 🎀
(F) — an attempt was made to create an object of a class where the start of the class definition has been seen, but the class has not been completed.
This can happen for a failed eval, or if you attempt to create an object at compile time before the class is complete:
eval "class Foo {"; Foo->new; # error
class Bar { BEGIN { Bar->new } }; # errorkeep it complete, bestie. 🌸
Cannot find encoding "%s" 🦋
(S io) — you tried to apply an encoding that did not exist to a filehandle, either with open() or binmode(). encoding not found, it’s giving… missing. 😭
Cannot invoke a method of "%s" on an instance of "%s" 💖
(F) — you tried to directly call a method subroutine of one class by passing in a value that is an instance of a different class. This is not permitted, as the method would not have access to the correct instance fields. wrong class, bestie. 💅
Cannot invoke method on a non-instance
(F) ficou fatal, bestie 💀 you tried to call a "method" subroutine of a class directly, by passing in some value that isn't an instance of that class. Not allowed, and honestly for a good reason: the method wouldn't have access to its instance fields. It'd be like grabbing someone else's locker and being shocked your stuff isn't in it. no cap.
Cannot open %s as a dirhandle: it is already open as a filehandle
(F) you tried to use opendir() to tie a dirhandle to a symbol (a glob or a scalar) that's already holding a filehandle. messy. this idiom might make your code confusing, which is why it got deprecated back in Perl 5.10, and as of Perl 5.28 it's a full-on fatal error. glow-down behavior, we don't do it anymore ✨
Cannot open %s as a filehandle: it is already open as a dirhandle
(F) same energy, opposite direction: you tried open() to hook a filehandle onto a symbol (glob or scalar) that's already holding a dirhandle. deprecated since Perl 5.10 for being confusing, and as of Perl 5.28 it is a fatal error, periodt.
Cannot '%s' outside of a 'class'
(F) you used one of those keywords that only makes sense inside a "class" definition, but you were somewhere that is NOT inside such a class. context is everything, queen 👑
Cannot pack %f with '%c'
(F) you tried to convert an infinity or a not-a-number into an integer. bestie that makes zero sense and perl is not going to pretend it does.
Cannot printf %f with '%c'
(F) you tried printing an infinity or a not-a-number as a character (%c), which — say it with me — makes no sense. maybe you meant '%s', or honestly just stringifying it? 🤷
Cannot reopen existing class "%s"
(F) you tried to start a "class" definition for a class that already exists. one class, one definition block. no remixes 🎀
Cannot set tied @DB::args
(F) "caller" tried to set @DB::args, but found it tied. tying @DB::args is just not supported. (and fun fact: before this error existed, it used to crash. so this is the glow-up 🫶)
Cannot tie unreifiable array
(P) you somehow managed to call "tie" on an array that doesn't keep a reference count on its arguments and literally cannot be made to do so. these arrays aren't even supposed to be reachable from Perl code — they're internal-only, iykyk.
Cannot use __CLASS__ outside of a method or field initializer expression
(F) a "__CLASS__" expression hands you the class name of the object instance running the current method, so it only makes sense inside an actual method (or a method-like expression, like a field initializer expression). outside of that? it's giving nothing, and perl says no.
Cannot use declared reference iterator variables in foreach loop past the 24th variable
(F) you tried to build a multi-variable "foreach" loop where at least one variable is a declared reference ("\$VAR", "\@VAR" or "\%VAR") and one of the variables past the 24th one is a declared reference. for internal implementation reasons, perl simply cannot keep track of declared references past the first 24. 24 is the limit, that's the vibe check 💅
Cannot use more than 256 iterator variables on a foreach loop if any are declared refs
(F) you tried to build a multi-variable "foreach" loop where at least one variable is a declared reference ("\$VAR", "\@VAR" or "\%VAR") and there are more than 256 iterator variables in total. for internal implementation reasons that's just too many for perl to keep track of. 256 is where the party ends 🎉
Cannot yet reorder sv_vcatpvfn() arguments from va_list
(F) some XS code tried to use sv_vcatpvfn() (or a related function) with a format string that specifies explicit indexes for some of the elements, while using a C-style variable-argument list (a "va_list"). that combo is not currently supported. XS authors who want this must instead construct a C array of "SV*" scalars holding the arguments. them's the rules.
Can only compress unsigned integers in pack
(F) an argument to pack("w",...) was not an integer. the BER compressed integer format only works with positive integers, and you tried to compress something else entirely. see "pack" in perlfunc.
Can't "%s" out of a "defer" block
(F) someone tried to jump out of a "defer" block using a control-flow statement like "return", "goto" or a loop control. not permitted. no sneaking out the back 🙈
Can't "%s" out of a "finally" block
(F) basically the same as above, but this time it's a "finally" block at the end of a "try"/"catch" construction instead of a "defer" block. still no escape.
Can't bless an object reference
(F) you tried to call "bless" on a value that already refers to a real object instance. it's already blessed, bestie, leave it alone ✋
Can't bless non-reference value
(F) only hard references may be blessed. this is literally how Perl "enforces" encapsulation of objects. see perlobj.
Can't "break" in a loop topicalizer
(F) you called "break", but you're sitting in a "foreach" block instead of a "given" block. you probably meant "next" or "last". common mix-up, no shame, just fix it 💖
Can't "break" outside a given block
(F) you called "break", but you are not inside a "given" block. that's it, that's the whole problem.
Can't call destructor for 0x%p in global destruction
(S) this should not happen. internals code set up a destructor using "mortal_destructor_sv" or "mortal_destructor_x" and it's firing during global destruction. please try to reduce the code that triggers this warning down to as small an example as you possibly can, then report the problem to <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/new/choose>. you'd be doing the whole community a solid 🫶
Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
(F) you used method-call syntax, but the slot holding the object reference (or the package name) contains an undefined value. something like this will reproduce the error:
$BADREF = undef;
process $BADREF 1,2,3;
$BADREF->process(1,2,3);Can't call method "%s" on unblessed reference
(F) a method call has to know which package it's supposed to run in. usually it figures that out from the object reference you hand it — but this time you didn't hand it one. and a reference isn't an object reference until it's been blessed. see perlobj.
Can't call method "%s" without a package or object reference
(F) you used method-call syntax, but the slot holding the object reference or package name contains an expression that returns a defined value which is neither an object reference nor a package name. something like this will reproduce the error:
$BADREF = 42;
process $BADREF 1,2,3;
$BADREF->process(1,2,3);Can't call mro_isa_changed_in() on anonymous symbol table
(P) perl got confused about whether a hash was a plain hash or a symbol table hash while trying to update @ISA caches. relatable honestly 😭
Can't call mro_method_changed_in() on anonymous symbol table
(F) an XS module tried to call "mro_method_changed_in" on a hash that wasn't attached to the symbol table. wrong address, no delivery 📦
Can't chdir to %s
(F) you called perl -x/foo/bar, but /foo/bar is not a directory you can chdir into — possibly because it doesn't exist. check your path bestie.
Can't coerce %s to %s in %s
(F) some types of SVs — especially real symbol table entries (typeglobs) — can't be forced to stop being what they are. so you can't say things like:
*foo += 1;You CAN say
$foo = *foo;
$foo += 1;but then $foo no longer contains a glob. so. tradeoffs 💅
Can't "continue" outside a when block
(F) you called "continue", but you're not inside a "when" or "default" block. wrong room, honey.
can't convert empty path
(F) on Cygwin, you called a path conversion function with an empty path. only non-empty paths are legal. give it something 🌸
Can't create pipe mailbox
(P) an error that's peculiar to VMS. the process is suffering from exhausted quotas or other plumbing problems. pipes are leaking, someone call a plumber 🔧
Can't declare %s in "%s"
(F) only scalar, array and hash variables may be declared as "my", "our" or "state" variables. and they must have ordinary identifiers as names. no funky business.
Can't "default" outside a topicalizer
(F) you used a "default" block that's neither inside a "foreach" loop nor a "given" block. (heads up: this error gets issued on exit from the "default" block, so if you use an explicit "continue" you won't get the error at all. sneaky!)
Can't determine class of operator %s, assuming BASEOP
(S) this warning means something is wrong in the internals of perl. perl was trying to find the class (like LISTOP) of a particular OP and couldn't. most likely it's a bug in the perl internals, or a bug in XS code that manipulates perl optrees. sorry babe, that one's on the internals 😭
Can't do inplace edit: %s is not a regular file
(S inplace) you tried to use the -i switch on a special file — something like a file in /dev, a FIFO, or an uneditable directory. the file was ignored. can't edit what won't be edited ✨
Can't do inplace edit on %s: %s
(S inplace) creating the new file failed, for the reason indicated. that's the whole tea.
Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
(S inplace) your filesystem doesn't support filenames longer than 14 characters, and Perl couldn't create a unique filename during inplace editing with the -i switch. the file was ignored. retro filesystem, retro problems 💀
Can't do %s("%s") on non-UTF-8 locale; resolved to "%s".
(W locale) you are 1) running under "use locale"; 2) the current locale is not a UTF-8 one; 3) you tried to do the designated case-change operation on the specified Unicode character; and 4) the result of this operation would mix Unicode and locale rules, which likely conflict. mixing different rule types is forbidden, so the operation was not done — instead you get the indicated value, which is the best available option that uses entirely Unicode rules. turns out that's almost always the original character, unchanged.
it's generally a bad idea to mix non-UTF-8 locales and Unicode, and this issue is one of the reasons why. this warning gets raised when Unicode rules would normally cause the result of this operation to contain a character that's in the range specified by the locale, 0..255, and hence is subject to the locale's rules, not Unicode's.
if you're using locale purely for its characteristics related to things like numeric and time formatting (and not LC_CTYPE), consider using a restricted form of the locale pragma (see "The use locale pragma" in perllocale) like "use locale ':not_characters'".
note that failed case-changing operations done as a result of case-insensitive /i regular expression matching will show up in this warning as having the fc operation (because that's what the regular expression engine calls behind the scenes.) 👑
Can't do waitpid with flags
(F) this machine doesn't have either waitpid() or wait4(), so only waitpid() without flags is emulated. flag-free and thriving, I guess 💅
Can't emulate -%s on #! line
(F) — fatal, bestie 💀 Your #! line is out here asking for a switch that makes zero sense at that point. Like, the example in the docs: putting a -x on the #! line is kind of silly. The shebang is not the vibe for that, okay? 🙈
Can't %s %s-endian %ss on this platform
(F) — fatal 💀 Your platform's byte-order is neither big-endian nor little-endian, OR it has a very strange pointer size. So packing and unpacking big- or little-endian floating point values and pointers may just not be possible here. Sending you to "pack" in perlfunc for the lore 📦✨
Can't exec "%s": %s
(W exec) — a warning, not a crash 🫶 A system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the named program, for the reason it tells you. The usual suspects:
- the permissions were wrong on the file 🔒
- the file wasn't found in
$ENV{PATH}🕵️ - the executable in question was compiled for another architecture
- the
#!line in a script points to an interpreter that can't be run, for similar reasons - (or maybe your system doesn't support
#!at all, no cap 💀)
Can't exec %s
(F) — fatal 💀 Perl was trying to execute the indicated program for you, because that's literally what your #! line said. If that is not what you wanted, you may need to mention "perl" on the #! line somewhere. She's just following instructions, bestie 😭
Can't execute %s
(F) — fatal 💀 You used the -S switch, but the copies of the script you wanted to execute that were found in the PATH did not have correct permissions. Rude of them honestly 🙄
Can't find an opnumber for "%s"
(F) — fatal 💀 A string shaped like "CORE::word" got handed to prototype(), except there's no builtin named "word". Like, the op is not op-ing 🎀
Can't find label %s
(F) — fatal 💀 You told Perl to goto a label that isn't mentioned anywhere it's possible for us to go to. It's giving "took the map and left" 🗺️ — see "goto" in perlfunc for how this is supposed to work.
Can't find %s on PATH
(F) — fatal 💀 You used the -S switch, but the script to execute could not be found in the PATH. She looked everywhere, bestie. Nowhere 🥲
Can't find %s on PATH, '.' not in PATH
(F) — fatal 💀 You used the -S switch, but the script to execute could not be found in the PATH — or at least not with the correct permissions. The script does exist in the current directory, but PATH prohibits running it. So close and yet so far 😭
Can't find string terminator %s anywhere before EOF
(F) — fatal 💀 Okay so, fun fact: Perl strings can stretch over multiple lines 🌈 Which means this message is actually saying the closing delimiter got left out. And because bracketed quotes count nesting levels, the following is missing its final parenthesis:
print q(The character '(' starts a side comment.);If you're getting this error from a here-document, you may have included unseen whitespace before or after your closing tag, or there may not be a linebreak after it 👻 A good programmer's editor will have a way to help you find these characters (or lack of characters). Full details on here-documents live in perlop ✨
Can't find Unicode property definition "%s" / Can't find Unicode property definition "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — fatal 💀 The named property you specified via "\p" or "\P" is not one that Perl knows about. Perhaps you misspelled the name? 🤔 See "Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}" in perluniprops for a complete list of available official properties. And if it's a user-defined property, it must have been defined by the time the regular expression is matched. Timing is everything, periodt ⏰
If you didn't mean to use a Unicode property, escape the "\p" — either by "\\p" (just the "\p") or by "\Q\p" (the rest of the string, or until "\E"). 🧚
Can't fork: %s
(F) — fatal 💀 A fatal error happened while trying to fork while opening a pipeline. The fork said no 🙅♀️
Can't fork, trying again in 5 seconds
(W pipe) — warning 🫶 A fork in a piped open failed with EAGAIN, so she'll retry after five seconds. Manifesting a successful fork for you ✨🕯️
Can't get filespec - stale stat buffer?
(S) — a warning peculiar to VMS 💜 This arises because of the difference between access checks under VMS and under the Unix model Perl assumes. Under VMS, access checks are done by filename, rather than by bits in the stat buffer, so that ACLs and other protections can be taken into account. Unfortunately, Perl assumes that the stat buffer contains all the necessary information, and passes it, instead of the filespec, to the access-checking routine. It will try to retrieve the filespec using the device name and FID present in the stat buffer, but this works only if you haven't made a subsequent call to the CRTL stat() routine, because the device name is overwritten with each call 😵💫 If this warning appears, the name lookup failed, and the access-checking routine gave up and returned FALSE, just to be conservative.
Note: the access-checking routine knows about the Perl "stat" operator and file tests, so you shouldn't ever see this warning in response to a Perl command; it arises only if some internal code takes stat buffers lightly 👀
Can't get pipe mailbox device name
(P) — an error peculiar to VMS 💜 After creating a mailbox to act as a pipe, Perl can't retrieve its name for later use. The mailbox is giving anonymous 💀
Can't get SYSGEN parameter value for MAXBUF
(P) — an error peculiar to VMS 💜 Perl asked $GETSYI how big you want your mailbox buffers to be, and didn't get an answer. Ghosted by the system 😭
Can't "goto" into a binary or list expression
(F) — fatal 💀 A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a binary or list expression. You can't get there from here, bestie 🚫 The reason for this restriction is that the interpreter would get confused as to how many arguments there are, resulting in stack corruption or crashes. Not cute, not slay 🔥 This error occurs in cases such as these:
goto F;
print do { F: }; # Can't jump into the arguments to print
goto G;
$x + do { G: $y }; # How is + supposed to get its first operand?Can't "goto" into a "defer" block
(F) — fatal 💀 A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the scope of a "defer" block. This is not permitted. That's it, that's the rule 🎀
Can't "goto" into a "given" block
(F) — fatal 💀 A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a "given" block. You can't get there from here 💅 See "goto" in perlfunc.
Can't "goto" into the middle of a foreach loop
(F) — fatal 💀 A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a foreach loop. You can't get there from here 😌 See "goto" in perlfunc.
Can't "goto" out of a pseudo block
(F) — fatal 💀 A "goto" statement was executed to jump out of something that might look like a block, except that it isn't a proper block 🙃 This usually occurs if you tried to jump out of a sort() block or subroutine, which is a no-no. See "goto" in perlfunc.
Can't goto subroutine from an eval-%s
(F) — fatal 💀 The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval "string" or block. The eval said "no exit" 🚪
Can't goto subroutine from a sort sub (or similar callback)
(F) — fatal 💀 The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of the comparison sub for a sort(), or from a similar callback (such as the reduce() function in List::Util). Callbacks are little roach motels, sorry 🪳
Can't goto subroutine outside a subroutine
(F) — fatal 💀 The deeply magical "goto subroutine" call can only replace one subroutine call for another. It can't manufacture one out of whole cloth 🧵✨ In general you should be calling it out of only an AUTOLOAD routine anyway. See "goto" in perlfunc.
Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
(W signal) — warning 🫶 Perl has detected that it is being run with the SIGCHLD signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD) disabled. Since disabling this signal will interfere with proper determination of exit status of child processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default value. This situation typically indicates that the parent program under which Perl may be running (e.g. cron) is being very careless 😬 Sir, please.
Can't kill a non-numeric process ID
(F) — fatal 💀 Process identifiers must be (signed) integers, periodt. It is a fatal error to attempt to kill() an undefined, empty-string or otherwise non-numeric process identifier. Numbers only, queen 👑
Can't "last" outside a loop block
(F) — fatal 💀 A "last" statement was executed to break out of the current block, except that there's this itty bitty problem called there isn't a current block 💀 Note that an "if" or "else" block doesn't count as a "loopish" block, and neither does a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). You can usually double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner curlies will be considered a block that loops once 🌀 See "last" in perlfunc.
Can't linearize anonymous symbol table
(F) — fatal 💀 Perl tried to calculate the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, but failed because the package stash has no name. Anonymous and unlinearizable, iconic behavior actually 🌸
Can't load '%s' for module %s
(F) — fatal 💀 The module you tried to load failed to load a dynamic extension. This may mean one of two things:
- you upgraded your version of perl to one that is incompatible with your old dynamic extensions (which is known to happen between major versions of perl), or
- (more likely) your dynamic extension was built against an older version of the library that is installed on your system.
Either way, you may need to rebuild your old dynamic extensions 🔨 Good luck, bestie, you've got this 💪
Can't localize lexical variable %s
(F) — fatal 💀 You used local on a variable name that was previously declared as a lexical variable using "my" or "state". This is not allowed 🚫 If you want to localize a package variable of the same name, qualify it with the package name. Namespaces, bestie, respect them 💜
Can't localize through a reference
(F) — fatal 💀 You said something like "local $$ref", which Perl can't currently handle, because when it goes to restore the old value of whatever $ref pointed to after the scope of the local() is finished, it can't be sure that $ref will still be a reference. She's not gonna promise something she can't guarantee 🤷♀️
Can't locate %s
(F) — fatal 💀 You said to "do" (or "require", or "use") a file that couldn't be found. Perl looks for the file in all the locations mentioned in @INC, unless the file name included the full path to the file. So maybe:
- you need to set the
PERL5LIBorPERL5OPTenvironment variable to say where the extra library is 📚 - or the script needs to add the library name to
@INC - or, honestly, you just misspelled the name of the file 🙈
See "require" in perlfunc and lib.
Can't locate auto/%s.al in @INC
(F) — fatal 💀 A function (or method) was called in a package which allows autoload, but there is no function to autoload. Most probable causes:
- a misprint in a function/method name ✍️
- a failure to
"AutoSplit"the file, say, by doingmake install
Autoload said "no thoughts, head empty" 🫠
Can't locate loadable object for module %s in @INC
(F) — fatal 💀 The module you loaded is trying to load an external library, like for example, foo.so or bar.dll, but the DynaLoader module was unable to locate this library. See DynaLoader. The library is missing and not in a cute way 😭
Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s"
(F) — okay so this one is fatal, perl literally cannot keep going 💀. You called a method correctly, and the package it landed on is properly functioning as a class... but that package doesn't define that particular method, and neither does any of its base classes. Go read perlobj, bestie. 🔥
Can't locate object method "%s" via package "%s" (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
(F) — you called a method on a class that did not exist, and the method also couldn't be found in UNIVERSAL. Nine times out of ten this means a method needs a package that never got loaded. Go check your use lines 🫶
Can't locate object method "INC", nor "INCDIR" nor string overload via package "%s" %s in @INC
(F) — so you pushed an object into @INC, either directly or through an array reference hook, and that object supports none of the known hook methods, doesn't have a string overload, and isn't a blessed CODE reference either. Basically require is standing there like "what do you want me to do with this thing??" 😭 See also "require" in perlfunc.
Attempt to call missing %s method with arguments ("%s"%s) via package "%s" (Perhaps you forgot to load the package?)
(S missing_import) — you called import() or unimport() on a class that has no import method anywhere in its inheritance graph, and you passed an argument to it. Very often this is a misspelled package name in a use statement that silently "succeeded" because your file system is case insensitive. 🙈
Another common reason: you're mistakenly trying to import or unimport a symbol from a package that doesn't use Exporter and doesn't define its own import or unimport method.
Can't locate package %s for @%s::ISA
(W syntax) — your @ISA array was holding the name of another package that doesn't seem to exist. Vibe check failed 🌸
Can't locate PerlIO%s
(F) — you tried to use a PerlIO layer in open() that doesn't exist. Like, for real, e.g. open(FH, ">:nosuchlayer", "somefile"). 👑
Can't make list assignment to %ENV on this system
(F) — list assignment to %ENV just isn't supported on some systems, notably VMS. Not our fault, not your fault, it's a platform thing 💅
Can't make loaded symbols global on this platform while loading %s
(S) — a module passed the flag 0x01 to DynaLoader::dl_load_file() asking that symbols from the stated file be made available globally across the process, but this platform doesn't have that functionality. The module will probably still work, but this may stop the perl interpreter from loading other XS-based extensions that need to link directly to functions defined in the C or XS code in that stated file. 😬
Can't modify %s in %s
(F) — nope, you're not allowed to assign to the item you indicated, and you're not allowed to change it any other way either, like with an auto-increment. Hands off 🚫
Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call of &%s
Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call of &%s in %s
(F) — if a subroutine is meant to be used in lvalue context, it has to be declared that way. See "Lvalue subroutines" in perlsub. ✨
Can't modify reference to %s in %s assignment
(F) — only a limited number of constructs can be the argument to a reference constructor on the left-hand side of an assignment, and what you used? Not one of them, bestie. See "Assigning to References" in perlref.
Can't modify reference to localized parenthesized array in list assignment
(F) — assigning to \local(@array) or \(local @array) is not supported, because nobody can agree on what it should even do. If you meant to make @array refer to some other array, write \@array = \@other_array. If you want the elements of @array to be aliases of the scalars on the right-hand side, use \(@array) = @scalar_refs. 🎀
Can't modify reference to parenthesized hash in list assignment
(F) — assigning to \(%hash) is not supported either. If you meant to make %hash refer to some other hash, use \%hash = \%other_hash. If you want the elements of %hash to become aliases of the scalars referenced on the right-hand side, use a hash slice: \@hash{@keys} = @those_scalar_refs. 🦋
Can't msgrcv to read-only var
(F) — the target of a msgrcv has to be modifiable, because it's being used as a receive buffer. A read-only var can't receive anything 💀
Can't "next" outside a loop block
(F) — a next statement ran to reiterate the current block, but there is no current block. Heads up: an if or else block does not count as a "loopish" block, and neither does a block handed to sort(), map() or grep(). You can usually just double the curlies to get the same effect though, because the inner curlies get treated as a block that loops once. See "next" in perlfunc. 🔥
Can't open %s: %s
(S inplace) — the implicit opening of a file via the <> filehandle (either implicitly under the -n or -p command-line switches, or explicitly) failed for the indicated reason. Usually it's because you don't have read permission for a file you named on the command line. 🫶
(F) — you tried to call perl with the -e switch, but /dev/null (or your operating system's equivalent) couldn't be opened.
Can't open a reference
(W io) — you tried to open a scalar reference for reading or writing using the 3-arg open() syntax:
open FH, '>', $ref;...but your version of perl is compiled without perlio, and this form of open isn't supported. 😭
Can't open bidirectional pipe
(W pipe) — you tried open(CMD, "|cmd|"), which is not supported, bestie. You can use any of several modules in the Perl library to do this, such as IPC::Open2. Or, alternately, direct the pipe's output to a file using >, then read it in under a different file handle. 💅
Can't open error file %s as stderr
(F) — a VMS-specific error, fr fr. Perl does its own command line redirection, and it couldn't open the file specified after 2> or 2>> on the command line for writing.
Can't open input file %s as stdin
(F) — also VMS-specific. Perl does its own command line redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after < on the command line for reading.
Can't open output file %s as stdout
(F) — VMS again. Perl does its own command line redirection, and couldn't open the file specified after > or >> on the command line for writing.
Can't open output pipe (name: %s)
(P) — a VMS-specific error. Perl does its own command line redirection, and couldn't open the pipe it needs to send data destined for stdout into. 💀
Can't open perl script "%s": %s
(F) — the script you specified can't be opened, for the reason given. 🥲
If you're debugging a script that uses #! and normally relies on the shell's $PATH search, the -S option makes perl do that search, so you don't have to type out the path or which $scriptname. ✨
Can't read CRTL environ
(S) — a warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read an element of %ENV from the CRTL's internal environment array and discovered the array was missing. You need to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ, or define PERL_ENV_TABLES (see perlvms) so that environ isn't searched. 🌸
Can't redeclare catch variable as "%s"
(F) — a my, our or state keyword got used with the exception variable inside a catch block:
try { ... }
catch (my $e) { ... }
# or catch (our $e) { ... }
# or catch (state $e) { ... }That is not valid syntax. catch takes a bare variable name, which gets automatically lexically declared. Periodt 👑
Can't redeclare "%s" in "%s"
(F) — a my, our or state declaration was found inside another declaration, like my ($x, my($y), $z) or our (my $x). Nesting dolls but make it illegal 🎀
Can't "redo" outside a loop block
(F) — a redo statement ran to restart the current block, but there isn't a current block. Again: an if or else block doesn't count as a "loopish" block, and neither does a block given to sort(), map() or grep(). Doubling the curlies usually gives you the same effect, since the inner curlies count as a block that loops once. See "redo" in perlfunc. 💖
Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
(S inplace) — you asked for an inplace edit without creating a backup file, and perl couldn't remove the original file to replace it with the modified one. The file was left unmodified, okay? So at least nothing is broken. 🫶
Can't rename in-place work file '%s' to '%s': %s
(F) — when closed implicitly, the temporary file for in-place editing couldn't be renamed to the original filename. 😭
Can't rename %s to %s: %s, skipping file
(F) — the rename done by the -i switch failed for some reason, probably because you don't have write permission to the directory. Check your perms bestie 💅
Can't reopen input pipe (name: %s) in binary mode
(P) — a VMS-specific error. Perl thought stdin was a pipe and tried to reopen it to accept binary data. Alas, it failed. 🙈
Can't represent character for Ox%X on this platform
(F) — there's a hard limit on how big a character code point can be, because of the fundamental properties of UTF-8, especially on EBCDIC platforms. The code point you gave exceeds that limit. The only work-around is to not use such a large code point, sorry bestie 😭
Can't reset %ENV on this system
(F) — you called reset('E') or similar, which tried to reset every variable in the current package beginning with E. In the main package, that includes %ENV. Resetting %ENV isn't supported on some systems, notably VMS. 🌈
Can't resolve method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
(F)(P) — an error resolving overloading specified by a method name (as opposed to a subroutine reference): no such method is callable via the package. Oh, and if the method name is "???", that's an internal error. 🔥
Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
(F) — perl caught you trying to return illegal lvalues from a subroutine used as an lvalue, like temporary or readonly values. Not allowed, periodt ✋
Can't return outside a subroutine
(F) — the return statement was executed in mainline code, meaning there was no subroutine call to return out of. See perlsub. 💀
Can't return %s to lvalue scalar context
(F) — you tried to return a complete array or hash from an lvalue subroutine, but you called the subroutine in a way that made Perl think you only meant to return one value. You probably meant to put parentheses around the call to the subroutine, which tells Perl the call should be in list context. 🎀
Can't take log of %g 📉
(F) For ordinary real numbers, you genuinely can't take the logarithm of a negative number or of zero. No vibes, just math. That said, there's a Math::Complex package that comes standard with Perl if you really wanna do that for the negative numbers. Live your dreams.
Can't take sqrt of %g 🌱
(F) For ordinary real numbers, you can't take the square root of a negative number — it's simply not the move. But guess what, Math::Complex comes standard with Perl, so if you really want to do that, it's right there waiting for you.
Can't undef active subroutine 🫠
(F) You can't undefine a routine that's currently running. It's giving "you can't delete the ladder you're standing on." You can, however, redefine it while it's running, and you can even undef the redefined subroutine while the old routine is running. Go figure. Perl stays iconic.
Can't unweaken a nonreference 💪
(F) You attempted to unweaken something that was not a reference. Only references can be unweakened, bestie. That's the whole rule.
Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d 📈
(P) The internal sv_upgrade routine adds "members" to an SV, making it into a more specialized kind of SV. The top several SV types are so specialized, however, that they cannot be interconverted. This message means such a conversion was attempted. Not allowed, no cap.
Can't use '%c' after -mname 🚩
(F) You tried to call perl with the -m switch, but you put something other than "=" after the module name. It's gotta be =, babe.
Can't use a hash as a reference 🗂️
(F) You tried to use a hash as a reference, as in %foo->{"bar"} or %$ref->{"hello"}. Versions of perl <= 5.22.0 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. It was deprecated in perl 5.6.1. Ancient history, still a no.
Can't use an array as a reference 📚
(F) You tried to use an array as a reference, as in @foo->[23] or @$ref->[99]. Versions of perl <= 5.22.0 used to allow this syntax, but shouldn't have. Deprecated in perl 5.6.1, and we're not bringing it back.
Can't use anonymous symbol table for method lookup 👻
(F) The internal routine that does method lookup was handed a symbol table that doesn't have a name. Symbol tables can become anonymous for example by undefining stashes: undef %Some::Package::. Mystery stash, no name, no lookup.
Can't use an undefined value as %s reference 🕳️
(F) A value used as either a hard reference or a symbolic reference must be a defined value. This helps to delurk some insidious errors — aka it saves you from a bug that was hiding in the shadows being creepy.
Can't use bareword ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use 🚫
(F) Only hard references are allowed by "strict refs". Symbolic references are disallowed. See perlref.
Can't use %! because Errno.pm is not available 😭
(F) The first time the "%!" hash is used, perl automatically loads the Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to provide symbolic names for $! errno values. If it can't show up, nobody can.
Can't use both '<' and '>' after type '%c' in %s ↔️
(F) A type cannot be forced to have both big-endian and little-endian byte-order at the same time, so this combination of modifiers is not allowed. Pick a lane, queen. See "pack" in perlfunc.
Can't use 'defined(@array)' (Maybe you should just omit the defined()?) 🧐
(F) defined() is not useful on arrays because it checks for an undefined scalar value. If you want to see if the array is empty, just use if (@array) { # not empty } for example. That's the whole vibe check.
Can't use 'defined(%hash)' (Maybe you should just omit the defined()?) 🤯
(F) defined() is not usually right on hashes.
Although defined %hash is false on a plain not-yet-used hash, it becomes true in several non-obvious circumstances, including iterators, weak references, stash names, even remaining true after undef %hash. These things make defined %hash fairly useless in practice, so it now generates a fatal error. Like, it's over.
If a check for non-empty is what you wanted then just put it in boolean context (see "Scalar values" in perldata):
if (%hash) {
# not empty
}If you had defined %Foo::Bar::QUUX to check whether such a package variable exists then that's never really been reliable, and isn't a good way to enquire about the features of a package, or whether it's loaded, etc. Bestie, please stop asking it that.
Can't use %s for loop variable 🔁
(P) The parser got confused when trying to parse a foreach loop. It's not you, it's the parser.
Can't use global %s in %s 🌍
(F) You tried to declare a magical variable as a lexical variable. This is not allowed, because the magic can be tied to only one location (namely the global variable) and it would be incredibly confusing to have variables in your program that looked like magical variables but weren't. Catfishing, basically. Not on our watch.
Can't use '%c' in a group with different byte-order in %s 🧩
(F) You attempted to force a different byte-order on a type that is already inside a group with a byte-order modifier. For example you cannot force little-endianness on a type that is inside a big-endian group. That type already picked its side.
Can't use "my %s" in sort comparison 🔀
(F) The global variables $a and $b are reserved for sort comparisons. You mentioned $a or $b in the same line as the <=> or cmp operator, and the variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable. Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the lexical variable. Sibling name clash, we hate to see it.
Can't use %s ref as %s ref 🎭
(F) You've mixed up your reference types. You have to dereference a reference of the type needed. You can use the ref() function to test the type of the reference, if need be. Wrong reference, wrong function, wrong era.
Can't use string ("%s") as %s ref while "strict refs" in use 🪢
Can't use string ("%s"...) as %s ref while "strict refs" in use 🪢
(F) You've told Perl to dereference a string, something which use strict blocks to prevent it happening accidentally. See "Symbolic references" in perlref. This can be triggered by an "@" or "$" in a double-quoted string immediately before interpolating a variable, for example in "user @$twitter_id", which says to treat the contents of $twitter_id as an array reference; use a "\" to have a literal "@" symbol followed by the contents of $twitter_id: "user \@$twitter_id". One backslash and you're saved, fr fr.
Can't use subscript on %s 🔍
(F) The compiler tried to interpret a bracketed expression as a subscript. But to the left of the brackets was an expression that didn't look like a hash or array reference, or anything else subscriptable. You're indexing into a vibe, and the vibe has no keys.
Can't use \%c to mean $%c in expression 🪄
(W syntax) In an ordinary expression, backslash is a unary operator that creates a reference to its argument. The use of backslash to indicate a backreference to a matched substring is valid only as part of a regular expression pattern. Trying to do this in ordinary Perl code produces a value that prints out looking like SCALAR(0xdecaf). Use the $1 form instead. Not the haunted version, the cute version.
Can't weaken a nonreference
(F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a reference. Only references can be weakened. Same energy as the unweaken one, just the other direction.
Can't "when" outside a topicalizer 🎯
(F) You have used a when() block that is neither inside a "foreach" loop nor a "given" block. (Note that this error is issued on exit from the "when" block, so you won't get the error if the match fails, or if you use an explicit "continue".) So like, it only yells at you on the way out. Sneaky.
Can't x= to read-only value 🧊
(F) You tried to repeat a constant value (often the undefined value) with an assignment operator, which implies modifying the value itself. Perhaps you need to copy the value to a temporary, and repeat that. Can't edit a frozen vibe.
catch block requires a (VAR) 🕸️
(F) You tried to use the "try" and "catch" syntax of "use feature 'try'" but did not include the error variable in the "catch" block. The parenthesized variable name is not optional, unlike in some other forms of syntax you may be familiar with from CPAN modules or other languages. Different ecosystem, different rules, bestie.
The required syntax is
try { ... }
catch ($var) { ... }Changing use VERSION while another use VERSION is in scope is now deprecated 🏚️
(W deprecated) Once you have a "use VERSION" statement in scope, any "use VERSION" statement that requests a different version is now deprecated, due to the increasing complexity of swapping from one prevailing version to another. It's getting messy and nobody has the energy.
It is suggested that you do not try to mix multiple different version declarations within the same file as it leads to complex behaviours about the visibility of features and builtin functions, as well as confusing human readers. Confusing humans, babe. That's the real crime.
If it is essential to have different "use VERSION" declarations in different regions of the same file, you should surround each one by its own enclosing scope so the two do not mix. Boundaries! We love boundaries!
{
use v5.20;
...
}
{
use v5.36;
...
}Character following "\c" must be printable ASCII ⌨️
(F) In "\cX", X must be a printable (non-control) ASCII character.
Note that ASCII characters that don't map to control characters are discouraged, and will generate the warning (when enabled) ""\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"". The compiler is just trying to be helpful, okay?
Character following \%c must be '{' or a single-character Unicode property name in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ 🧬
(F) (In the above the %c is replaced by either "p" or "P".) You specified something that isn't a legal Unicode property name. Most Unicode properties are specified by "\p{...}". But if the name is a single character one, the braces may be omitted. Tiny exception, huge drama when it's wrong.
Character in 'C' format wrapped in pack 📦
(W pack) You said
pack("C", $x)where $x is either less than 0 or more than 255; the "C" format is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC, and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
pack("C", $x & 255)If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the "U" format instead. Right tool, right job.
Character in 'c' format wrapped in pack 📦
(W pack) You said
pack("c", $x)where $x is either less than -128 or more than 127; the "c" format is only for encoding native operating system characters (ASCII, EBCDIC, and so on) and not for Unicode characters, so Perl behaved as if you meant
pack("c", $x & 255);If you actually want to pack Unicode codepoints, use the "U" format instead. Same deal as above, lowercase edition.
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}")Perl just quietly rounds it down and moves on, because Perl is unbothered.
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. The thing is, "U0"-mode is out here expecting every single value to land in the interval [0, 255], so Perl just went "okay bestie, I know what you meant" and behaved as if you'd written:
pack("U0W", $x & 255)🎀 Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in pack
(W pack) You tried something like this:
pack("u", "\x{1f3}b")and the format was expecting to chew through a sequence of bytes (characters with a value below 256), except some of those characters had a higher value. So Perl uses the character values modulus 256 instead, as if you'd handed it:
pack("u", "\x{f3}b")🎀 Character(s) in '%c' format wrapped in unpack
(W unpack) Same energy, unpack edition. You tried something like:
unpack("s", "\x{1f3}b")where the format expects 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, exactly as if you'd provided:
unpack("s", "\x{f3}b")🦋 charnames alias definitions may not contain a sequence of multiple spaces; marked by <-- HERE in %s
(F) Bestie, you defined a character name with multiple space characters in a whole row. Change them to single spaces. Usually these names get defined in the ":alias" import argument to use charnames, but they could also be defined by a translator installed into $^H{charnames}. See "CUSTOM ALIASES" in charnames.
🦋 chdir() on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) You tried chdir() on a filehandle that was never opened. Not the vibe. 💀
🦋 "\c%c" is more clearly written simply as "%s"
(W syntax) The "\cX" construct is meant to be a way of specifying non-printable characters. You used it for a printable one, which is better written as simply itself — maybe with a backslash in front if it's a non-word character. Doing it the way you did is not portable between ASCII and EBCDIC platforms.
👑 Class already has a superclass, cannot add another
(F) You attempted to specify a second superclass for a "class" by using the ":isa" attribute, when one was already specified. And here's the tea: unlike classes whose instances are created with "bless", classes created via the "class" keyword cannot have more than one superclass. Periodt.
👑 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 you didn't provide one. Remember: whitespace is not permitted between the attribute name and its value — you must write it like this:
class Example::Class :attr(VALUE) ...👑 class is experimental
(S experimental::class) This warning pops off if you use the "class" keyword of use feature 'class'. This keyword is currently experimental and its behaviour may change in future releases of Perl. Iykyk. 👀
👑 Class :isa attribute requires a class but "%s" is not one
(F) When you're creating a subclass with the "class" ":isa" attribute, the named superclass must also be a real class created using the "class" keyword.
🌸 Cloning substitution context is unimplemented
(F) Creating a new thread inside the "s///" operator is not supported. Sorry bestie, it's just not. 🫠
🌸 close() on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) You tried to close a filehandle that was never opened.
🌸 Closure prototype called
(F) If a closure has attributes, the subroutine passed to an attribute handler is the prototype that is cloned when a new closure is created. This subroutine cannot be called.
🔥 \C no longer supported in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The \C character class used to allow a match of a single byte within a multi-byte utf-8 character, but it was removed in v5.24 because it broke encapsulation and its implementation was extremely buggy. If you really need to process the individual bytes, you probably want to convert your string to one where each underlying byte is stored as a character, with utf8::encode().
🔥 Code missing after '/'
(F) You had a (sub-)template ending with a /. There must be another template code following the slash. See "pack" in perlfunc.
💜 Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, and not portable
(S non_unicode portable) You had a code point that has never been in any standard, so it's likely that languages other than Perl will NOT understand it. This code point also won't fit in a 32-bit word on ASCII platforms, and therefore is non-portable between systems.
At one time, it was legal in some standards to have code points up to 0x7FFF_FFFF, but not higher, and this code point is higher.
Acceptance of these code points is a Perl extension, and you should expect that nothing other than Perl can handle them; Perl itself on EBCDIC platforms before v5.24 does not handle them.
Perl also makes no guarantees that the representation of these code points won't change at some point in the future, say when machines become available that have larger than a 64-bit word. At that time, files containing any of these, written by an older Perl, might require conversion before being readable by a newer Perl. 🙈
💜 Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, may not be portable
(S non_unicode) You had a code point above the Unicode maximum of U+10FFFF.
Perl allows strings to contain a superset of Unicode code points, but these may not be accepted by other languages/systems. Further, even if these languages/systems accept these large code points, they may have chosen a different representation for them than the UTF-8-like one that Perl has, which would mean files are not exchangeable between them and Perl.
On EBCDIC platforms, code points above 0x3FFF_FFFF have a different representation in Perl v5.24 than before, so any file containing these that was written before that version will require conversion before being readable by a later Perl.
🐚 %s: Command not found
(A) You've accidentally run your script through csh or another shell instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself. The #! line at the top of your file could look like:
#!/usr/bin/perl🐚 %s: command not found
(A) You've accidentally run your script through bash or another shell instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself. The #! line at the top of your file could look like:
#!/usr/bin/perl🐚 %s: command not found: %s
(A) You've accidentally run your script through zsh or another shell instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself. The #! line at the top of your file could look like:
#!/usr/bin/perl🍓 Compilation failed in require
(F) Perl could not compile a file specified in a require statement. Perl uses this generic message when none of the errors that it encountered were severe enough to halt compilation immediately.
🍓 connect() on closed socket %s
(W closed) You tried to do a connect on a closed socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See "connect" in perlfunc. 🫶
🧚 Constant(%s): Call to &{$^H{%s}} did not return a defined value
(F) The subroutine registered to handle constant overloading (see overload) or a custom charnames handler (see "CUSTOM TRANSLATORS" in charnames) returned an undefined value.
🧚 Constant(%s): $^H{%s} is not defined
(F) The parser found inconsistencies while attempting to define an overloaded constant. Perhaps you forgot to load the corresponding overload pragma? 👀
🧚 Constant is not %s reference
(F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the use constant pragma) is being dereferenced, but it amounts to the wrong type of reference. The message indicates the type of reference that was expected. This usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing the constant value. See "Constant Functions" in perlsub and constant.
🧚 Constants from lexical variables potentially modified elsewhere are no longer permitted
(F) You wrote something like
my $var;
$sub = sub () { $var };but $var is referenced elsewhere and could be modified after the "sub" expression is evaluated. Either it is explicitly modified elsewhere ("$var = 3") or it is passed to a subroutine or to an operator like "printf" or "map", which may or may not modify the variable.
Traditionally, Perl has captured the value of the variable at that point and turned the subroutine into a constant eligible for inlining. In those cases where the variable can be modified elsewhere, this breaks the behavior of closures, in which the subroutine captures the variable itself, rather than its value, so future changes to the variable are reflected in the subroutine's return value.
This usage was deprecated, and as of Perl 5.32 is no longer allowed, making it possible to change the behavior in the future.
If you intended for the subroutine to be eligible for inlining, then make sure the variable is not referenced elsewhere, possibly by copying it:
my $var2 = $var;
$sub = sub () { $var2 };If you do want this subroutine to be a closure that reflects future changes to the variable that it closes over, add an explicit "return":
my $var;
$sub = sub () { return $var };⭐ Constant subroutine %s redefined
(W redefine)(S) You redefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for inlining. See "Constant Functions" in perlsub for commentary and workarounds.
⭐ Constant subroutine %s undefined
(W misc) You undefined a subroutine which had previously been eligible for inlining. See "Constant Functions" in perlsub for commentary and workarounds.
⭐ Constant(%s) unknown
(F) The parser found inconsistencies either while attempting to define an overloaded constant, or when trying to find the character name specified in the "\N{...}" escape. Perhaps you forgot to load the corresponding overload pragma? 🤔
⭐ :const is not permitted on named subroutines
(F) The "const" attribute causes an anonymous subroutine to be run and its value captured at the time that it is cloned. Named subroutines are not cloned like this, so the attribute does not make sense on them.
💅 Copy method did not return a reference
(F) The method which overloads "=" is buggy. See "Copy Constructor" in overload.
&CORE::%s cannot be called directly
(F) bestie you tried to call a sub living in the CORE:: namespace using &foo syntax or through a reference, and that's just not allowed. Some of the subs in this package can't be called that way yet — they have to be called as barewords. Something like this will work:
BEGIN { *shove = \&CORE::push; }
shove @array, 1,2,3; # pushes on to @arrayCORE::%s is not a keyword
(F) the CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl keywords, and that is literally the whole point of it. Stay out of there 💅
Corrupted regexp opcode %d > %d
(P) either this is a bug in Perl itself, or — if you're running one — your custom regular expression engine is the problem. If it's not your engine, please report it to <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/new/choose>. Do your civic duty 🫶
corrupted regexp pointers
(P) the regular expression engine got completely confused by whatever the regular expression compiler handed it. Not your fault, not its fault, just chaos 😭
corrupted regexp program
(P) the regexp engine got passed a regexp program that didn't have a valid magic number. Ngl, that's a whole vibe failure.
Corrupt malloc ptr 0x%x at 0x%x
(P) the malloc package that ships with Perl had an internal failure. Big yikes.
Count after length/code in unpack
(F) your unpack template said "here comes a counted-length string", but you also gave an explicit size for that string. Pick a lane. See "pack" in perlfunc.
Declaring references is experimental
(S experimental::declared_refs) this warning shows up if you use a reference constructor on the right-hand side of my, state, our, or local. You can just suppress the warning if you wanna use the feature — but be smart about it, because you're taking on the risk of using an experimental feature that may change or get removed in a future Perl version:
no warnings "experimental::declared_refs";
use feature "declared_refs";
$fooref = my \$foo;Deep recursion on anonymous subroutine
Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
(W recursion) this sub has called itself — directly or indirectly — 100 times more than it has returned. That probably means infinite recursion 🌀 unless you're out here writing strange benchmark programs, in which case it means something else entirely.
You can change that threshold from 100 by recompiling the perl binary and setting the C pre-processor macro PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN to whatever value you want.
(?(DEFINE)....) does not allow branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) you used something like (?(DEFINE)...|..) and that's illegal. Most of the time the real cause is that you forgot a parenthesis somewhere inside the .... part. It happens to the best of us 🙈
The <-- HERE shows you whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
%s defines neither package nor VERSION--version check failed
(F) you said something like use Module 42, but inside the Module file there are neither package declarations nor a $VERSION. Can't version-check what doesn't exist, babe.
delete argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
(F) the argument to delete has to be either a hash or array element, like:
$foo{$bar}
$ref->{"susie"}[12]or a hash or array slice, like:
@foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
$ref->[12]->@{"susie", "queue"}or a hash key/value or array index/value slice, like:
%foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
$ref->[12]->%{"susie", "queue"}Give it one of those and it'll slay 💖
Delimiter for here document is too long
(F) in a here document construct like <<FOO, the label FOO is too long for Perl to handle. Honestly you'd have to be seriously twisted to write code that triggers this error. Respect, kind of.
DESTROY created new reference to dead object '%s'
(F) a DESTROY() method created a new reference to the very object that's currently being DESTROYed. Perl is confused 😵 and would rather abort than create a dangling reference. Fair, honestly.
Did not produce a valid header
See "500 Server error".
%s did not return a true value
(F) any file that's required (or used) has to return a true value, to prove that it compiled correctly and ran its initialization code correctly. The traditional flex is ending the file with a "1;", though literally any true value would do. See "require" in perlfunc.
(Did you mean &%s instead?)
(W misc) you probably referred to an imported subroutine &FOO as $FOO or something along those lines. We've all been there 🙈
(Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
(W shadow) remember bestie: "our" does not localize the declared global variable. You declared it again in the same lexical scope, which... seems a lil superfluous ngl.
(Did you mean $ or @ instead of %?)
(W) you probably said %hash{$key} when you actually meant $hash{$key} or @hash{@keys}. Or maybe you just meant %hash and got carried away. Main character moment, but wrong sigil.
Did you mean to have a second '#' in your comment? If so, escape with '\' or quote with " or ' to silence this message
(W regexp) (only under "use feature 'enhanced_xx'") your pattern contains an unescaped, unquoted # character inside a comment. This warning exists to catch the case where that first # was meant to be taken as a literal, but instead it — and the rest of the line — got slurped up as a comment, leading to very unintented behavior. If that earlier # wasn't meant to begin a comment, change it to \#; otherwise, quote or escape the second # to suppress the message.
Did you mean this to be a comment?
(W regexp) (only under "use feature 'enhanced_xx'") your pattern contains an unescaped # character, which causes it and all the text up through the end of the current line to be considered a comment. The normal style for comments like that is for the # to be surrounded by at least one white space character on each side. And this one wasn't. So it looks like it might have been intended as a literal # character. This warning is here to alert you to the possibility that your pattern won't behave how you intended. If the # really is meant literally, change it to \#. If it was meant to start a comment, change it to " # ".
Did you mean to have a ']' in your comment?
(W regexp) (only under "use feature 'enhanced_xx'") your pattern contains a bracketed character class with a comment, and inside that comment there's an unescaped, unquoted ] character — which is normally what terminates the character class. So the class isn't terminated there; it keeps going and swallows other lines instead. This warning is here to catch the cases where that wasn't what you wanted. If the ] is meant to be part of the comment, quote or escape it to suppress the message. If it was meant to terminate the class, simply put it on a new line in the source code.
Died
(F) you passed die() an empty string (the equivalent of die ""), or you called it with no args and $@ was empty. Rest in peace 🪦
Document contains no data
See "500 Server error".
%s does not define %s::VERSION--version check failed
(F) you said something like use Module 42, but the Module didn't define a $VERSION. Girl where is it 😭
'/' does not take a repeat count in %s
(F) you cannot put a repeat count of any kind right after the / code. Periodt. See "pack" in perlfunc.
do "%s" failed, '.' is no longer in @INC; did you mean do "./%s"?
(D deprecated::dot_in_inc) back in the day, do "somefile"; would search the current directory for the file you specified. Since perl v5.26.0, . has been removed from @INC by default, so that is no longer true. If you want to search the current directory (and only the current directory), you can write do "./somefile";.
'%s' does not appear to be an imported builtin function
(F) someone tried to remove a previously-imported lexical from builtin using the "unimport" method (probably via no builtin ... syntax), but that function was never imported into the current scope in the first place. Can't un-invite someone who was never on the list 💅
Don't know how to get file name
(P) "PerlIO_getname", a perl internal I/O function specific to VMS, somehow got called on another platform. This should not happen. Fr fr.
Don't know how to handle magic of type \%o
(P) the internal handling of magical variables has been cursed. 🧙
Downgrading a use VERSION declaration to below v5.11 is not permitted
(F) a use VERSION statement requesting a version below v5.11 — which is the point where the effects of use strict would be disabled — was found after a previous declaration with a larger number (one that would have enabled those effects). Because of a change in the way use VERSION interacts with the strictness flags, this is no longer supported. No take-backs, bestie ✨
(Do you need to predeclare %s?)
(S syntax) this is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s found where operator expected". It often means a subroutine or module name is being referenced that hasn't been declared yet. That could be an ordering problem in your file, or it could be a missing sub, package, require, or use statement. And good news: if you're referencing something that isn't defined yet, you don't actually have to define the sub or package before the current location. You can use an empty sub foo; or package FOO; to enter a "forward" declaration. Iconic little trick, iykyk 🎀
dump() must be written as CORE::dump() as of Perl 5.30
(F) you used the obsolete dump() built-in function. That got deprecated way back in Perl 5.8.0. As of Perl 5.30 it must be written in fully qualified format: CORE::dump().
See "dump" in perlfunc.
dump is not supported
(F) your machine doesn't support dump/undump. It's not you, it's the hardware 😔
Duplicate free() ignored
(S malloc) an internal routine called free() on something that had already been freed. Double-dipping, jail 🚔
Duplicate modifier '%c' after '%c' in %s
(W unpack) you applied the same modifier more than once after a type in a pack template. Once is enough, queen 👑 See "pack" in perlfunc.
Duplicated subroutine parameter name
(F) you tried to use a subroutine parameter name a second time:
sub f ( :$name, :$name ) { ... }Pick different names, babe.
each on anonymous %s will always start from the beginning
(W syntax) you called each on an anonymous hash or array. Since a new hash or array gets created every single time, each() will restart iterating over your hash or array every time. Groundhog Day energy 🌀
elseif should be elsif
(S syntax) there is no keyword "elseif" in Perl, because Larry thinks it's ugly. 💀 Your code will instead be interpreted as an attempt to call a method named "elseif" for the class returned by the following block. Which is... unlikely to be what you want. Just write elsif, bestie.
Empty \%c in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
Empty \%c{}
Empty \%c{} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) bestie you dropped something like \b{}, \B{}, \o{}, \p, \P, or \x and then gave it nothing to chew on. it's giving empty plate energy 💀
unfortunately, for backwards compatibility reasons, an empty \x is legal outside use re 'strict' and expands to a NUL character. yes, really. don't ask.
Empty (?) without any modifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) (only under use re 'strict') (?) does absolutely nothing, so maybe it's a typo? like the regex equivalent of sending a text with zero words 🫶
${^ENCODING} is no longer supported
(F) the special variable ${^ENCODING}, formerly used to implement the encoding pragma, is no longer supported as of Perl 5.26.0. rip to a real one 🪦
setting it to anything other than undef is a fatal error as of Perl 5.28. so like, don't.
${^HOOK}{%s} may only be a CODE reference or undef
(F) you tried to assign something other than undef or a CODE ref to %{^HOOK}. hooks may only be CODE refs, no cap. see "%{^HOOK}" in perlvar for details.
Attempt to set unknown hook '%s' in %{^HOOK}
(F) you tried to assign something other than undef or a CODE ref to %{^HOOK}. hooks may only be CODE refs. see "%{^HOOK}" in perlvar for details.
(yes, the explanation reads the same as the one above — the manpage fr fr duplicated it, i'm just keeping it 100% faithful 💅)
enhanced_xx is experimental
(S experimental::enhanced_xx) this little warning pops off if you compile a regular expression pattern while use feature 'enhanced_xx' is in effect. the feature is currently experimental and its behaviour may change in future releases of Perl. so like, it's in its experimental era 🌸
entering effective %s failed
(F) while under the use filetest pragma, switching the real and effective uids or gids failed. 😭
%ENV is aliased to %s
(F) you're running under taint mode, and the %ENV variable has been aliased to another hash, so it doesn't reflect anymore the state of the program's environment. this is potentially insecure. red flag behaviour, be careful 🚩
Error converting file specification %s
(F) an error peculiar to VMS. because Perl may have to deal with file specifications in either VMS or Unix syntax, it converts them to a single form when it must operate on them directly. either you've passed an invalid file specification to Perl, or you've found a case the conversion routines don't handle. Drat. 🙈
error creating/fetching widecharmap entry for 0x%X
(P) a failure happened when folding a character for a regex trie. sad times.
Error %s in expansion of %s
(F) an error was encountered in handling a user-defined property ("User-Defined Character Properties" in perlunicode). these are programmer-written subroutines, so obviously they're subject to errors that may prevent them from compiling or running. the calls to these subs are eval'd, and if there's a failure, this message is raised, using the contents of $@ from the failed eval.
another possibility is that tainted data was encountered somewhere in the chain of expanding the property. if so, the message wording will indicate that this is the problem. see "Insecure user-defined property %s".
Eval-group in insecure regular expression
(F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular expression that contains the (?{ ... }) zero-width assertion, which is unsafe. see "(?{ code })" in perlre, and perlsec. 🔒
Eval-group not allowed at runtime, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
(F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the (?{ ... }) zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the pattern contains interpolated values. since that's a security risk, it is not allowed. if you insist, you may still do this by using the re 'eval' pragma or by explicitly building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using that in an eval(). see "(?{ code })" in perlre.
Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval' in regex m/%s/
(F) a regular expression contained the (?{ ... }) zero-width assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the use re 'eval' pragma is in effect. see "(?{ code })" in perlre.
EVAL without pos change exceeded limit in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) you used a pattern that nested too many EVAL calls without consuming any text. restructure the pattern so that text is consumed, bestie. it's giving infinite loop energy 💀
the <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
Excessively long <> operator
(F) the contents of a <> operator may not exceed the maximum size of a Perl identifier. if you're just trying to glob a long list of filenames, try using the glob() operator, or put the filenames into a variable and glob that. glow up your approach ✨
exec? I'm not *that* kind of operating system
(F) the exec function is not implemented on some systems, e.g. Catamount. see perlport. the sass is unmatched, honestly iconic 🔥
%sExecution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
(F) the final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.
(F) the final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.
exists argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine
(F) the argument to exists must be a hash or array element or a subroutine with an ampersand, such as:
$foo{$bar}
$ref->{"susie"}[12]
&do_somethingexists argument is not a subroutine name
(F) the argument to exists for exists &sub must be a subroutine name, and not a subroutine call. exists &sub() will generate this error.
Exiting eval via %s
(W exiting) you are exiting an eval by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a loop control statement. dramatic exit, honestly 👑
Exiting format via %s
(W exiting) you are exiting a format by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a loop control statement.
Exiting pseudo-block via %s
(W exiting) you are exiting a rather special block construct (like a sort block or subroutine) by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a loop control statement. see "sort" in perlfunc.
Exiting subroutine via %s
(W exiting) you are exiting a subroutine by unconventional means, such as a goto, or a loop control statement.
Exiting substitution via %s
(W exiting) you are exiting a substitution by unconventional means, such as a return, a goto, or a loop control statement.
Expected %s reference in export_lexically
(F) the type of a reference given to export_lexically in builtin did not match the sigil of the preceding name, or the value wasn't a reference at all. mismatch, bestie 💔
Expecting close bracket in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) you wrote something like
(?13to denote a capturing group of the form (?PARNO), but you omitted the ). it happens to the best of us 🫶
Expecting interpolated extended charclass in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) it looked like you were attempting to interpolate an already-compiled extended character class, like so:
my $thai_or_lao = qr/(?[ \p{Thai} + \p{Lao} ])/;
...
qr/(?[ \p{Digit} & $thai_or_lao ])/;but the marked code isn't syntactically correct to be such an interpolated class. close but not quite, babes 😭
Experimental aliasing via reference not enabled
(F) to do aliasing via references, you must first enable the feature:
no warnings "experimental::refaliasing";
use feature "refaliasing";
\$x = \$y;Experimental %s on scalar is now forbidden
(F) an experimental feature added in Perl 5.14 allowed each, keys, push, pop, shift, splice, unshift, and values to be called with a scalar argument. this experiment is considered unsuccessful, and has been removed. rip 🪦 the postderef feature may meet your needs better.
Experimental subroutine signatures not enabled
(F) to use subroutine signatures, you must first enable them:
use feature "signatures";
sub foo ($left, $right) { ... }Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
(W misc) you are blessing a reference to a zero length string. this has the effect of blessing the reference into the package main. this is usually not what you want. consider providing a default target package, e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage'); — it's giving main character energy but like, the wrong kind 💅
export_lexically can only be called at compile time
(F) export_lexically in builtin was called at runtime. because it creates new names in the lexical scope currently being compiled, it can only be called from code inside a BEGIN block in that scope. timing is everything, no cap ⏰
%s: Expression syntax
(A) you've accidentally run your script through csh instead of Perl. check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself. we've all been there 🙈
%s failed--call queue aborted
(F) an untrapped exception was raised while executing a UNITCHECK, CHECK, INIT, or END subroutine. processing of the remainder of the queue of such routines has been prematurely ended. the queue is cancelled, bestie 💀
Failed to close in-place work file %s: %s
(F) closing an output file from in-place editing, as with the -i command-line switch, failed.
Failed to create a fake bit bucket
(F) you tried to call perl with the -e switch, but you're on a Cray system and perl's /dev/null emulation was unable to create an empty temporary file. the fake bit bucket wouldn't fake 😭
False [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp)(F) a character class range must start and end at a literal character, not another character class like \d or [:alpha:]. the - in your false range is interpreted as a literal -. in a (?[...]) construct, this is an error, rather than a warning. consider escaping the - as \-. the <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. see perlre.
Fatal VMS error (status=%d) at %s, line %d
(P) an error peculiar to VMS. something untoward happened in a VMS system service or RTL routine; Perl's exit status should provide more details. the filename in at %s and the line number in line %d tell you which section of the Perl source code is distressed. 🫶
fcntl is not implemented
(F) your machine apparently doesn't implement fcntl(). What is this, a PDP-11 or something? the read is brutal but honestly valid 💀
FETCHSIZE returned a negative value
(F) a tied array claimed to have a negative number of elements, which is not possible. bestie that's not a thing 😭
Field already has a parameter name, cannot add another
(F) a field may have at most one application of the :param attribute to assign a parameter name to it; once applied a second one is not allowed. one name per field, periodt 👑
Field attribute %s requires a value
(F) okay so you gave a field an attribute that needs a value passed in parentheses, and then... didn't pass one 💀. Remember the golden rule: no whitespace is allowed between the attribute name and its value. It has to look exactly like this:
field $var :attr(VALUE) ...field is experimental
(S experimental::class) this warning pops off if you use the field keyword from use feature 'class'. It's still experimental, meaning its behaviour may literally change in future releases of Perl. Use it, love it, but know the vibes could shift on you 🦋.
Field %s is not accessible outside a method
(F) you tried to touch a field variable of a class from code that isn't inside the body of a method subroutine. Not allowed, sorry bestie — only methods have access to the fields of an instance. Main character privilege only 💅.
Field %s of "%s" is not accessible in a method of "%s"
(F) someone tried to reach a field variable of a class from a method of a different class that's nested inside the one that actually defined it. Nope, not permitted. Only methods defined by a given class get to access the fields of that class. Periodt.
Field too wide in 'u' format in pack
(W pack) with the u format in pack, every line of a uuencoded string starts with a length indicator, and that indicator can't encode anything above 63. So asking for a longer line length is pointless. Perl just behaves as if you wrote u63.
Filehandle %s opened only for input
(W io) you tried to write to a read-only filehandle 😭. Wanted read-write? You needed to open it with +< or +> or +>> instead of with < or nothing at all. Only wanted to write the file? Use > or >>. See open in perlfunc.
Filehandle %s opened only for output
(W io) you tried to read from a filehandle that's write-only. Wanted a read/write filehandle? You needed +< or +> or +>> instead of >. Only wanted to read? Use <. See open in perlfunc. Another possibility: you tried to open filedescriptor 0 (aka STDIN) for output — maybe you closed STDIN earlier? 🙈
Filehandle %s reopened as %s only for input
(W io) you opened a filehandle for reading, and it grabbed the same filehandle id as STDOUT or STDERR. Why? Because you closed STDOUT or STDERR previously. Oops.
Filehandle STDIN reopened as %s only for output
(W io) you opened a filehandle for writing and it got the same filehandle id as STDIN, because you closed STDIN earlier.
Filehandle STD%s reopened as %s only for input
(W io) you opened a filehandle for reading and it got the same filehandle id as STDOUT or STDERR. This happened because you closed the handle previously.
Final $ should be \$ or $name
(F) so now you have to decide: was that final $ in the string meant to be a literal dollar sign, or was it supposed to introduce a variable name that just... isn't there? Either way you gotta put the backslash or the name. Choose your fighter.
defer is experimental
(S experimental::defer) the defer block modifier is experimental. Wanna use it anyway? Silence the warning with no warnings 'experimental::defer' — but know that in doing so you're taking the risk that your code may break in a future Perl version 👀.
flock() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) the filehandle you're trying to flock() got itself closed somewhere before now. Check your control flow. flock() operates on filehandles — so are you maybe trying to call flock() on a dirhandle with the same name? 🤨
Forked open '%s' not meaningful in <>
(S inplace) you had |- or -| sitting in @ARGV and then tried to read from it with <>. Previously this would fork and produce a confusing error message, so like... at least now it's a clearer one ✨.
Format not terminated
(F) a format has to be terminated by a line with a solitary dot. Perl reached the end of your file and never found one. Rude of it, honestly.
Format %s redefined
(W redefine) you redefined a format. Want to suppress this warning? Say:
{
no warnings 'redefine';
eval "format NAME =...";
}Found = in conditional, should be ==
(W syntax) you wrote
if ($foo = 123)when you meant
if ($foo == 123)(or something like that 👀 — we've all been there)
%s found where operator expected
(S syntax) the Perl lexer knows whether it should be expecting a term or an operator. If it sees something it knows is a term while it was expecting an operator, boom, this warning. Usually it means an operator or delimiter got left out — like a semicolon.
gdbm store returned %d, errno %d, key "%s"
(S) a warning from the GDBM_File extension that a store failed. That's it, that's the tea 🍵.
gethostent not implemented
(F) your C library apparently doesn't implement gethostent() — probably because if it did, it'd feel morally obligated to return every hostname on the Internet 😭. Fair, honestly.
get%sname() on closed socket %s
(W closed) you tried to get a socket or peer socket name on a closed socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call, bestie?
getpwnam returned invalid UIC %#o for user "%s"
(S) a warning that's peculiar to VMS. The call to sys$getuai underlying the getpwnam operator returned an invalid UIC.
getsockopt() on closed socket %s
(W closed) you tried to get a socket option on a closed socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See getsockopt in perlfunc.
get_layers: unknown argument '%s'
(F) you called PerlIO::get_layers() with an unknown argument. The legal arguments come in key/value pairs, where the keys are one of input, output or detail, followed by a boolean. That's the whole menu 🎀.
Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name (did you forget to declare "my %s"?)
(F) you said use strict or use strict vars, which means every variable has to either be lexically scoped (with my or state), declared beforehand with our, or explicitly qualified to say which package the global variable lives in (using ::). Strict mode said "no anonymous globals" and it meant it 💅.
glob failed (%s)
(S glob) something went wrong with the external program(s) used for glob and <*.c>. Usually this means you supplied a glob pattern that made the external program fail and exit with a nonzero status. If the message says the abnormal exit resulted in a coredump, it may also mean your csh (C shell) is broken 😭. If so, change all of the csh-related variables in config.sh: if you have tcsh, make the variables refer to it as if it were csh (e.g. full_csh='/usr/bin/tcsh'); otherwise make them all empty (except that d_csh should be 'undef') so Perl will think csh is missing. Either way, after editing config.sh, run ./Configure -S and rebuild Perl.
Glob not terminated
(F) the lexer saw a left angle bracket somewhere it was expecting a term, so now it's hunting for the matching right angle bracket and not finding it. Chances are you left out some needed parentheses earlier in the line and you actually meant a "less than" 💀.
gmtime(%f) failed
(W overflow) you called gmtime with a number it couldn't handle: too large, too small, or NaN. The returned value is undef.
gmtime(%f) too large
(W overflow) you called gmtime with a number larger than it can reliably handle, and gmtime probably returned the wrong date. This warning also triggers with NaN (the special not-a-number value).
gmtime(%f) too small
(W overflow) you called gmtime with a number smaller than it can reliably handle, and gmtime probably returned the wrong date.
Got an error from DosAllocMem
(P) an error peculiar to OS/2. Most probably you're using an obsolete version of Perl, and this should not happen anyway.
goto must have label
(F) unlike next or last, you're not allowed to goto an unspecified destination. See goto in perlfunc.
Goto undefined subroutine%s
(F) you tried to call a subroutine with goto &sub syntax, but the indicated subroutine hasn't been defined — or if it was, it has since been undefined. Gone, reduced to atoms 🫠.
Group name must start with a non-digit word character in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) group names have to follow the rules for Perl identifiers, meaning they must start with a character that matches \p{XID_Start} plus the underscore. So the first character may not be a digit. Subsequent characters must match \p{XID_Continue}.
A common cause of this error is using (?&0) instead of (?0).
See perlre and "Identifier parsing" in perldata.
This message was formulated before Perl supported Unicode, so it is not accurate for Unicode characters outside the ASCII-range. There are lots of word characters in Unicode that may not start a group name, and a few that may not be a continuation character. Noted 💜.
()-group starts with a count
(F) a ()-group started with a count. A count is supposed to follow something: a template character or a ()-group. See pack in perlfunc.
%s had compilation errors.
(F) the final summary message when a perl -c fails. The sad little bow on top 🎀.
Had to create %s unexpectedly
(S internal) a routine asked for a symbol from a symbol table that ought to have already existed, but for some reason it didn't, and it had to be created on an emergency basis to prevent a core dump. Emergency symbol creation, iconic behaviour honestly.
%s has too many errors
(F) the parser has given up trying to parse the program after 10 errors. Further error messages would likely be uninformative. It's not mad, it's just tired 😭.
Hexadecimal float: exponent overflow
(W overflow) the hexadecimal floating point has a larger exponent than the floating point supports. Too big, bestie 📈.
Hexadecimal float: exponent underflow
(W overflow) the hexadecimal floating point has a smaller exponent than the floating point supports. With the IEEE 754 floating point, this may also mean that the subnormals (formerly known as denormals) are being used, which may or may not be an error. Ambiguous little moment, iykyk.
Hexadecimal float: internal error (%s)
(F) something went horribly bad in hexadecimal float handling. Genuinely bad vibes 🔥.
Hexadecimal float: mantissa overflow 💜
(W overflow) bestie the hexadecimal floating point literal had more bits in the mantissa than the floating point can even hold. and by mantissa i mean the part sitting between the 0x and the exponent — aka the fraction, aka the significand, three names for one thing, iconic.
Hexadecimal float: precision loss 😭
(W overflow) internally this hex float had more digits than could actually be output. why tho? could be unsupported long double formats, or could be that 64-bit integers aren't available (and you literally need those to retrieve the digits under some configurations). no integers, no digits, periodt.
Hexadecimal float: unsupported long double format 🚫
(F) you configured Perl to use long doubles but the internals of the long double format are, like, unknown?? so the hexadecimal float output is just impossible. can't print what you can't parse, bestie.
Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable 🌍
(W portable) the hex number you specified is bigger than 2**32-1 (4294967295), which means it's non-portable between systems. go read perlport for more on portability concerns, iykyk.
Identifier too long 📏
(F) Perl caps identifiers (names for variables, functions, etc.) at about 250 characters for simple names, and somewhat more for compound names (like $A::B). you blew past Perl's limits, oops. ngl future versions of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary limitations, so.
Ignoring zero length \N{} in character class in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ 🕳️
(W regexp) named Unicode character escapes ("\N{...}") may return a zero-length sequence. when such an escape gets used in a character class its behavior is not well defined — vibe check failed. verify the correct escape has been used, and that the correct charname handler is in scope.
Illegal %s digit '%c' ignored 🙈
(W digit) here %s is one of "binary", "octal", or "hex". you may have tried to use a digit that isn't legal for the given type — like only 0 and 1 are fine for binary. for octals, this only gets raised if the illegal character is an '8' or '9'. for hex, 'A' - 'F' and 'a' - 'f' are legal. interpretation of the number stopped just before the offending digit or character, so at least it's polite about it 💅.
Illegal binary digit '%c' 🔢
(F) you used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary number. binary is a two-digit club and you brought a third, respectfully.
Illegal character after '_' in prototype for %s : %s 😬
(W illegalproto) an illegal character snuck into a prototype declaration. the '_' in a prototype must be followed by a ';', which means the rest of the parameters are optional — or by one of '@' or '%', since those two will accept 0 or more final parameters.
Illegal character following sigil in a subroutine signature ⚠️
(F) a parameter in a subroutine signature had an unexpected character following the "$", "@" or "%'" sigil character. normally the sigil should be followed by the variable name or "=" etc. maybe you're trying to use a prototype while in the scope of "use feature 'signatures'"? for example:
sub foo ($$) {} # legal - a prototype
use feature 'signatures;
sub foo ($$) {} # illegal - was expecting a signature
sub foo ($x, $y)
:prototype($$) {} # legalIllegal character in prototype for %s : %s 🚨
(W illegalproto) an illegal character was found in a prototype declaration. legal characters in prototypes are $, @, %, *, ;, [, ], &, \, and +. maybe you were trying to write a subroutine signature but didn't enable that feature first ("use feature 'signatures'"), so your signature got interpreted as a bad prototype instead. betrayal fr fr.
Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine 👻
(F) when using the "sub" keyword to construct an anonymous subroutine, you must always specify a block of code. see perlsub.
Illegal declaration of subroutine %s 📛
(F) a subroutine was not declared correctly. see perlsub.
Illegal division by zero ➗
(F) you tried to divide a number by 0. either something was wrong in your logic, or you need to put a conditional in to guard against meaningless input. math said no 🫶.
Illegal modulus zero 🧮
(F) you tried to divide a number by 0 to get the remainder. most numbers don't take to this kindly, and honestly? same.
Illegal number of bits in vec 🎚️
(F) the number of bits in vec() (the third argument) must be a power of two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform supports that).
Illegal octal digit '%c' 8️⃣
(F) you used an 8 or 9 in an octal number. octal said absolutely not.
Illegal operator following parameter in a subroutine signature 🛑
(F) a parameter in a subroutine signature was followed by something other than "=" introducing a default, "," or ")".
use feature 'signatures';
sub foo ($=1) {} # legal
sub foo ($x = 1) {} # legal
sub foo ($x += 1) {} # illegal
sub foo ($x == 1) {} # illegalIllegal pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ 🧩
(F) you wrote something like
(?+foo)the "+" is valid only when followed by digits, indicating a capturing group. see "(?PARNO)".
Illegal suidscript 🕵️
(F) the script run under suidperl was somehow illegal. lowkey sketchy.
Illegal switch in PERL5OPT: -%c 🚩
(X) the PERL5OPT environment variable may only be used to set the following switches: -[CDIMUdmtw].
Illegal user-defined property name 🏷️
(F) you specified a Unicode-like property name in a regular expression pattern (using "\p{}" or "\P{}") that Perl knows isn't an official Unicode property, and it was likely meant to be a user-defined property name — but it can't be one of those, because those must begin with either "In" or "Is". check the spelling. see also "Can't find Unicode property definition "%s"".
Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s" 🌀
(W internal) a warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the CRTL's internal environ array and encountered an element without the "=" delimiter used to separate keys from values. the element is ignored.
Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s| 🌀
(W internal) another warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read a logical name or CLI symbol definition when preparing to iterate over %ENV, and didn't see the expected delimiter between key and value, so the line was ignored.
(in cleanup) %s 🧹
(W misc) this prefix usually means a DESTROY() method raised the indicated exception. since destructors are usually called by the system at arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast number of times, the warning is issued only once for any number of failures that would otherwise result in the same message being repeated. so it's not ghosting you, it's just efficient ✨.
failure of user callbacks dispatched using the "G_KEEPERR" flag could also result in this warning. see "G_KEEPERR" in perlcall.
Implicit use of @_ in %s with signatured subroutine is experimental 🧪
(S experimental::args_array_with_signatures) an expression that implicitly involves the @_ arguments array was found in a subroutine that uses a signature. this is experimental because the interaction between the arguments array and parameter handling via signatures is not guaranteed to remain stable in any future version of Perl, and such code should be avoided. proceed with caution bestie, or don't proceed at all 💀.
Incomplete expression within '(?[ ])' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ 🧷
(F) there was a syntax error within the "(?[ ])". this can happen if the expression inside the construct was completely empty, or if there are too many or too few operands for the number of operators. Perl is not smart enough to give you a more precise indication as to what is wrong. it tried its best 😭.
Inconsistent hierarchy during C3 merge of class '%s': merging failed on parent '%s' 🌳
(F) the method resolution order (MRO) of the given class is not C3-consistent, and you have enabled the C3 MRO for this class. see the C3 documentation in mro for more information.
Indentation on line %d of here-doc doesn't match delimiter 📐
(F) you have an indented here-document where one or more of its lines have whitespace at the beginning that does not match the closing delimiter.
for example, line 2 below is wrong because it does not have at least 2 spaces, but lines 1 and 3 are fine because they have at least 2:
if ($something) {
print <<~EOF;
Line 1
Line 2 not
Line 3
EOF
}note that tabs and spaces are compared strictly, meaning 1 tab will not match 8 spaces. no cap.
Infinite recursion in regex ♾️
(F) you used a pattern that references itself without consuming any input text. check the pattern to make sure that recursive patterns either consume text or fail, because right now it's just going in circles forever 🔄.
Infinite recursion in user-defined property ♾️
(F) a user-defined property ("User-Defined Character Properties" in perlunicode) can depend on the definitions of other user-defined properties. if the chain of dependencies leads back to this property, infinite recursion would occur — were it not for the check that raised this error. restructure your property definitions to avoid this.
Infinite recursion via empty pattern 🌀
(F) you tried to use the empty pattern inside of a regex code block, for instance "/(?{ s!!! })/", which resulted in re-executing the same pattern — an infinite loop which is broken by throwing an exception. chaos, but contained.
Initialization of state variables in list currently forbidden 🚧
(F) "state" only permits initializing a single variable, specified without parentheses. so "state $x = 42" and "state @x = qw(a b c)" are allowed, but not "state ($x) = 42" or "(state $x) = 42". to initialize more than one "state" variable, initialize them one at a time. one at a time, bestie 💅.
%%s[%s] in scalar context better written as $%s[%s] ✍️
(W syntax) in scalar context, you've used an array index/value slice (indicated by %) to select a single element of an array. generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (indicated by $). the difference is that $foo[&bar] always behaves like a scalar, both in the value it returns and when evaluating its argument, while %foo[&bar] provides a list context to its subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript. when called in list context, it also returns the index (what &bar returns) in addition to the value. so like, $ is giving main character energy here 🎀.
%%s{%s} in scalar context better written as $%s{%s}
okay bestie 💅 so this one's a (W syntax) situation — you're in scalar context and you used a hash key/value slice (that's the % doing its thing ✨) just to grab ONE single element out of a hash. Like. One. Element. And honestly? It's lowkey better to just ask for a scalar value, which is what $ gives you 🎀.
The difference, fr fr: $foo{&bar} always behaves like a scalar — both in the value it returns and when it's evaluating its argument. Meanwhile @foo{&bar} provides a list context to its subscript, which can do some genuinely unhinged things if you were only expecting one subscript 🙈. And when it's called in list context, it also returns the key in addition to the value. So yeah, $ it up, no cap.
Insecure dependency in %s
(F) — you tried to do something and the tainting mechanism was like "absolutely not 💀". Tainting turns on when you're running setuid or setgid, or when you specify -T to turn it on explicitly. What it does is label all data that's derived directly or indirectly from the user, because the user is considered to be unworthy of your trust. Periodt. If any such data gets used in a "dangerous" operation, you get this error. See perlsec for the whole saga 🫶.
Insecure directory in %s
(F) — nope, not today. You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or setgid script if $ENV{PATH} contains a directory that is writable by the world 😭. Also, the PATH must not contain any relative directory or empty component (so '', ':', and '/usr/bin::/usr/local/bin' would all trigger this error). See perlsec.
Insecure $ENV{%s} while running %s
(F) — same energy, different env var 👑. You can't use system(), exec(), or a piped open in a setuid or setgid script if any of $ENV{PATH}, $ENV{IFS}, $ENV{CDPATH}, $ENV{ENV}, $ENV{BASH_ENV} or $ENV{TERM} are derived from data supplied (or potentially supplied) by the user. The script must set the path to a known value, using trustworthy data. See perlsec.
Insecure user-defined property %s
(F) — Perl detected tainted data while trying to compile a regular expression that contains a call to a user-defined character property function, i.e. \p{IsFoo} or \p{InFoo}. Go read "User-Defined Character Properties" in perlunicode and perlsec 💖.
Integer overflow in format string for %s
(F) — the indexes and widths specified in the format string of printf() or sprintf() are too large. Those numbers must not overflow the size of integers for your architecture. That's the whole thing 💅.
Integer overflow in %s number
(S overflow) — the hexadecimal, octal or binary number you specified, either as a literal or as an argument to hex() or oct(), is too big for your architecture, so it got converted to a floating point number. On a 32-bit architecture the largest hexadecimal, octal or binary number representable without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively. Also, note that Perl transparently promotes all numbers to a floating point representation internally — subject to loss of precision errors in subsequent operations 👀.
Integer overflow in srand
(S overflow) — the number you passed to srand is too big to fit in your architecture's integer representation. It's been replaced with the largest integer supported (0xFFFFFFFF on 32-bit architectures). Which means you may be getting less randomness than you expect, because different random seeds above the maximum will return the same sequence of random numbers 💀. Not the vibe.
Integer overflow in version
Integer overflow in version %d
(W overflow) — some portion of a version initialization is too large for the size of integers for your architecture. And no, this isn't a warning because there is no rational reason for a version to try and use an element larger than typically 2**32. This is usually caused by trying to use some odd mathematical operation as a version, like 100/9 🙈.
Internal disaster in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(P) — something went badly wrong in the regular expression parser 😭. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
Internal inconsistency in tracking vforks
(S) — a warning peculiar to VMS, bestie. Perl keeps track of the number of times you've called fork and exec, to determine whether the current call to exec should affect the current script or a subprocess (see "exec LIST" in perlvms). Somehow, this count has become scrambled, so Perl is making a guess and treating this exec as a request to terminate the Perl script and execute the specified command. Rude, but okay 🫶.
internal %<num>p might conflict with future printf extensions
(S internal) — Perl's internal routine that handles printf and sprintf formatting follows a slightly different set of rules when called from C or XS code. Specifically, formats consisting of digits followed by p (e.g., %7p) are reserved for future use 👀. If you see this message, then an XS module tried to call that routine with one such reserved format.
Internal urp in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(P) — something went badly awry in the regular expression parser. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. urp. iconic word choice, truly 💅.
%s (...) interpreted as function
(W syntax) — you've run afoul of the rule that says that any list operator followed by parentheses turns into a function, with all the list operators arguments found inside the parentheses. See "Terms and List Operators (Leftward)" in perlop.
In '(?...)', the '(' and '?' must be adjacent in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — the two-character sequence (? in this context in a regular expression pattern should be an indivisible token, with nothing intervening between the ( and the ?, but you separated them with whitespace. Bestie. They have to be adjacent 🎀. No space. None.
In '(...)', the '(' and '' must be adjacent in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — the two-character sequence (* in this context in a regular expression pattern should be an indivisible token, with nothing intervening between the ( and the *, but you separated them. Fix the pattern and retry ✨.
Invalid %s attribute: %s
(F) — the indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable was not recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See attributes.
Invalid %s attributes: %s
(F) — the indicated attributes (plural, we're fancy now) for a subroutine or variable were not recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied handler. See attributes.
Invalid character in charnames alias definition; marked by <-- HERE in '%s
(F) — you tried to create a custom alias for a character name, with the :alias option to use charnames, and the specified character in the indicated name isn't valid. See "CUSTOM ALIASES" in charnames.
Invalid \0 character in %s for %s: %s\0%s
(W syscalls) — embedded \0 characters in pathnames or other system call arguments produce a warning as of 5.20 🦋. The parts after the \0 were formerly ignored by system calls.
Invalid character in \N{...}; marked by <-- HERE in \N{%s}
(F) — only certain characters are valid for character names, and the indicated one isn't. See "CUSTOM ALIASES" in charnames.
Invalid conversion in %s: "%s"
(W printf) — Perl does not understand the given format conversion. See "sprintf" in perlfunc.
Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp)(F) — the numeric escape (for example \xHH) of value < 256 didn't correspond to a single character through the conversion from the encoding specified by the encoding pragma. The escape was replaced with REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD) instead, except within (?[ ]), where it is a fatal error 😭. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the escape was discovered.
Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}
Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — the character constant represented by ... is not a valid hexadecimal number. Either it's empty, or you tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or A - F, a - f in a hexadecimal number. Keep it hex-y, bestie 💜.
Invalid module name %s with -%c option: contains single ':'
(F) — the module argument to perl's -m and -M command-line options cannot contain single colons in the module name, but only in the arguments after =. In other words, -MFoo::Bar=:baz is ok, but -MFoo:Bar=baz is not. Double colons or nothing, periodt.
Invalid mro name: '%s'
(F) — you tried mro::set_mro("classname", "foo") or use mro 'foo', where foo is not a valid method resolution order (MRO). Currently, the only valid ones supported are dfs and c3, unless you have loaded a module that is a MRO plugin. See mro and perlmroapi.
Invalid negative number (%s) in chr
(W utf8) — you passed a negative number to chr. Negative numbers are not valid character numbers, so it returns the Unicode replacement character (U+FFFD). Not me passing a negative number to chr 🙈.
Invalid number '%s' for -C option.
(F) — you supplied a number to the -C option that either has extra leading zeroes or overflows perl's unsigned integer representation.
invalid option -D%c, use -D'' to see choices
(S debugging) — Perl was called with invalid debugger flags 🐛. Call perl with the -D option with no flags to see the list of acceptable values. See also "-Dletters" in perlrun.
Invalid quantifier in {,} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — the pattern looks like a {min,max} quantifier, but the min or max could not be parsed as a valid number — either it has leading zeroes, or it represents too big a number to cope with. The <-- HERE shows where in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Invalid [] range "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — the range specified in a character class had a minimum character greater than the maximum character 💀. One possibility is that you forgot the {} from your ending \x{} — \x without the curly braces can go only up to ff. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Invalid range "%s" in transliteration operator
(F) — the range specified in the tr/// or y/// operator had a minimum character greater than the maximum character. See perlop.
Invalid reference to group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — the capture group you specified can't possibly exist, because the number you used is not within the legal range of possible values for this machine 😭. That group is giving ✨imaginary✨ and not in the cute way.
Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
(F) bestie something that was NOT a colon and NOT whitespace showed up between the elements of an attribute list 😭 and if the attribute right before it had a parenthesised parameter list, lowkey maybe that list got terminated way too soon. See attributes.
Invalid separator character %s in PerlIO layer specification %s
(W layer) okay so when you're pushing layers onto the Perl I/O system, something that wasn't a colon and wasn't whitespace appeared between the elements of a layer list. If the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter list, maybe that list got closed off too early 👀
Invalid strict version format (%s)
(F) a version number did not meet the "strict" criteria for versions 💅 a "strict" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or decimal-fraction) without exponentiation, or else a dotted-decimal v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least three components. The parenthesized text tells you which criteria were not met. See the version module for more details on allowed version formats.
Invalid type '%s' in %s
(F) the character you gave is not a valid pack or unpack type. See "pack" in perlfunc.
(W) the character you gave is not a valid pack or unpack type, but it used to be silently ignored 🙈
Invalid version bundle "%s"
(F) a version number used to specify an import bundle during a "use builtin ..." statement has to be formatted as ":MAJOR.MINOR" with an optional third component, which is ignored. Each component must be a number of 1 to 3 digits. No other characters are permitted. The value you specified does not conform to these rules, periodt.
Invalid version format (%s)
(F) a version number did not meet the "lax" criteria for versions 😔 a "lax" version number is a positive decimal number (integer or decimal-fraction) without exponentiation, or else a dotted-decimal v-string. If the v-string has fewer than three components, it must have a leading 'v' character. Otherwise, the leading 'v' is optional. Both decimal and dotted-decimal versions may have a trailing "alpha" component separated by an underscore character after a fractional or dotted-decimal component. The parenthesized text indicates which criteria were not met. See the version module for more details on allowed version formats.
Invalid version object
(F) the internal structure of the version object was invalid 🫠 maybe the internals got modified directly somehow, or an arbitrary reference got blessed into the "version" class.
In '(*VERB...)', the '(' and '*' must be adjacent in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ and Inverting a character class which contains a multi-character sequence is illegal in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) you wrote something like
qr/\P{name=KATAKANA LETTER AINU P}/
qr/[^\p{name=KATAKANA LETTER AINU P}]/This name actually evaluates to a sequence of two Katakana characters, not just a single one, and it is illegal to try to take the complement of a sequence. (Mathematically it would mean any sequence of characters from 0 to infinity in length that weren't these two in a row, and that is likely not of any real use.)
(F) the two-character sequence "(*" in this context in a regular expression pattern should be an indivisible token, with nothing intervening between the "(" and the "*", but you separated them 💀
ioctl is not implemented
(F) your machine apparently doesn't implement ioctl(), which is pretty strange for a machine that supports C 😭 like???
ioctl() on unopened %s
(W unopened) you tried ioctl() on a filehandle that was never opened. Check your control flow and your number of arguments 🧚
IO layers (like '%s') unavailable
(F) your Perl has not been configured to have PerlIO, so bestie you literally cannot use IO layers 🚫 to have PerlIO, Perl must be configured with 'useperlio'.
IO::Socket::atmark not implemented on this architecture
(F) your machine doesn't implement the sockatmark() functionality, neither as a system call nor an ioctl call (SIOCATMARK) 😔
'%s' is an unknown bound type in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) you used "\b{...}" or "\B{...}" and the "..." is not known to Perl. The current valid ones are given in "\b{}, \b, \B{}, \B" in perlrebackslash.
%s() isn't allowed on :utf8 handles
(F) the sysread(), recv(), syswrite() and send() operators are not allowed on handles that have the ":utf8" layer, either explicitly, or implicitly, eg., with the :encoding(UTF-16LE) layer.
Previously sysread() and recv() currently use only the ":utf8" flag for the stream, ignoring the actual layers. Since sysread() and recv() did no UTF-8 validation they can end up creating invalidly encoded scalars 👀
Similarly, syswrite() and send() used only the ":utf8" flag, otherwise ignoring any layers. If the flag is set, both wrote the value UTF-8 encoded, even if the layer is some different encoding, such as the example above.
Ideally, all of these operators would completely ignore the ":utf8" state, working only with bytes, but this would result in silently breaking existing code 😬
"%s" is more clearly written simply as "%s" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) (only under "use re 'strict'" or within "(?[...])")
You specified a character that has the given plainer way of writing it, and which is also portable to platforms running with different character sets ✨
$* is no longer supported as of Perl 5.30
(F) the special variable $*, deprecated in older perls, was removed in 5.10.0, is no longer supported and is a fatal error as of Perl 5.30 💀 In previous versions of perl the use of $* enabled or disabled multi-line matching within a string.
Instead of using $* you should use the "/m" (and maybe "/s") regexp modifiers. You can enable "/m" for a lexical scope (even a whole file) with "use re '/m'". (In older versions: when $* was set to a true value then all regular expressions behaved as if they were written using "/m".)
Use of this variable will be a fatal error in Perl 5.30.
$# is no longer supported as of Perl 5.30
(F) the special variable $#, deprecated in older perls, was removed as of 5.10.0, is no longer supported and is a fatal error as of Perl 5.30. You should use the printf/sprintf functions instead 🫶
'%s' is not a code reference
(W overload) the second (fourth, sixth, ...) argument of overload::constant needs to be a code reference. Either an anonymous subroutine, or a reference to a subroutine 😌
"%s" is not a valid name for a generated method
(F) a custom method name was passed to an attribute on a field, such as ":reader", which creates a new method. These generated methods must have valid names, but the value given to the attribute would result in an invalid name 🚫
'%s' is not an overloadable type
(W overload) you tried to overload a constant type the overload package is unaware of 💅
'%s' is not recognised as a builtin function
(F) an attempt was made to "use" the builtin pragma module to create a lexical alias for an unknown function name 🤷
-i used with no filenames on the command line, reading from STDIN
(S inplace) the "-i" option was passed on the command line, which means the script is meant 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 it can be confusing because it can make perl look like it is hanging when it is really just trying to read from STDIN. You should either pass a filename to edit, or remove "-i" from the command line. See perlrun for more details.
Junk on end of regexp in regex m/%s/
(P) the regular expression parser is confused 🫠
\K not permitted in lookahead/lookbehind in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) your regular expression used "\K" in a lookahead or lookbehind assertion, which currently isn't permitted.
This may change in the future, see Support \K in lookarounds <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/18134>.
Label not found for "last %s"
(F) you named a loop to break out of, but you're not currently in a loop of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See "last" in perlfunc.
Label not found for "next %s"
(F) you named a loop to continue, but you're not currently in a loop of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See "last" in perlfunc.
Label not found for "redo %s"
(F) you named a loop to restart, but you're not currently in a loop of that name, not even if you count where you were called from. See "last" in perlfunc.
leaving effective %s failed
(F) while under the "use filetest" pragma, switching the real and effective uids or gids failed 🙃
length/code after end of string in unpack
(F) while unpacking, the string buffer was already used up when an unpack length/code combination tried to obtain more data. This results in an undefined value for the length 😭 See "pack" in perlfunc.
length() used on %s (did you mean "scalar(%s)"?)
(W syntax) you used length() on either an array or a hash when you probably wanted a count of the items 👀
Array size can be obtained by doing:
scalar(@array);The number of items in a hash can be obtained by doing:
scalar(keys %hash);Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into Latin-1 input
(F) an extension is attempting to insert text into the current parse (using lex_stuff_pvn or similar), but tried to insert a character that couldn't be part of the current input 😬 this is an inherent pitfall of the stuffing mechanism, and one of the reasons to avoid it. Where it is necessary to stuff, stuffing only plain ASCII is recommended.
Lexing code internal error (%s)
(F) lexing code supplied by an extension violated the lexer's API in a detectable way 💀
listen() on closed socket %s
(W closed) you tried to do a listen on a closed socket. Did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call? See "listen" in perlfunc.
List form of piped open not implemented
(F) on some platforms, notably Windows, the three-or-more-arguments form of "open" does not support pipes, such as "open($pipe, '|-', @args)". Use the two-argument "open($pipe, '|prog arg1 arg2...')" form instead 🫶
Literal vertical space in [] is illegal except under /x in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/— (F) (this one only pops up underuse re 'strict'or inside(?[...]))
ok so bestie, you almost definitely forgot the /x modifier, or there's a typo hiding in your pattern 🙈. Like... did you really mean to match a form-feed? Because if you did, every ASCII vertical space control character has a cute little escape sequence that won't look so cursed when your pattern gets displayed:
\r carriage return
\f form feed
\n line feed
\cK vertical tab%s: loadable library and perl binaries are mismatched (got %s handshake key %p, needed %p)— (P) a dynamic loading library.soor.dllwas getting loaded into the process, and it was built against a different build of perl than the library itself was compiled against 💀. Reinstalling the XS module will probably fix it fr fr. This error is the less-commonly-seen subset of thePerl API version %s of %s does not match %serror, iykyk.Locale '%s' contains (at least) the following characters which have unexpected meanings: %s The Perl program will use the expected meanings— (W locale) you're using the named UTF-8 locale 🌈. UTF-8 locales are supposed to have very particular behavior, and most of them do. This message shows up when perl found some departures from those expectations, and it's letting you know that the expected behavior wins over these differences ✨. Sometimes the differences are just the locale definition being defective, but the most common causes of this warning are ambiguities and conflicts in following the Standard, where the locale chose an approach that differs from Perl's.
One of these is because — plot twist — contrary to the claims, Unicode is not completely locale insensitive 😭. Turkish and some related languages have two types of "I" characters: one is dotted in both upper- and lowercase, and the other is dotless in both cases. Unicode lets a locale use either the Turkish rules, or the rules used everywhere else (only one type of "I", dotless uppercase, dotted lowercase). The perl core does not (yet) handle the Turkish case, and this message is warning you about that. Instead, the Unicode::Casing module lets you mostly implement the Turkish casing rules 🫶.
The other common cause is for these characters:
$ + < = > ^ ` | ~These are lowkey problematic ngl. The C standard says 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 added an extra category, "Symbol", and classifies these particular characters as being symbols 💅. Most UTF-8 locales have them treated as punctuation, so ispunct(3) returns non-zero for them. But a few locales have it return 0 😳. Perl takes the first approach, not using ispunct() at all (see Note [5] in perlrecharclass), and this message is raised to notify you that you're getting Perl's approach, not the locale's.
Locale '%s' is unsupported, and may crash the interpreter— (S locale) the named locale is not supported by Perl, and using it leads to undefined behavior, including potentially crashing the computer 💀🚨. Currently the only locales that generate this severe warning are non-UTF-8 ones which have characters that require more than one byte to represent (common in older East Asian language locales). See perllocale.Locale '%s' may not work well.%s— (W locale) you're using the named locale, which is a non-UTF-8 one, and perl has determined it's not fully compatible with what it can handle 😬. The second%sgives 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 a different locale or use Encode to translate from the locale into UTF-8; if that's impracticable, you have been warned that some things may break 😭.
This message is output once each time a bad locale is switched into within the scope of use locale, or on the first possibly-affected operation if the use locale inherits a bad one. It is not raised for any operations from the POSIX module.
localtime(%f) failed— (W overflow) you calledlocaltimewith a number it could not handle: too large, too small, or NaN 🙈. The returned value isundef.localtime(%f) too large— (W overflow) you calledlocaltimewith a number that was larger than it can reliably handle, andlocaltimeprobably returned the wrong date 😵. This warning is also triggered with NaN (the special not-a-number value).localtime(%f) too small— (W overflow) you calledlocaltimewith a number that was smaller than it can reliably handle, andlocaltimeprobably returned the wrong date.Lookbehind longer than %d not implemented in regex m/%s/— (F) there's currently a limit on the length of string which lookbehind can handle 🚧. This restriction may be eased in a future release.Lost precision when %s %f by 1— (W imprecision) you tried to increment or decrement a value by one, but the result is too large for the underlying floating point representation to store accurately 😬. So the target of++or--gets increased or decreased by a quite different value than one — like zero (i.e. the target is unchanged) or two — because of 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 not enough 💀. You may wish to switch to usingMath::BigIntexplicitly.lstat() on filehandle%s— (W io) you tried to do anlstaton a filehandle. Bestie. What did you mean by that?? 🤨lstat()makes sense only on filenames. (Perl did afstat()instead on the filehandle.)lvalue attribute %s already-defined subroutine— (W misc) even thoughattributes.pmallows this, turning the lvalue attribute on or off on a Perl subroutine that is already defined doesn't 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're doing.lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined— (W misc) using the:lvaluedeclarative 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 thesub foo :lvalue;declaration before the definition.
See also attributes.pm.
Magical list constants are not supported— (F) you assigned a magical array to a stash element, and then tried to use the subroutine from the same slot 🙈. You're asking Perl to do something it cannot do, details subject to change between Perl versions.Malformed integer in [] in pack— (F) between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count, only digits are permitted. Seepackin perlfunc.Malformed integer in [] in unpack— (F) between the brackets enclosing a numeric repeat count, only digits are permitted. Seepackin perlfunc.Malformed PERLLIB_PREFIX— (F) an error that's peculiar to OS/2 👑.PERLLIB_PREFIXshould be of the form
prefix1;prefix2or
prefix1 prefix2with nonempty prefix1 and prefix2. If prefix1 is indeed a prefix of a builtin library search path, prefix2 is substituted. The error may appear if components are not found, or are too long. See PERLLIB_PREFIX in perlos2.
Malformed prototype for %s: %s— (F) you tried to use a function with a malformed prototype 😬. The syntax of function prototypes gets a brief compile-time check for obvious errors like invalid characters. A more rigorous check is run when the function is called. Perhaps the function's author was trying to write a subroutine signature but didn't enable that feature first (use feature 'signatures'), so the signature was instead interpreted as a bad prototype 💀. iykyk.Malformed UTF-8 character%s— (S utf8)(F) Perl detected a string that should be UTF-8, but it didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding rules, or it represents a code point whose ordinal integer value doesn't fit into the word size of the current platform (overflows) 🫠. Details as to the exact malformation are given in the variable,%s, part of the message.
One possible cause is that you set the UTF8 flag yourself for data that you thought was in UTF-8 but it wasn't (it was, for example, legacy 8-bit data). To guard against this, you can use Encode::decode('UTF-8', ...) 💖.
If you use the :encoding(UTF-8) PerlIO layer for input, invalid byte sequences are handled gracefully, but if you use :utf8, the flag is set without validating the data, possibly resulting in this error message 😭.
See also Handling Malformed Data in Encode.
Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N{%s} immediately after '%s'— (F) the charnames handler returned malformed UTF-8 🙈.Malformed UTF-8 string in "%s"— (F) this message indicates a bug either in the Perl core or in XS code 💀. Such code was trying to find out if a character — allegedly stored internally encoded as UTF-8 — was of a given type, such as being punctuation or a digit. But the character was not encoded in legal UTF-8. The%sis 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. periodt.
Malformed UTF-8 string in '%c' format in unpack 😭
(F) bestie you tried to unpack something and it just... did not comply with UTF-8 encoding rules, and perl straight up couldn't guess how to make any more progress. it's giving stuck. 💀
Malformed UTF-8 string in pack 😭
(F) same energy, different direction: you tried to pack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding rules and perl couldn't guess how to make more progress.
Malformed UTF-8 string in unpack 😭
(F) yeah so this one's the encore — you tried to unpack something that didn't comply with UTF-8 encoding rules, perl could not guess how to make more progress, the whole vibe is off. 🫠
Malformed UTF-16 surrogate 💀
(F) perl thought it was reading UTF-16 encoded character data, and while doing it, it met a malformed Unicode surrogate. rude of that data, honestly.
Mandatory parameter follows optional parameter 🚨
(F) so in a subroutine signature you wrote something like "$x = undef, $y" — that makes an earlier parameter optional and a later one mandatory. and listen, parameters get filled from left to right, so it's literally impossible for the caller to omit an earlier one and pass a later one. impossible. no cap.
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. slay, problem solved. ✨
When using named parameters, no named parameter may be made mandatory if there exist any optional positional parameters — though any named parameters may be freely mixed between mandatory and optional. very mix-and-match, very flexible. 🎀
Matched non-Unicode code point 0x%X against Unicode property; may not be portable ⚠️
(S non_unicode) okay so 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 bestie, these may not be accepted by other languages/systems. portability? not found. 🙈
This message occurs when you matched a string containing such a code point against a regular expression pattern, and the code point was matched against a Unicode property, "\p{...}" or "\P{...}". Unicode properties are only defined on Unicode code points, so the result of this match is undefined by Unicode — but perl (starting in v5.20) treats non-Unicode code points as if they were typical unassigned Unicode ones, and matched this one accordingly. Whether a given property matches these code points or not is specified in "Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}" in perluniprops.
This message is suppressed (unless it has been made fatal) if it is immaterial to the results of the match whether the code point is Unicode or not. for example, the property "\p{ASCII_Hex_Digit}" only can match the 22 characters "[0-9A-Fa-f]", so obviously all other code points, Unicode or not, won't match it. (And "\P{ASCII_Hex_Digit}" will match every code point except these 22.) iconic behavior from a property, honestly. 💅
Getting this message indicates that the outcome of the match arguably should have been the opposite of what actually happened. If you think that is the case, you may wish to make the "non_unicode" warnings category fatal; if you agree with Perl's decision, you may wish to turn off this category. your call, bestie. 🫶
See "Beyond Unicode code points" in perlunicode for more information.
%s matches null string many times in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ 🔁
(W regexp) the pattern you've specified would be an infinite loop if the regular expression engine didn't specifically check for that. 😭 the <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Maximal count of pending signals (%u) exceeded 🚨
(F) perl aborted due to too high a number of signals pending. this usually indicates that your operating system tried to deliver signals too fast (with a very high priority), starving the perl process from resources it would need to reach a point where it can process signals safely. (See "Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)" in perlipc.) the OS was being too main character. 💀
"%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". retro vibes, but make it a warning.
'%' 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. the math is simply not mathing. See "unpack" in perlfunc.
Method for operation %s not found in package %s during blessing 🪄
(F) an attempt was made to specify an entry in an overloading table that doesn't resolve to a valid subroutine. See overload.
method is experimental 🧪
(S experimental::class) this warning is emitted if you use the "method" keyword of "use feature 'class'". this keyword is currently experimental and its behaviour may change in future releases of Perl. handle with care, bestie, it's still in its testing era. ✨
Method %s not permitted 🚫
See "500 Server error".
Method %s redefined 🔁
(W redefine) you redefined a method. to suppress this warning, say:
{
no warnings 'redefine';
*name = method { ... };
}Might be a runaway multi-line %s string starting on line %d 🏃♀️
(S) an advisory indicating that the previous error may have been caused by a missing delimiter on a string or pattern, because it eventually ended earlier on the current line. it ran away. it was found. 💀
Mismatch between expected and libperl %s 💥
(F) for an embedded perl, the perl headers and configuration you built your binary against don't match the library you've linked with. they're not matching. it's giving incompatible. 😭
Mismatched brackets in template 🧩
(F) a pack template could not be parsed because pairs of "[...]" or "(...)" could not be matched up. See "pack" in perlfunc.
Misplaced _ in number 🔢
(W syntax) an underscore (underbar) in a numeric constant did not separate two digits. the underscore was just... vibing in the wrong place. 🎀
Missing argument for %n in %s 🕳️
(F) a %n was used in a format string with no corresponding argument for perl to write the current string length to. nothing to write to. nowhere to put it. 🙈
Missing argument in %s 🕳️
(W missing) you called a function with fewer arguments than other arguments you supplied indicated would be needed.
Currently only emitted when a printf-type format required more arguments than were supplied, but might be used in the future for other cases where we can statically determine that arguments to functions are missing, e.g. for the "pack" in perlfunc function. foreshadowing. 👀
Missing argument to -%c 🕳️
(F) the argument to the indicated command line switch must follow immediately after the switch, without intervening spaces. no spaces, bestie. immediately. 💅
Missing braces on \N{} / Missing braces on \N{} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ 🎀
(F) wrong syntax of character name literal "\N{charname}" within double-quotish context. this can also happen when there is a space (or comment) between the "\N" and the "{" in a regex with the "/x" modifier. and no, that modifier does not change the requirement that the brace immediately follow the "\N". rules are rules. ✨
Missing braces on \o{} 🎀
(F) a "\o" must be followed immediately by a "{" in double-quotish context.
Missing comma after first argument to %s function 🕳️
(F) while certain functions allow you to specify a filehandle or an "indirect object" before the argument list, this ain't one of them. not this one. nope. 😌
Missing comma after first argument to return 🕳️
(F) while certain operators allow you to specify a filehandle or an "indirect object" before the argument list, "return" isn't one of them.
Missing command in piped open 🕳️
(W pipe) you used the "open(FH, "| command")" or "open(FH, "command |")" construction, but the command was missing or blank. the pipe is piping to absolutely nothing. 💀
Missing control char name in \c 🎀
(F) a double-quoted string ended with "\c", without the required control character name. the \c wanted a name and got ghosted. 😭
Missing ']' in prototype for %s : %s 🕳️
(W illegalproto) a grouping was started with "[" but never closed with "]". it's still open. it's been open this whole time. 🙈
Missing name in "%s sub" 🕳️
(F) the syntax for lexically scoped subroutines requires that they have a name with which they can be found. an anonymous sub is cute but this syntax needs a name, bestie. 💅
Missing $ on loop variable 💸
(F) apparently you've been programming in csh too much. 😭 variables are always mentioned with the $ in Perl, unlike in the shells, where it can vary from one line to the next.
(Missing operator before %s?) 🤔
(S syntax) this is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message "%s found where operator expected". often the missing operator is a comma. she's guessing, but she's guessing helpfully. ✨
Missing or undefined argument to %s 🕳️
(F) you tried to call "require" or "do" with no argument or with an undefined value as an argument. Require expects either a package name or a file-specification as an argument; do expects a filename. See "require EXPR" in perlfunc and "do EXPR" in perlfunc.
Missing or undefined argument to %s via %{^HOOK}{require__before} 🕳️
(F) a "%{^HOOK}{require__before}" hook rewrote the name of the file being compiled with "require" or "do" with an empty string an undefined value which is forbidden. 🚫 See "%{^HOOK}" in perlvar and "require EXPR" in perlfunc.
Missing required named parameter '%s' to subroutine '%s' / Missing required named parameters '%s' to subroutine '%s' 🚨
(F) a subroutine was invoked that uses a signature declaring at least one non-optional named parameter, but the caller did not provide a value associated with that name. 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. so if you aliased it, don't be confused — that's just how it is. 💅
Missing right brace on \%c{} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ 🕳️
(F) missing right brace in "\x{...}", "\p{...}", "\P{...}", or "\N{...}". the brace went missing. if found, please return. 🙈
Missing right brace on \N{} / Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace after \N 🕳️
(F) "\N" has two meanings. buckle up. 🎀
The traditional one has it followed by a name enclosed in braces, meaning the character (or sequence of characters) given by that name. Thus "\N{ASTERISK}" is another way of writing "*", valid in both double-quoted strings and regular expression patterns. In patterns, it doesn't have the meaning an unescaped "*" does.
Starting in Perl 5.12.0, "\N" also can have an additional meaning (only) in patterns, namely to match a non-newline character. (This is short for "[^\n]", and like "." but is not affected by the "/s" regex modifier.) iconic dual usage, honestly. ✨
This can lead to some ambiguities, bestie. When \N isn't followed immediately by a left brace, Perl assumes the [^\n] meaning. Also, if the braces form a valid quantifier such as \N{3} or \N{5,}, Perl assumes this means match the given quantity of non-newlines (in these examples, 3; and 5 or more, respectively). In all other cases, where there's a \N{ and a matching }, Perl assumes a character name is what you wanted. 🦋
However — plot twist — if there's no matching }, Perl genuinely can't tell whether it was mistakenly omitted, or whether [^\n]{ was the goal, so it raises this error. Meant the first? Add the right brace. Meant the second? Escape the brace with a backslash, like so: \N\{ 💅
Missing right curly or square bracket
(F) The lexer counted more opening curly or square brackets than closing ones. General rule, bestie: the missing one is near the place you were last editing. 👀
(Missing semicolon on previous line?)
(S syntax) This is an educated guess, made in conjunction with the message "%s found where operator expected". Do not automatically put a semicolon on the previous line just because you saw this. It's giving "maybe", not "definitely". 🙈
Modification of a read-only value attempted
(F) You tried, directly or indirectly, to change the value of a constant. No, you didn't try 2 = 1, because the compiler catches that one. But an easy way to do the same thing is:
sub mod { $_[0] = 1 }
mod(2);Another way is to assign to a substr() that's off the end of the string. 😭
Yet another way is to assign to a foreach loop VAR when VAR is aliased to a constant in the look LIST:
$x = 1;
foreach my $n ($x, 2) {
$n *= 2; # modifies the $x, but fails on attempt to
} # modify the 2PerlIO::scalar will also produce this message as a warning if you attempt to open a read-only scalar for writing. 🎀
Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, %s
(F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence ✨, and the subscript was probably negative — even counting backwards from the end of the array.
Modification of non-creatable hash value attempted, %s
(P) You tried to make a hash value spring into existence, and it couldn't be created, for some peculiar reason. 💀
Module name must be constant
(F) Only a bare module name is allowed as the first argument to a use.
Module name required with -%c option
(F) The -M or -m options say Perl should load some module, but you left out the module's name. Consult perlrun for the full tea on -M and -m. ☕
More than one argument to '%s' open
(F) The open function was asked to open multiple files. This can happen if you're trying to open a pipe to a command that takes a list of arguments, but you forgot to specify a piped open mode. See "open" in perlfunc for the details. 🫶
mprotect for COW string %p %u failed with %d
(S) You compiled perl with -DPERL_DEBUG_READONLY_COW (see "Copy on Write" in perlguts), but a shared string buffer couldn't be made read-only. 😤
mprotect for %p %u failed with %d
(S) You compiled perl with -DPERL_DEBUG_READONLY_OPS (see perlhacktips), but an op tree couldn't be made read-only.
mprotect RW for COW string %p %u failed with %d
(S) You compiled perl with -DPERL_DEBUG_READONLY_COW (see "Copy on Write" in perlguts), but a read-only shared string buffer couldn't be made mutable. not me fighting the memory protection 😭
mprotect RW for %p %u failed with %d
(S) You compiled perl with -DPERL_DEBUG_READONLY_OPS (see perlhacktips), but a read-only op tree couldn't be made mutable before freeing the ops.
msg%s not implemented
(F) You don't have System V message IPC on your system. That's it, that's the whole vibe check. 💀
Multidimensional hash lookup is disabled
(F) You supplied a list of subscripts to a hash lookup under no feature "multidimensional";, eg:
$z = $foo{$x, $y};which by default acts like:
$z = $foo{join($;, $x, $y)};Multidimensional syntax %s not supported
(W syntax) Multidimensional arrays aren't written like $foo[1,2,3]. They're written like "$foo[1][2][3]", as in C. periodt. 💅
Multiple slurpy parameters not allowed
(F) In subroutine signatures, a slurpy parameter ("@" or "%") must be the last parameter, and there must not be more than one of them; for example:
sub foo ($x, @y) {} # legal
sub foo ($x, @y, %) {} # invalid'/' must follow a numeric type in unpack
(F) You had an unpack template that contained a /, but it didn't follow some unpack specification producing a numeric value. See "pack" in perlfunc.
%s must not be a named sequence in transliteration operator
(F) Transliteration (tr/// and y///) transliterates individual characters. But a named sequence, by definition, is more than an individual character, so doing this operation on it just doesn't make sense. 🧚
"my sub" not yet implemented
(F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet implemented. Don't try that yet, bestie. 🙈
"my" subroutine %s can't be in a package
(F) Lexically scoped subroutines aren't in a package, so declaring one with a package qualifier on the front makes zero sense. 🚫
"my %s" used in sort comparison
(W syntax) The package variables $a and $b are used for sort comparisons. You used $a or $b as an operand to the <=> or cmp operator inside a sort comparison block, and that variable had earlier been declared as a lexical variable. Either qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the lexical variable. Fix it, it's giving name collision. 👑
"my" variable %s can't be in a package
(F) Lexically scoped variables aren't in a package, so declaring one with a package qualifier on the front makes no sense either. Use local() if you want to localize a package variable. 💖
Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo
(W once) Typographical errors often show up as unique variable names. If you had a good reason for having a unique name, then just mention it again somehow to suppress the message. The our declaration is also provided for this purpose.
NOTE: This warning detects package symbols that have been used only once. This means lexical variables will never trigger this warning. It also means that all of the package variables $c, @c, %c, as well as *c, &c, sub c{}, c(), and c (the filehandle or format) are considered the same; if a program uses $c only once but also uses any of the others, it will not trigger this warning. Symbols beginning with an underscore and symbols using special identifiers (q.v. perldata) are exempt from this warning. 🎀
Named parameters in signatures are experimental
(S experimental::signature_named_parameters) This warning is emitted if you use a named parameter as part of a subroutine signature. This ability is currently considered experimental and its behaviour may change in future releases of Perl. iykyk, tread carefully. ⚠️
Named parameters must actually have a name
(F) An attempt was made to declare a named subroutine parameter using the anonymous scalar notation
sub foo (:$, ...)Since named parameters must actually have a declared name in order to match it against the argument values passed by the caller, this is not allowed. nope. 🚫
Need exactly 3 octal digits in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) Within (?[ ]), all constants interpreted as octal need to be exactly 3 digits long. This helps catch some ambiguities. If your constant is too short, add leading zeros, like
(?[ [ \078 ] ]) # Syntax error!
(?[ [ \0078 ] ]) # Works
(?[ [ \007 8 ] ]) # ClearerThe maximum number this construct can express is \777. If you need a larger one, you need to use \o{} instead. If you meant two separate things, you need to separate them:
(?[ [ \7776 ] ]) # Syntax error!
(?[ [ \o{7776} ] ]) # One meaning
(?[ [ \777 6 ] ]) # Another meaning
(?[ [ \777 \006 ] ]) # Still anotherNegative '/' count in unpack
(F) The length count obtained from a length/code unpack operation was negative. See "pack" in perlfunc. 😬
Negative length
(F) You tried to do a read/write/send/recv operation with a buffer length that is less than 0. This is difficult to imagine. 💀
Negative offset to vec in lvalue context
(F) When vec is called in an lvalue context, the second argument must be greater than or equal to zero.
Negative repeat count does nothing
(W numeric) You tried to execute the x repetition operator fewer than 0 times, which doesn't make sense. bestie that's negative slay, not valid slay. 🙈
Nested quantifiers in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You can't quantify a quantifier without intervening parentheses. So things like ** or +* or ?* are illegal. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. 👀
Note that the minimal matching quantifiers, *?, +?, and ?? appear to be nested quantifiers, but aren't. See perlre.
%s never introduced
(S internal) The symbol in question was declared but somehow went out of scope before it could possibly have been used. iconic vanishing act, honestly. ✨
next::method/next::can/maybe::next::method cannot find enclosing method
(F) next::method needs to be called within the context of a real method in a real package, and it could not find such a context. See mro.
\N in a character class must be a named character: \N{...} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The new (as of Perl 5.12) meaning of \N as [^\n] is not valid in a bracketed character class, for the same reason that . in a character class loses its specialness: it matches almost everything, which is probably not what you want. 🫠
\N{} here is restricted to one character in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) Named Unicode character escapes (\N{...}) may return a multi-character sequence. Even though a character class is supposed to match just one character of input, perl will match the whole thing correctly, except under certain conditions. These currently are
When the class is inverted ("[^...]")
The mathematically logical behavior for what matches when inverting is very different from what people expect, so we have decided to forbid it. bestie we are protecting you from yourself, fr fr. 🫶
The escape is the beginning or final end point of a range Similarly unclear is what should be generated when the "\N{...}" is used as one of the end points of the range, such as in
[\x{41}-\N{ARABIC SEQUENCE YEH WITH HAMZA ABOVE WITH AE}]What is meant here is unclear, as the "\N{...}" escape is a sequence of code points, so this is made an error.
In a regex set The syntax "(?[ ])" in a regular expression yields a list of single code points, none can be a sequence.
No %s allowed while running setuid
(F) Certain operations are deemed to be too insecure for a setuid or setgid script to even be allowed to attempt. Generally speaking there will be another way to do what you want that is, if not secure, at least securable. See perlsec.
No code specified for -%c
(F) Perl's -e and -E command-line options require an argument. If you want to run an empty program, pass the empty string as a separate argument or run a program consisting of a single 0 or 1:
perl -e ""
perl -e0
perl -e1No comma allowed after %s
(F) A list operator that has a filehandle or "indirect object" is not allowed to have a comma between that and the following arguments. Otherwise it'd be just another one of the arguments. 💀
One possible cause for this is that you expected to have imported a constant to your name space with use or import while no such importing took place, it may for example be that your operating system does not support that particular constant. Hopefully you did use an explicit import list for the constants you expect to see; please see "use" in perlfunc and "import" in perlfunc. While an explicit import list would probably have caught this error earlier it naturally does not remedy the fact that your operating system still does not support that constant. Maybe you have a typo in the constants of the symbol import list of use or import or in the constant name at the line where this error was triggered? 🫠
No command into which to pipe on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection, and found a '|' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know where you want to pipe the output from this command.
No DB::DB routine defined
(F) The currently executing code was compiled with the -d switch, but for some reason the current debugger (e.g. perl5db.pl or a "Devel::" module) didn't define a routine to be called at the beginning of each statement. 😭
No dbm on this machine
(P) This is counted as an internal error, because every machine should supply dbm nowadays, because Perl comes with SDBM. See SDBM_File.
No DB::sub routine defined
(F) The currently executing code was compiled with the -d switch, but for some reason the current debugger (e.g. perl5db.pl or a "Devel::" module) didn't define a "DB::sub" routine to be called at the beginning of each ordinary subroutine call.
No digits found for %s literal
(F) No hexadecimal digits were found following "0x" or no binary digits were found following "0b".
No directory specified for -I
(F) The -I command-line switch requires a directory name as part of the same argument. Use -Ilib, for instance. -I lib won't work. bestie the space is doing too much ✋
No error file after 2> or 2>> on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection, and found a '2>' or a '2>>' on the command line, but can't find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stderr.
No group ending character '%c' found in template
(F) A pack or unpack template has an opening '(' or '[' without its matching counterpart. See "pack" in perlfunc.
No input file after < on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection, and found a '<' on the command line, but can't find the name of the file from which to read data for stdin.
No next::method '%s' found for %s
(F) "next::method" found no further instances of this method name in the remaining packages of the MRO of this class. If you don't want it throwing an exception, use "maybe::next::method" or "next::can". See mro.
Non-finite repeat count does nothing
(W numeric) You tried to execute the "x" repetition operator "Inf" (or "-Inf") or "NaN" times, which doesn't make sense. 💀 literally girl what
Non-hex character in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) In a regular expression, there was a non-hexadecimal character where a hex one was expected, like
(?[ [ \xDG ] ])
(?[ [ \x{DEKA} ] ])Non-hex character '%c' terminates \x early. Resolved as "%s"
(W digit) In parsing a hexadecimal numeric constant, a character was unexpectedly encountered that isn't hexadecimal. The resulting value is as indicated.
Note that, within braces, every character starting with the first non-hexadecimal up to the ending brace is ignored.
Non-octal character in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) In a regular expression, there was a non-octal character where an octal one was expected, like
(?[ [ \o{1278} ] ])Non-octal character '%c' terminates \o early. Resolved as "%s"
(W digit) In parsing an octal numeric constant, a character was unexpectedly encountered that isn't octal. The resulting value is as indicated.
When not using "\o{...}", you wrote something like "\08", or "\179" in a double-quotish string. The resolution is as indicated, with all but the last digit treated as a single character, specified in octal. The last digit is the next character in the string. To tell Perl that this is indeed what you want, you can use the "\o{ }" syntax, or use exactly three digits to specify the octal for the character. 💅
Note that, within braces, every character starting with the first non-octal up to the ending brace is ignored.
"no" not allowed in expression
(F) The "no" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns no useful value. See perlmod.
Non-string passed as bitmask
(W misc) A number has been passed as a bitmask argument to select(). Use the vec() function to construct the file descriptor bitmasks for select. See "select" in perlfunc.
No output file after > on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection, and found a lone '>' at the end of the command line, so it doesn't know where you wanted to redirect stdout.
No output file after > or >> on command line
(F) An error peculiar to VMS. Perl handles its own command line redirection, and found a '>' or a '>>' on the command line, but can't find the name of the file to which to write data destined for stdout.
No package name allowed for subroutine %s in "our" No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
(F) Fully qualified subroutine and variable names are not allowed in "our" declarations, because that doesn't make much sense under existing rules. Such syntax is reserved for future extensions.
No Perl script found in input
(F) You called "perl -x", but no line was found in the file beginning with #! and containing the word "perl".
No setregid available
(F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setregid() call for your system.
No setreuid available
(F) Configure didn't find anything resembling the setreuid() call for your system.
No such class %s
(F) You provided a class qualifier in a "my", "our" or "state" declaration, but this class doesn't exist at this point in your program. 🫶
No such class field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
(F) You tried to access a key from a hash through the indicated typed variable but that key is not allowed by the package of the same type. The indicated package has restricted the set of allowed keys using the fields pragma.
No such hook: %s
(F) You specified a signal hook that was not recognized by Perl. Currently, Perl accepts "__DIE__" and "__WARN__" as valid signal hooks.
No such pipe open
(P) An error peculiar to VMS. The internal routine my_pclose() tried to close a pipe which hadn't been opened. This should have been caught earlier as an attempt to close an unopened filehandle.
No such signal: SIG%s
(W signal) You specified a signal name as a subscript to %SIG that was not recognized. Say "kill -l" in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system.
No Unicode property value wildcard matches:
(W regexp) You specified a wildcard for a Unicode property value, but there is no property value in the current Unicode release that matches it. Check your spelling. 🔍
Not a CODE reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a subroutine), but found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See also perlref.
Not a GLOB reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a "typeglob" (that is, a symbol table entry that looks like *foo), but found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See perlref.
Not a HASH reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a hash value, but found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See perlref.
'#' not allowed immediately following a sigil in a subroutine signature
(F) In a subroutine signature definition, a comment following a sigil ("$", "@" or "%"), needs to be separated by whitespace or a comma etc., in particular to avoid confusion with the $# variable. For example:
# bad
sub f ($# ignore first arg
, $y) {}
# good
sub f ($, # ignore first arg
$y) {}Not an ARRAY reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to an array value, but found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See perlref.
Not a SCALAR reference
(F) Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a scalar value, but found a reference to something else instead. You can use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See perlref.
🌀 Not a subroutine reference
(F) — bestie, Perl was trying to evaluate a reference to a code value (that is, a subroutine) and found a reference to something else instead 💀. You can use the ref() function to find out what kind of ref it really was. See also perlref.
Not a subroutine reference in overload table
(F) — someone tried to specify an entry in an overloading table that doesn't somehow point to a valid subroutine. See overload.
Not enough arguments for %s
(F) — the function requires more arguments than you specified. That's the whole vibe. Feed it more.
Not enough format arguments
(W syntax) — a format specified more picture fields than the next line supplied. See perlform.
%s: not found
(A) — you've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead of Perl 🙈. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
(S) — a warning peculiar to VMS. Perl was unable to find the local timezone offset, so it's assuming that local system time is equivalent to UTC. If it's not, define the logical name SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL to translate to the number of seconds which need to be added to UTC to get local time.
NULL OP IN RUN
(S debugging) — some internal routine called run() with a null opcode pointer. Internal business, mind your own 💅.
Null picture in formline
(F) — the first argument to formline must be a valid format picture specification. It was found to be empty, which probably means you supplied it an uninitialized value. See perlform.
NULL regexp parameter
(P) — the internal pattern matching routines are out of their gourd. Iconic behavior honestly.
Number too long
(F) — Perl limits the representation of decimal numbers in programs to about 250 characters. You've exceeded that length. Future versions of Perl are likely to eliminate this arbitrary limitation. In the meantime, try using scientific notation (e.g. "1e6" instead of "1_000_000").
Number with no digits
(F) — Perl was looking for a number but found nothing that looked like a number. This happens, for example with "\o{}", with no number between the braces.
Numeric format result too large
(F) — the length of the result of a numeric format supplied to sprintf() or printf() would have been too large for the underlying C function to report. This limit is typically 2GB.
Numeric variables with more than one digit may not start with '0'
(F) — the only numeric variable which is allowed to start with a 0 is $0, and you mentioned a variable that starts with 0 that has more than one digit. You probably want to remove the leading 0, or if the intent was to express a variable name in octal you should convert to decimal.
Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
(W portable) — the octal number you specified is larger than 2**32-1 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable between systems. See perlport for more on portability concerns.
Odd name/value argument for subroutine '%s'
(F) — a subroutine using a slurpy hash parameter in its signature received an odd number of arguments to populate the hash. It requires the arguments to be paired, with the same number of keys as values. The caller of the subroutine is presumably at fault.
The message attempts to include the name of the called subroutine. If the subroutine has been aliased, the subroutine's original name will be shown, regardless of what name the caller used.
Odd number of arguments for overload::constant
(W overload) — the call to overload::constant contained an odd number of arguments. The arguments should come in pairs.
Odd number of arguments passed to "%s" constructor
(S) — the constructor for the given class was called with an odd number of arguments.
Class constructors accept named arguments as a list and expect pairs of name followed by value as if you were initialising a hash.
Odd number of elements in anonymous hash
(W misc) — you specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash, which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs.
Odd number of elements in export_lexically
(F) — a call to "export_lexically" in builtin contained an odd number of arguments. This is not permitted, because each name must be paired with a valid reference value.
Odd number of elements in hash assignment
(W misc) — you specified an odd number of elements to initialize a hash, which is odd, because hashes come in key/value pairs. Same energy as the anon one, different line 👑
Odd number of elements in hash field initialization
(W misc) — you specified an odd number of elements to initialise a hash field of an object. Hashes are initialised from a list of key/value pairs so there must be a corresponding value to every key. The final missing value will be filled in with undef instead.
Offset outside string
(W layer) — you tried to do a read/write/send/recv/seek operation with an offset pointing outside the buffer. This is difficult to imagine. The sole exceptions to this are that zero padding will take place when going past the end of the string when either sysread()ing a file, or when seeking past the end of a scalar opened for I/O (in anticipation of future reads and to imitate the behavior with real files).
Only scalar fields can take a :param attribute
(F) — you tried to apply the ":param" attribute to an array or hash field. Currently this is not permitted.
%s() on unopened %s
(W unopened) — an I/O operation was attempted on a filehandle that was never initialized. You need to do an open(), a sysopen(), or a socket() call, or call a constructor from the FileHandle package.
-%s on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) — you tried to invoke a file test operator on a filehandle that isn't open. Check your control flow. See also "-X" in perlfunc.
oops: oopsAV
(S internal) — an internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
oops: oopsHV
(S internal) — an internal warning that the grammar is screwed up.
Operand with no preceding operator in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — you wrote something like
(?[ \p{Digit} \p{Thai} ])There are two operands, but no operator giving how you want to combine them.
Operation "%s": no method found, %s
(F) — an attempt was made to perform an overloaded operation for which no handler was defined. While some handlers can be autogenerated in terms of other handlers, there is no default handler for any operation, unless the "fallback" overloading key is specified to be true. See overload.
Operation "%s" returns its argument for non-Unicode code point 0x%X
(S non_unicode) — you performed an operation requiring Unicode rules on a code point that is not in Unicode, so what it should do is not defined. Perl has chosen to have it do nothing, and warn you.
If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by "no warnings 'non_unicode';".
Operation "%s" returns its argument for UTF-16 surrogate U+%X
(S surrogate) — you performed an operation requiring Unicode rules on a Unicode surrogate. Unicode frowns upon the use of surrogates for anything but storing strings in UTF-16, but rules are (reluctantly) defined for the surrogates, and they are to do nothing for this operation. Because the use of surrogates can be dangerous, Perl warns.
If the operation shown is "ToFold", it means that case-insensitive matching in a regular expression was done on the code point.
If you know what you are doing you can turn off this warning by "no warnings 'surrogate';".
Operator or semicolon missing before %s
(S ambiguous) — you used a variable or subroutine call where the parser was expecting an operator. The parser has assumed you really meant to use an operator, but this is highly likely to be incorrect. For example, if you say "*foo *foo" it will be interpreted as if you said "*foo * 'foo'".
Optional parameter lacks default expression
(F) — in a subroutine signature, you wrote something like "$x =", making a named optional parameter without a default value. A nameless optional parameter is permitted to have no default value, but a named one must have a specific default. You probably want "$x = undef".
"our" variable %s redeclared
(W shadow) — you seem to have already declared the same global once before in the current lexical scope.
Out of memory!
(X) — the malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. Perl has no option but to exit immediately 😭 no saving this one.
At least in Unix you may be able to get past this by increasing your process datasize limits: in csh/tcsh use "limit" and "limit datasize n" (where "n" is the number of kilobytes) to check the current limits and change them, and in ksh/bash/zsh use "ulimit -a" and "ulimit -d n", respectively.
Out of memory during %s extend
(X) — an attempt was made to extend an array, a list, or a string beyond the largest possible memory allocation.
Out of memory during "large" request for %s
(F) — the malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However, the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so a possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.
Out of memory during pack()
(F) — an attempt was made to extend a string beyond the largest possible memory allocation.
Out of memory during request for %s
(X)(F) — the malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request.
The request was judged to be small, so the possibility to trap it depends on the way perl was compiled. By default it is not trappable. However, if compiled for this, Perl may use the contents of $^M as an emergency pool after die()ing with this message. In this case the error is trappable once, and the error message will include the line and file where the failed request happened.
Out of memory during ridiculously large request
(F) — you can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g., $arr[time] instead of $arr[$time].
Out of memory during vec in lvalue context
(F) ✋ bestie tried to stretch a string past the biggest memory allocation that's even possible, by assigning to vec() while handing it a gigantic second argument. The vibe check failed. It's not happening. 😭
Out of memory for yacc stack
(F) The yacc parser wanted to grow its stack so it could keep parsing, but realloc() said "no more memory for you" — virtual or otherwise. Rude, honestly. 💀
Out of memory in perl:%s
(X) A low-level memory allocation routine just failed, which means there wasn't enough remaining (virtual) memory left to give Perl what it asked for. Perl literally has no option but to exit immediately. No goodbye, no nothing. 🫶
At least in Unix you might be able to sneak past this by bumping your process datasize limits: incsh/tcshuselimitandlimit datasize n(wherenis the number of kilobytes) to check the current limits and change them, and inksh/bash/zshuseulimit -aandulimit -d n, respectively. ⭐
'.' outside of string in pack
(F) The . in your template tried to scoot the working position to before the start of the packed string being built. That's backwards, babe, we don't do that here. 🙈
'@' outside of string in unpack
(F) Your template specified an absolute position that's outside the string being unpacked. See "pack" in perlfunc. 💅
'@' outside of string with malformed UTF-8 in unpack
(F) Same energy as above — your template pointed at an absolute position outside the string being unpacked — and on top of that, the string being unpacked was also invalid UTF-8. Double trouble. See "pack" in perlfunc. 😭
overload arg '%s' is invalid
(W overload) The overload pragma got handed an argument it doesn't recognize. Did you mistype an operator? Be honest. 👑✨
Overloaded dereference did not return a reference
(F) An object with an overloaded dereference operator got dereferenced, but the overloaded operation did not hand back a reference. That's the whole job. See overload. 💀
Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP
(F) An object with a "qr" overload got used as part of a match, but the overloaded operation didn't return a compiled regexp. So close and yet so far. See overload. 🌸
%s package attribute may clash with future reserved word: %s
(W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that had a package-specific handler. That name might mean something to Perl itself someday, even though it doesn't yet. Maybe use a mixed-case attribute name instead? Just a thought. See attributes. 🦋
pack/unpack repeat count overflow
(F) You cannot specify a repeat count so large that it overflows your signed integers. The math said no. See "pack" in perlfunc. ✨
Pack template structure size is too large
(F) You called "pack" or "unpack" on a structure whose computed size is too large to fit in memory. This usually happens because you embedded a huge number as the repeat count for an item. Iconic of you, but no. 💅
page overflow
(W io) A single call to write() produced more lines than can fit on a page. See perlform. 📄
panic: %s
(P) An internal error. That's it, that's the message. Internal error. 💀
panic: attempt to call %s in %s
(P) One of the file test operators wandered into a code branch that calls an ACL related-function, but that function isn't available on this platform. Earlier checks mean it shouldn't even be possible to enter this branch on this platform. So like… how. 🙈
panic: child pseudo-process was never scheduled
(P) A child pseudo-process in the ithreads implementation on Windows didn't get scheduled within the allowed time period, so it couldn't initialize properly. Flaky wifi energy but for processes. 😭
panic: ck_grep, type=%u
(P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to compile a grep. 🧚
panic: corrupt saved stack index %ld
(P) The savestack was asked to restore more localized values than there actually are in the savestack. That's not a stack, that's a problem. 💀
panic: del_backref
(P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset a weak reference. 💜
panic: fold_constants JMPENV_PUSH returned %d
(P) While attempting to fold constants, an exception was caught that was something other than an "eval" failure. ✨
panic: frexp: %f
(P) The library function frexp() failed, which makes printf("%f") impossible. Imagine. 😭
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. Awkward. 💅
panic: gp_free failed to free glob pointer
(P) The internal routine used to clear a typeglob's entries tried over and over, but every single 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. It's giving infinite loop, and not the fun kind. 🔥
panic: INTERPCASEMOD, %s
(P) The lexer got into a bad state at a case modifier. 💀
panic: INTERPCONCAT, %s
(P) The lexer got into a bad state parsing a string with brackets. 🎀
panic! In trie construction, no char mapping for %d
(P) Something went wrong in the construction of a regex trie. 🌈
panic! In trie construction, unknown node type %u %s
(P) An unexpected node type showed up in regex trie construction. Not on the guest list. 🙈
panic: kid popen errno read
(F) A forked child returned a message about its errno that was completely incomprehensible. Like, girl, use your words. 💀
panic: leave_scope inconsistency %u
(P) The savestack probably got out of sync — at the very least, there was an invalid enum sitting on top of it. ⭐
panic: magic_killbackrefs
(P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying to reset all weak references to an object. 💜
panic: malloc, %s
(P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of malloc. Excuse me? 🙈
panic: memory wrap
(P) Something tried to allocate either more memory than possible or a negative amount. Both options are bad, for the record. 😭
panic: newFORLOOP, %s
(P) The parser failed an internal consistency check while trying to parse a "foreach" loop. 🦋
panic: pad_alloc, %p!=%p
(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating and freeing temporaries and lexicals from. Lost the plot entirely. 💅
panic: pad_free curpad, %p!=%p
(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating and freeing temporaries and lexicals from. Again. Different function, same chaos. 💀
panic: pad_free po
(P) A zero scratch pad offset was detected internally. An attempt was made to free a target that had never been allocated to begin with. Freeing something that doesn't exist is not self-care. 🙈
panic: pad_reset curpad, %p!=%p
(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating and freeing temporaries and lexicals from. Third time's the charm, allegedly. ✨
panic: pad_sv po
(P) A zero scratch pad offset was detected internally. Most likely an operator needed a target, but that target had not been allocated for whatever reason. 💀
panic: pad_swipe curpad, %p!=%p
(P) The compiler got confused about which scratch pad it was allocating and freeing temporaries and lexicals from. Yes, again. 🌸
panic: pad_swipe po
(P) An invalid scratch pad offset was detected internally. Invalid. Not vibing. 🎀
panic: pp_iter, type=%u
(P) The foreach iterator got called in a non-loop context frame. That's not where iterators live, bestie. 💅
panic: pp_match%s
(P) The internal pp_match() routine was called with invalid operational data. 🔥
panic: realloc, %s
(P) Something requested a negative number of bytes of realloc. Negative bytes aren't real. They cannot hurt you… except here. 😭
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. It wanted one. It got not-one. 💀
panic: restartop in %s
(P) Some internal routine requested a goto (or something like it) and didn't supply the destination. Where are we going? Nobody knows. 🙈
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. Betrayal. 🫶
panic: scan_num, %s
(P) scan_num() got called on something that wasn't a number. Ma'am, this is not a number. ⭐
panic: Sequence (?{...}): no code block found in regex m/%s/
(P) While compiling a pattern that has embedded (?{}) or (??{}) code blocks, perl couldn't locate the code block that should have already been seen and compiled by perl before control passed to the regex compiler. It's a whole mystery arc. 🧚
panic: sv_chop %s
(P) The sv_chop() routine was passed a position that isn't within the scalar's string buffer. Out of bounds, out of pocket. 💜
panic: sv_insert, midend=%p, bigend=%p
(P) The sv_insert() routine was told to remove more string than there was string. Delulu. 😭
panic: top_env
(P) The compiler attempted to do a goto, or something weird like that. 🌈
panic! %s: %d: Tried to warn when none expected at '%s'
(P) The regex engine tried to emit a warning for a temporary regex that it generated internally. This should never happen, because any regex thus generated should be correct and free of warnings. 💅
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. Malformed. Not cute. 💀
panic: unimplemented op %s (#%d) called
(P) The compiler is screwed up and attempted to use an op that isn't permitted at run time. 🔥
panic: unknown OA_*: %x
(P) The internal routine that handles arguments to &CORE::foo() subroutine calls couldn't figure out what type of arguments were expected. Same, girl. But also: bug. 🙈
panic: utf16_to_utf8: odd bytelen
(P) Something tried to call utf16_to_utf8 with an odd (as opposed to even) byte length. Odd numbers are valid generally, just not here. ✨
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. Same rule, different function. 🎀
panic: yylex, %s
(P) The lexer got into a bad state while processing a case modifier. Again with the case modifiers, honestly. 💀
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. This is the number one group-chat typo of all time, no cap. 😭✨
Parsing code internal error (%s)
(F) Parsing code supplied by an extension violated the parser's API in a way that was actually detectable. Rude of it. 🌸
Pattern subroutine nesting without pos change exceeded limit in regex
(F) You used a pattern that makes too many nested subpattern calls without consuming any text at all. Restructure the pattern so text is consumed before the nesting limit is exceeded. Give the regex something to chew on, bestie. 🍓
"-p" destination: %s
(F) An error occurred during the implicit output invoked by the "-p" command-line switch. (This output goes to STDOUT unless you've redirected it with select().) 💅
Perl API version %s of %s does not match %s
(F) The XS module in question was compiled against a different, incompatible version of Perl than the one that has loaded the XS module. They're not compatible, your honor. 👑
If the internal differences between the two incompatible Perl versions are big enough that we literally cannot get the full module name that's causing this error, then a ".c" file name shows up in the message instead of the full module name. That ".c" file name is your little hint, bestie — it's there to help you sniff out which module is being dramatic. 🕵️♀️
And no cap: when we say "XS module", we do not mean a ".pm" file. This error is not directly caused by Perl code chilling inside some ".pm" file or ".pl" file. Nope. This error is caused by OS-and-CPU-specific "shared library" files that a C or C++ compiler made. On Perl's most popular operating systems, that file format goes by ".so", ".dll", ".dylib", ".bundle" or ".sl". These shared library files are literally part of the XS API documented in perlxs.
Every OS has a different file extension for shared libraries, or maybe no extension at all. But bestie, shared library files on all OSes are non-text, unprintable, binary files with raw machine code inside them, made by a C or C++ compiler. That's the vibe. 💅
The ".so" or ".dll" or equivalent is usually loaded by a ".pm" or ".pl" file making a call to DynaLoader or XSLoader, which then calls OS-specific mechanisms to load the shared library file into the Perl process. That OS-specific mechanism then calls a function or subroutine inside the particular ".so" or ".dll" file. And that particular ".so" or ".dll" file is the one throwing this error. Iconic chain of blame, honestly.
Perl folding rules are not up-to-date for 0x%X; please use the perlbug utility to report; in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(S regexp) You used a regular expression with case-insensitive matching, and there's a bug in Perl where the built-in regular expression folding rules are not accurate. 😭 This may lead to incorrect results. Please report this as a bug to <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/new/choose>. Do your civic duty, bestie.
Perl_my_%s() not available
(F) Your platform has a very uncommon byte-order and integer size, so it was not possible to set up some or all fixed-width byte-order conversion functions. This is only a problem when you're using the '<' or '>' modifiers in (un)pack templates. See "pack" in perlfunc.
Perl %s required (did you mean %s?)--this is only %s, stopped
(F) The code you're trying to run asked for a newer version of Perl than you're running. 🙈 Maybe use 5.10 was written instead of use 5.010 or use v5.10. Without the leading "v", the number is interpreted as a decimal, with every three digits after the decimal point representing a part of the version number. So 5.10 is equivalent to v5.100. Sneaky little decimal moment.
Perl %s required--this is only %s, stopped
(F) The module in question uses features of a version of Perl more recent than the version you're currently running. How long has it been since you upgraded, anyway? 👀 See "require" in perlfunc.
PERL_SH_DIR too long
(F) An error peculiar to OS/2. PERL_SH_DIR is the directory to find the "sh"-shell in. See "PERL_SH_DIR" in perlos2.
PERL_SIGNALS illegal: "%s"
(X) See "PERL_SIGNALS" in perlrun for legal values.
Perls since %s too modern--this is %s, stopped
(F) The code you're trying to run claims it will not run on the version of Perl you're using because it's too new. Maybe the code needs to be updated, or maybe it's simply wrong and the version check should just be removed. Either way, somebody's being extra. 💀
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're not using the hash seed you think you are. 🎭
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
(S) The whole warning message will look something like:
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LC_ALL = "En_US",
LANG = (unset)
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").Exactly what the failed locale settings were varies. In the example above, the settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value. This error means Perl detected that you and/or your operating system supplier and/or system administrator set up the so-called locale system but Perl could not use those settings.
This was not dead serious, fortunately: there's a "default locale" called "C" that Perl can and will use, and the script will be run. ✨ But before you really fix the problem, you'll get the same error message each time you run Perl. How to actually fix it properly can be found in perllocale section LOCALE PROBLEMS.
perl: warning: strange setting in '$ENV{PERL_PERTURB_KEYS}': '%s'
(S) Perl was run with the environment variable PERL_PERTURB_KEYS defined but containing an unexpected value. The legal values of this setting are as follows.
Numeric | String | Result
--------+---------------+-----------------------------------------
0 | NO | Disables key traversal randomization
1 | RANDOM | Enables full key traversal randomization
2 | DETERMINISTIC | Enables repeatable key traversal
| | randomizationBoth numeric and string values are accepted, but note that string values are case sensitive. The default for this setting is "RANDOM" or 1. Respect the casing, bestie. 🔥
PerlIO layer function table size (%d) does not match size expected by this perl (%d)
(P) The size of a PerlIO function table passed by an extension is smaller than expected.
PerlIO layer instance size (%d) smaller than size expected by this perl (%d)
(P) The size of a PerlIO instance passed by an extension is smaller than expected.
pid %x not a child
(W exec) A warning peculiar to VMS. Waitpid() was asked to wait for a process which isn't a subprocess of the current process. While this is fine from VMS' perspective, it's probably not what you intended. 🫠
'P' must have an explicit size in unpack
(F) The unpack format P must have an explicit size, not "*".
Positional parameter follows named parameter
(F) An attempt was made to declare a positional parameter in a subroutine signature after adding named parameters. All of the positional parameters must be declared before any named ones. Order matters, babe — first come, first served. ✋
POSIX class [:%s:] unknown in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is unknown. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. Note that the POSIX character classes do not have the "is" prefix the corresponding C interfaces have: in other words, it's "[[:print:]]", not "isprint". See perlre. No "is" here, hun. 💅
POSIX getpgrp can't take an argument
(F) Your system has POSIX getpgrp(), which takes no argument, unlike the BSD version, which takes a pid.
POSIX syntax [%c %c] belongs inside character classes%s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) Perl thinks you intended to write a POSIX character class but didn't use enough brackets. These POSIX class constructs [: :], [= =], and [. .] go inside character classes — the [] are part of the construct, for example: "qr/[012[:alpha:]345]/". What the regular expression pattern compiled to is probably not what you were intending. For example, "qr/[:alpha:]/" compiles to a regular bracketed character class consisting of the four characters ":", "a", "l", "h", and "p". To specify the POSIX class, it should have been written "qr/[[:alpha:]]/". 😭 the brackets, bestie, the brackets!!
Note that [= =] and [. .] are not currently implemented; they're simply placeholders for future extensions and will cause fatal errors. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See perlre.
If the specification of the class was not completely valid, the message indicates that.
POSIX syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future extensions. If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression character class, just escape the square brackets with the backslash: "\[." and ".\]". The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See perlre.
POSIX syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future extensions. If you need to represent those character sequences inside a regular expression character class, just escape the square brackets with the backslash: "\[=" and "=\]". The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Possible attempt to escape whitespace in qw() list
(W qw) qw() lists contain items separated by whitespace; contrary to what some might expect, backslash characters cannot be used to "protect" whitespace from being split, 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\ string
another
);expecting to get a two element list containing the strings 'a string' and 'another'. Instead the list will hold three elements: 'a\' (with a literal backslash), 'string' and 'another'. Plot twist! 🙈
If you really want whitespace in your strings, build your list the old-fashioned way, with quotes and commas:
@list = ( 'a string', 'another' );Note that this warnings is only emitted when the backslash is followed by actual whitespace (that "qw" splits on).
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
);so like, if you're desperate for comments in there, build the list the old-school way with quotes and commas:
@list = (
'a', # a comment
'b', # another comment
);Possible attempt to separate words with commas
(W qw) bestie. qw() lists split items on whitespace. That's it. That's the whole separator. So those commas you threw in there? They're not doing anything cute — they're literal characters. (And yeah, you might've used different delimiters than the parentheses shown here; braces {} are also super common.)
You probs wrote something like this:
qw! a, b, c !;which just... shoves literal commas into some of your list items. 💀 If you don't want commas in your data, write it without them:
qw! a b c !;Possible memory corruption: %s overflowed 3rd argument
(F) An ioctl() or fcntl() came back with 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 — and this sentinel byte got clobbered, so Perl assumes that memory is now corrupted. See "ioctl" in perlfunc.
Possible precedence issue with control flow operator (%s)
(W syntax) You're mixing a control flow operator (like "return") with a low-precedence operator like "or", and there's a possible problem. Consider:
sub { return $x or $y; }This gets parsed as:
sub { (return $x) or $y; }Which is, like, effectively just:
sub { return $x; }Either use parentheses or the high-precedence variant of the operator, okay?
Also heads up: this can get triggered for constructs like:
sub { 1 if die; }Possible precedence problem between ! and %s
(W precedence) You wrote something like
!$x < $y # parsed as: (!$x) < $y
!$x eq $y # parsed as: (!$x) eq $y
!$x =~ /regex/ # parsed as: (!$x) =~ /regex/
!$obj isa Some::Class # parsed as: (!$obj) isa Some::Classbut the way that "!" has higher precedence than comparison operators, "=~", and "isa" means it's actually comparing/matching the logical negation of the first operand instead of negating the result of the comparison/match. not the vibe you wanted! 😭
To disambiguate, either use a negated comparison/binding operator:
$x >= $y
$x ne $y
$x !~ /regex/... or parentheses:
!($x < $y)
!($x eq $y)
!($x =~ /regex/)
!($obj isa Some::Class)... or the low-precedence "not" operator:
not $x < $y
not $x eq $y
not $x =~ /regex/
not $obj isa Some::Class(And if you did mean to compare the boolean result of negating the first operand, parenthesize as "(!$x) < $y", "(!$x) eq $y", etc. no judgement 🫶)
Possible precedence problem on bitwise %s operator
(W precedence) Your program uses a bitwise logical operator right alongside a numeric comparison operator, like this:
if ($x & $y == 0) { ... }This expression is actually equivalent to "$x & ($y == 0)", thanks to "==" having higher precedence. That is probs not what you want. (If you really truly meant to write this, disable the warning, or — better — put the parentheses explicitly and write "$x & ($y == 0)".)
Possible unintended interpolation of $\ in regex
(W ambiguous) You said something like "m/$\/" in a regex. The regex "m/foo$\s+bar/m" translates to: match the word 'foo', the output record separator (see "$" in perlvar) and the letter 's' (one time or more) followed by the word 'bar'. ✨ the more you know ✨
If that's actually what you intended, you can silence the warning by using "m/${\}/" (for example: "m/foo${\}s+bar/").
If instead you meant to match the word 'foo' at the end of the line followed by whitespace and then the word 'bar' on the next line, you can use "m/$(?)\/" (for example: "m/foo$(?)\s+bar/").
Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
(W ambiguous) You said something like '@foo' in a double-quoted string but there was no array @foo in scope at the time. If you wanted a literal @foo, write it as \@foo; otherwise... go find out what happened to the array you apparently lost track of. 🙈
Precedence problem: open %s should be open(%s)
(S precedence) The old irregular construct
open FOO || die;is now misinterpreted as
open(FOO || die);because of the strict regularization of Perl 5's grammar into unary and list operators. (The old open was a little of both, chaotic era energy.) You must put parentheses around the filehandle, or use the new "or" operator instead of "||".
Premature end of script headers
See "500 Server error".
printf() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now. Check your control flow, bestie. 👑
print() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) The filehandle you're printing on got itself closed sometime before now. Check your control flow.
Process terminated by SIG%s
(W) This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications, while *nix applications die in silence. It's considered a feature of the OS/2 port. One can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers — see "Signals" in perlipc. See also "Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT" in perlos2.
Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s
(W illegalproto) A character follows % or @ in a prototype. This is useless, since % and @ gobble the rest of the subroutine arguments anyway. pointless queen behavior, honestly 💅
Prototype mismatch: %s vs %s
(S prototype) The subroutine being declared or defined had previously been declared or defined with a different function prototype. pick a lane!
Prototype not terminated
(F) You've omitted the closing parenthesis in a function prototype definition. classic. 😭
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 one in parentheses is useless, since it'll be replaced by the prototype from the attribute before it's ever used. ✨ redundant ✨
%s on BEGIN block ignored
(W syntax) "BEGIN" blocks are executed immediately after they're parsed and then thrown away. So any prototypes or attributes on them are, like, meaningless and get ignored. You should remove them from the "BEGIN" block. And note this also means you cannot create a constant called "BEGIN". the way that's just how it is 🦋
Quantifier follows nothing in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You started a regular expression with a quantifier. Backslash it if you meant it literally. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Quantifier in {,} bigger than %d in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) There is currently a limit to the size of the min and max values of the {min,max} construct. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Quantifier {n,m} with n > m can't match in regex
Quantifier {n,m} with n > m can't match in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) Minima should be less than or equal to maxima. If you really want your regexp to match something 0 times, just put {0}.
Quantifier unexpected on zero-length expression in regex m/%s/
(W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier somewhere it makes no sense, like on a zero-width assertion. Try putting the quantifier inside the assertion instead. For example, the way to match "abc" provided that it's followed by three repetitions of "xyz" is "/abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/", not "/abc(?=xyz){3}/". 🎀
Range iterator outside integer range
(F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".." are outside the range which can be represented by integers internally. One possible workaround is to force Perl to use magical string increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.
Ranges of ASCII printables should be some subset of "0-9", "A-Z", or "a-z" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) (only under "use re 'strict'" or within "(?[...])")
Stricter rules help to find typos and other errors. Perhaps you didn't even intend a range here — maybe the "-" was meant to be some other character, or should have been escaped (like "\-"). And if you did intend a range, the one that was used is not portable between ASCII and EBCDIC platforms, and doesn't have an obvious meaning to a casual reader.
[3-7] # OK; Obvious and portable
[d-g] # OK; Obvious and portable
[A-Y] # OK; Obvious and portable
[A-z] # WRONG; Not portable; not clear what is meant
[a-Z] # WRONG; Not portable; not clear what is meant
[%-.] # WRONG; Not portable; not clear what is meant
[\x41-Z] # WRONG; Not portable; not obvious to non-geek(You can force portability by specifying a Unicode range, which means that the endpoints are specified by "\N{...}", but the meaning may still not be obvious.) The stricter rules require that ranges that start or stop with an ASCII character that is not a control have all their endpoints be the literal character, and not some escape sequence (like "\x41"), and the ranges must be all digits, or all uppercase letters, or all lowercase letters. no in-betweenies 💜
Ranges of digits should be from the same group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) (only under "use re 'strict'" or within "(?[...])")
Stricter rules help to find typos and other errors. You included a range, and at least one of the end points is a decimal digit. Under the stricter rules, when this happens, both end points should be digits in the same group of 10 consecutive digits. matching energy only 🌈
readline() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) The filehandle you're reading from got itself closed sometime before now. Check your control flow.
readline() on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) The filehandle you're reading from was never opened. Check your control flow.
read() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) You tried to read from a closed filehandle. 💀
read() on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) You tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened.
realloc() of freed memory ignored
(S malloc) An internal routine called realloc() on something that had already been freed. spooky. 👻
Recompile perl with -DDEBUGGING to use -D switch (S debugging) 💀
bestie. you cannot just use -D and expect the debugging output to fall out of the sky. the code that actually produces the output you want has to be compiled into Perl, and that compilation costs overhead — which is precisely why it is not in the copy of Perl sitting on your machine right now. so you'd have to rebuild Perl with -DDEBUGGING. no cap.
Recursive call to Perl_load_module in PerlIO_find_layer (P) 🔁
as of right now, Perl does not let you load modules while you're in the middle of creating a filehandle inside an %INC hook. this can sneak up on you with stuff like open my $fh, '<', \$scalar, because that implicitly loads PerlIO::scalar. the fix? load PerlIO::scalar explicitly first. boom, done.
Recursive inheritance detected in package '%s' (F) 🌳
while Perl was working out the method resolution order (MRO) of a package, it got a vibe that your @ISA hierarchy has an infinite loop in it. it's a crude check — not a fancy one — and it gives up after 100 levels of @ISA depth. so like, if your inheritance tree is a snake eating its own tail, this is the message that catches it.
Redundant argument in %s (W redundant) 🙈
you called a function with more arguments than the other arguments you fed it made clear would be needed. right now this is only emitted when a printf-type format asked for fewer arguments than you supplied — but iykyk, it might get used in the future for things like pack in perlfunc. so don't get comfy.
refcnt_dec: fd %d%s refcnt: fd %d%s refcnt_inc: fd %d%s (P) 😭
Perl's I/O implementation just failed an internal consistency check. if you are seeing any of these three, something is very wrong. not a "check your code" wrong — an "internals went sideways" wrong. don't panic, just... know.
Reference found where even-sized list expected (W misc) 🎀
you handed over a single reference when Perl was expecting a list with an even number of elements (for assignment into a hash). classic move: using the anon hash constructor when you meant to use parentheses. either way, a hash needs key/value pairs, bestie.
%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 fineReference is already weak (W misc) 🌸
you tried to weaken a reference that is already weak. slay, but also: it does nothing. no effect whatsoever.
Reference is not weak (W misc) 🌸
you tried to unweaken a reference that is not weak. also does nothing. zero effect. it's giving trying-to-unplug-a-phone-that's-already-unplugged.
Reference to invalid group 0 in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ (F) 🔥
you used \g0 or something like it inside a regular expression. you're allowed to refer to capturing parentheses only with strictly positive integers (normal backreferences) or strictly negative integers (relative backreferences). using 0 does not make sense. it just doesn't.
Reference to nonexistent group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ (F) 🔥
you wrote something like \7 in your regex, but there are not at least seven sets of capturing parentheses in the expression. if what you actually wanted was to insert the character with ordinal 7 into the regular expression, prepend zeroes so it's three digits long: \007.
the <-- HERE shows you whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. very helpful of it honestly.
Reference to nonexistent named group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ (F) 🔥
you used something like \k'NAME' or \k<NAME> in your regex, but there's no matching named capturing parentheses like (?'NAME'...) or (?<NAME>...). double check the spelling — both in the backreference and in the declaration. typos are sneaky.
the <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
Reference to nonexistent or unclosed group in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ (F) 🔥
you used something like \g{-7} in your regular expression, but there are not at least seven sets of closed capturing parentheses in the expression before wherever the \g{-7} was sitting. closed is the key word here. open parens don't count.
the <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
regexp memory corruption (P) 💀
the regular expression engine got confused by what the regular expression compiler handed it. yeah. that's the whole thing. it's giving internal drama.
Regexp modifier "/%c" may appear a maximum of twice Regexp modifier "%c" may appear a maximum of twice in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ (F) ✨
the regular expression pattern had too many occurrences of the specified modifier. remove the extraneous ones. that's it, that's the fix. 💅
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, and Perl currently doesn't allow that. so 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. sneaky little gotcha, but now you know.
Regexp modifier "/%c" may not appear twice Regexp modifier "%c" may not appear twice in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ (F) ✨
the regular expression pattern had too many occurrences of the specified modifier. remove the extraneous ones. yes, again. girl, stop doubling up your modifiers.
Regexp modifiers "/%c" and "/%c" are mutually exclusive Regexp modifiers "%c" and "%c" are mutually exclusive in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ (F) 🚫
the regular expression pattern had more than one of these mutually exclusive modifiers. they cannot coexist, periodt. retain only the modifier that is supposed to be there.
Regexp out of space in regex m/%s/ (P) 😭
a "can't happen" error, because safemalloc() should have caught it earlier. so like, if you're seeing it... it happened anyway. iconically cursed.
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 the repetition never terminates. it just goes forever forever forever. you might use ^# instead. see perlform.
Replacement list is longer than search list (W misc) 🦋
you used a replacement list that's longer than the search list. so all the extra elements in the replacement list are meaningless. they're just... sitting there. doing nothing. free them.
Required parameter '%s' is missing for %s constructor (F) 🌸
you called the constructor for a class that has a required named parameter, but you did not pass that parameter at all. not a wrong value — you just straight up didn't show up with it. rude, honestly.
'(*%s' requires a terminating ':' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ (F) 🔥
you used a construct that needs a colon and a pattern argument. supply these, or check that you're using the right construct in the first place. one of those two, bestie.
'%s' resolved to '\o{%s}%d' (W misc, regexp) ✨
as of Perl 5.32, this message is no longer generated. instead, see Non-octal character '%c' terminates \o early. Resolved as "%s".
so anyway: you wrote something like \08, or \179, inside a double-quotish string. all but the last digit gets treated as a single character specified in octal, and the last digit becomes the next character in the string. to tell Perl that this is actually what you want, use the \o{ } syntax, or use exactly three digits to specify the octal for the character. lowkey tidy.
Reversed %s= operator (W syntax) 🔄
you wrote your assignment operator backwards. the = must always come last, so it doesn't get ambiguous with whatever unary operators show up next. put it at the end, where it belongs. 👑
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 means is a memory leak, which is of course bad — and especially bad if your Perl program is intended to be long-running. long-running programs plus leaks equals pain.
Scalar value @%s[%s] better written as $%s[%s] (W syntax) 💅
you used an array slice (that's what the @ means) to grab a single element of an array. generally it's better to ask for a scalar value (that's the $). here's the difference, and it matters:
$foo[&bar]always behaves like a scalar — both when you assign to it and when you evaluate its argument.@foo[&bar]behaves like a list when you assign to it, and it gives list context to its subscript — which can do weird things if you were expecting only one subscript.
on the other hand, if you were genuinely hoping to treat that array element as a list, you need to look into how references work, because Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. see perlref.
Scalar value @%s{%s} better written as $%s{%s} (W syntax) 💅
same exact energy, but for a hash slice instead of an array slice. you used a hash slice (the @) to select a single element of a hash, and generally you want the scalar version (the $). because:
$foo{&bar}always behaves like a scalar — both when assigning to it and when evaluating its argument.@foo{&bar}behaves like a list when you assign to it, and provides list context to its subscript, which can do weird things if you're expecting only one subscript.
and again — if you really did want to treat the hash element as a list, go learn how references work first, because Perl will not magically convert between scalars and lists for you. see perlref.
Search pattern not terminated (F) 🔍
the lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a // or m{} construct. remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level, so an unclosed bracket inside is gonna wreck your day. also, forgetting the leading $ on a variable $m can cause this error. tiny typo, huge consequences.
heads up: since Perl 5.10.0, a//can also be the defined-or construct, not just the empty search pattern. so code written for Perl 5.10.0 or later that uses//as the defined-or can be misparsed by pre-5.10.0 Perls as a non-terminated search pattern. ancient perls simply do not know.
%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. check the flow, bestie — where did that handle go?
select not implemented (F) 🚫
this machine doesn't implement the select() system call. like, at all. not a you problem, a machine problem.
Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported (F) 🪞
self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported in the current implementation. that's the whole message. no workaround included, sorry.
Semicolon seems to be missing (W semicolon) ❓
a nearby syntax error was probably caused by a missing semicolon — or possibly some other missing operator, like a comma. it's a hint, not a diagnosis. look around the neighborhood.
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. yeah. that's bad. that's the whole vibe.
sem%s not implemented (F) 🚫
you don't have System V semaphore IPC on your system. so whatever you were trying to do with it? not happening here.
send() on closed socket %s (W closed) 📪
the socket you're sending to got itself closed sometime before now. check your control flow — something closed it early and nobody told you.
Sequence "\c{" invalid (F) 🚫
these three characters may not appear in sequence in a double-quotish context. and btw, this message is raised only on non-ASCII platforms — a different error message is output on ASCII ones. so if you were intending to specify a control character with this sequence, you'll have to use a different way to specify it. no shortcuts here.
Sequence (? incomplete in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) bestie your regex just... stopped?? mid-extension?? you opened a (? and then just left, like a text message you never finished typing 💀 the <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. see perlre for the whole lore.
Sequence (?%c...) not implemented in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) somebody had a Big Idea for a regex extension, reserved a character for it, and then never actually wrote it 🙈 it's giving "coming soon" energy forever. the <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. see perlre.
Sequence (?%s...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) so you used a regular expression extension that simply doesn't make sense — vibe check failed, no cap. the <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. classic cause: you're using the (?^...) construct to tell Perl to use the default regular expression modifiers and then you redundantly specify a default modifier 🫠 (why). for other causes, see perlre.
Sequence (?#... not terminated in regex m/%s/
(F) a regular expression comment has to be closed off with a closing parenthesis, that's the whole contract. embedded parentheses aren't allowed. see perlre.
Sequence (?&... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) a named reference of the form (?&...) was missing the final closing parenthesis after the name 🎀 close your brackets, bestie. the <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
Sequence (?%c... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) a named group of the form (?'...') or (?<...>) was missing the final closing quote or angle bracket. the <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. so close ✨
Sequence (%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) a lookahead assertion (?=...) or (?!...), or a lookbehind assertion (?<=...) or (?<!...), was missing the final closing parenthesis 😭 the <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
Sequence (?(%c... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) a named reference of the form (?('...')...) or (?(<...>)...) was missing the final closing quote or angle bracket after the name. the <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
Sequence (?... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) there was no matching closing parenthesis for the '(' — the opening did not have its other half, tragic 💔 the <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
Sequence \%s... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) the regular expression expects a mandatory argument following the escape sequence, and this has been omitted or incorrectly written. it's missing its lil buddy 🥺
Sequence (?{...}) not terminated with ')'
(F) the end of the perl code contained within the {...} must be followed immediately by a ')'. no dawdling, no space, immediately. periodt.
Sequence (?P>... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) a named reference of the form (?P>...) was missing the final closing parenthesis after the name. the <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
Sequence (?P<... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) a named group of the form (?P<...>') was missing the final closing angle bracket. the <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
Sequence ?P=... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) a named reference of the form (?P=...) was missing the final closing parenthesis after the name. the <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered.
Sequence (?R) not terminated in regex m/%s/
(F) an (?R) or (?0) sequence in a regular expression was missing the final parenthesis. just the one lil bracket, that's all it needed bestie 🫶
500 Server error
(A) okay so this is the error message you generally see in a browser window when you try 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".
real talk: this is a CGI error, not a Perl error 💅
you need to make sure your script is executable, is accessible by the user CGI is running the script under (which is probably not the user account you tested it under 🙃), does not rely on any environment variables (like PATH) from the user it isn't running under, and isn't in a location where the CGI server can't find it — basically, more or less. please see the following for more information:
https://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html
http://www.htmlhelp.org/faq/cgifaq.html
http://www.w3.org/Security/Faq/you should also look at perlfaq9.
setegid() not implemented
(F) you tried to assign to $), and your operating system doesn't support the setegid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't think so. delulu on your part honestly 😔
seteuid() not implemented
(F) you tried to assign to $>, and your operating system doesn't support the seteuid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't think so.
setpgrp can't take arguments
(F) your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which takes no arguments — unlike POSIX setpgid(), which takes a process ID and process group ID. so not the same function, bestie, different girl entirely 🌸
setrgid() not implemented
(F) you tried to assign to $(, and your operating system doesn't support the setrgid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't think so.
setruid() not implemented
(F) you tried to assign to $<, and your operating system doesn't support the setruid() system call (or equivalent), or at least Configure didn't think so.
setsockopt() on closed socket %s
(W closed) you tried to set a socket option on a closed socket 😭 did you forget to check the return value of your socket() call?? because that's the vibe here. see "setsockopt" in perlfunc.
Setting $/ to a reference to %s is forbidden
(F) you assigned a reference to a scalar to $/ where the referenced item is not a positive integer. in older perls this appeared to work the same as setting it to "undef", but was in fact internally different, less efficient, and with very bad luck could have resulted in your file being split by a stringified form of the reference 💀 (not the slay you wanted).
in Perl 5.20.0 this was changed so that it would be exactly the same as setting $/ to undef, with the exception that this warning would be thrown.
you are recommended to change your code to set $/ to "undef" explicitly if you wish to slurp the file. as of Perl 5.28, assigning $/ to a reference to an integer which isn't positive is a fatal error.
Setting $/ to %s reference is forbidden
(F) you tried to assign a reference to a non-integer to $/. in older Perls this would have behaved similarly to setting it to a reference to a positive integer, where the integer was the address of the reference. as of Perl 5.20.0 this is a fatal error, to allow future versions of Perl to use non-integer refs for more interesting purposes. glow-up in progress ✨
shm%s not implemented
(F) you don't have System V shared memory IPC on your system. that's it, that's the whole thing 🤷♀️
!=~ 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 😬 typos really do be like that.
/%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
(W syntax) you used a pattern where Perl expected to find a string, as in the first argument to "join". Perl will treat the true or false result of matching the pattern against $_ as the string, which is probably not what you had in mind 🙈
shutdown() on closed socket %s
(W closed) you tried to do a shutdown on a closed socket. seems a bit superfluous, ngl. she's already down, bestie 💅
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?? classic 🎀
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. it's giving haunted house.
sleep(%u) too large
(W overflow) you called "sleep" with a number that was larger than it can reliably handle, and "sleep" probably slept for less time than requested. she tried her best but she has limits 🫠
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. it ate everything, bestie, the plate is empty 🔥
Smart matching a non-overloaded object breaks encapsulation
(F) you should not use the ~~ operator on an object that does not overload it: Perl refuses to use the object's underlying structure for the smart match. respect the boundaries 💅
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. that's not a key that's a whole novel 📖
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. archaeological find, fr fr 🏺
Source filters apply only to byte streams
(F) you tried to activate a source filter (usually by loading a source filter module) within a string passed to "eval". this is not permitted under the "unicode_eval" feature. consider using "evalbytes" instead. see feature.
splice() offset past end of array
(W misc) you attempted to specify an offset that was past the end of the array passed to splice(). splicing will instead commence at the end of the array, rather than past it. if this isn't what you want, try explicitly pre-extending the array by assigning $#array = $offset. see "splice" in perlfunc.
Split loop
(P) the split was looping infinitely 🔁 (obviously, a split shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input, which is what happened.) see "split" in perlfunc. she's stuck in a loop and she's not coming out, bestie 😭
Statement unlikely to be reached
(W exec) — so you did an exec() and then left some statement sitting right after it that isn't a die(). Bestie, that's almost always a bug, because exec() never returns unless it failed. You probably wanted system() instead, which does come back like a good little function. Wanna mute this one? Put that exec() inside a block all by itself. 💅
"state" subroutine %s can't be in a package
(F) — lexically scoped subroutines don't live in a package, periodt. So trying to declare one with a package qualifier slapped on the front just doesn't make sense. 🚫
"state %s" used in sort comparison
(W syntax) — the package variables $a and $b are the whole vibe for sort comparisons. But here you used $a or $b as an operand to the <=> or cmp operator inside a sort comparison block, and that variable had already been declared as a lexical variable earlier. Fix it either way: qualify the sort variable with the package name, or rename the lexical variable. 🌸
"state" variable %s can't be in a package
(F) — lexically scoped variables aren't in a package either, so declaring one with a package qualifier on the front is a no. If you're trying to localize a package variable, that's what local() is for. ✨
stat() on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) — you hit stat() on a filehandle that was either never opened, or has since been closed. She's not there, babe. 😭
Strings with code points over 0xFF may not be mapped into in-memory file handles
(W utf8) — you tried to open a reference to a scalar for read or append, but that scalar was holding code points over 0xFF. In-memory files are modeling on-disk files, and those can only hold bytes. 💀
Stub found while resolving method "%s" overloading "%s" in package "%s"
(P) — overloading resolution over the @ISA tree can get broken by importation stubs. Stubs should never be implicitly created, but explicit calls to can can still ruin the whole thing. 🙈
Subroutine attributes must come before the signature
(F) — when subroutine signatures are on, any subroutine attributes have to come before the signature. And yes, the order used to be the exact opposite in versions 5.22..5.26. So:
sub foo :lvalue ($x, $y) { ... } # 5.20 and 5.28 +
sub foo ($x, $y) :lvalue { ... } # 5.22 .. 5.26Subroutine "&%s" is not available
(W closure) — during compilation, some inner named subroutine or eval is trying to capture an outer lexical subroutine that isn't currently available. Two possible reasons, bestie. 👇
Reason one: the lexical subroutine is declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that hasn't been created yet. (Remember the lore: named subs get created at compile time, anonymous subs get created at run-time.) Like:
sub { my sub a {...} sub f { \&a } }At the moment f gets created, it can't capture the current a sub, because that anonymous subroutine doesn't exist yet. Flip side, this next one won't warn, because by then the anonymous subroutine has been created and is live:
sub { my sub a {...} eval 'sub f { \&a }' }->();Reason two: an eval is accessing a lexical subroutine that has gone out of scope, like:
sub f {
my sub a {...}
sub { eval '\&a' }
}
f()->();Here, while the '\&a' inside the eval is being compiled, f() isn't actually being executed, so its &a isn't available for capture. 🦋
"%s" subroutine &%s masks earlier declaration in same %s
(W shadow) — a my or state subroutine got redeclared in the current scope or statement, which effectively nukes all access to the previous instance. This is almost always a typo. Heads up though: the earlier subroutine still exists until the end of the scope, or until all closure references to it are destroyed. 👑
Subroutine %s redefined
(W redefine) — you redefined a subroutine. To suppress this warning, say:
{
no warnings 'redefine';
eval "sub name { ... }";
}Subroutine "%s" will not stay shared
(W closure) — an inner (nested) named subroutine is referencing a my subroutine defined in an outer named subroutine.
When the inner subroutine gets called, it'll see the value of the outer subroutine's lexical subroutine as it was before and during the first call to the outer subroutine. Real talk: after that first call to the outer subroutine wraps up, the inner and outer subroutines no longer share a common value for the lexical subroutine. In other words — it will no longer be shared. This hits especially hard if the lexical subroutine accesses lexical variables declared in its surrounding scope. 💔
Good news: this usually gets solved by making the inner subroutine anonymous, using the sub {} syntax. When inner anonymous subs that reference lexical subroutines in outer subroutines are created, they get automatically rebound to the current values of those lexical subs. Slay. ✨
Substitution loop
(P) — the substitution was looping infinitely. (And like, obviously a substitution shouldn't iterate more times than there are characters of input — which is exactly what happened here.) Go read the discussion of substitution in "Regexp Quote-Like Operators" in perlop. 🔁
Substitution pattern not terminated
(F) — the lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of an s/// or s{}{} construct. Remember that bracketing delimiters count nesting level. Also, missing the leading $ from variable $s may cause this error. 😵
Substitution replacement not terminated
(F) — the lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of an s/// or s{}{} construct. Same deal: bracketing delimiters count nesting level, and missing the leading $ from variable $s may cause this error. 😵
substr outside of string
(W substr) (F) — you tried to reference a substr() that pointed outside of a string. Meaning: the absolute value of the offset was larger than the length of the string. See "substr" in perlfunc. Careful though — this warning is fatal if substr is used in an lvalue context (as the left hand side of an assignment, or as a subroutine argument, for example). 🚨
sv_upgrade from type %d down to type %d
(P) — Perl tried to force an SV to upgrade to a type that was actually inferior to its current type. Rude. 😤
Switch (?(condition)... contains too many branches in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct can have at most two branches (the if-clause and the else-clause). If you want one or both of them to contain alternation, like using this|that|other, wrap it in clustering parentheses:
(?(condition)(?:this|that|other)|else-clause)The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See perlre. 🔍
Switch condition not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — the condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct isn't known. The condition has to be one of these:
(1) (2) ... true if 1st, 2nd, etc., capture matched
(<NAME>) ('NAME') true if named capture matched
(?=...) (?<=...) true if subpattern matches
(?!...) (?<!...) true if subpattern fails to match
(?{ CODE }) true if code returns a true value
(R) true if evaluating inside recursion
(R1) (R2) ... true if directly inside capture group 1, 2, etc.
(R&NAME) true if directly inside named capture
(DEFINE) always false; for defining named subpatternsThe <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See perlre. 🔍
Switch (?(condition)... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — you forgot to close a (?(condition)...) block somewhere in the pattern. Add a closing parenthesis in the right spot. See perlre. 🫶
switching effective %s is not implemented
(F) — while you're under the use filetest pragma, we cannot switch the real and effective uids or gids. 💀
syntax error
(F) — probably means you had a syntax error. Common reasons include:
A keyword is misspelled.
A semicolon is missing.
A comma is missing.
An opening or closing parenthesis is missing.
An opening or closing brace is missing.
A closing quote is missing.Often there'll be another error message hanging around with the syntax error, giving you more info. (Sometimes it helps to turn on -w.) The error message itself often tells you where in the line it was when it decided to give up. Sometimes the actual error is several tokens before that, because Perl is genuinely good at understanding random input. Occasionally the line number is straight up misleading, and once in a blue moon the only way to figure out what's triggering the error is to call perl -c over and over, chopping away half the program each time to see if the error went away. Sort of the cybernetic version of 20 questions. 🧚
syntax error at line %d: '%s' unexpected
(A) — you've accidentally run your script through the Bourne shell instead of Perl. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself. Classic. 🙈
syntax error in file %s at line %d, next 2 tokens "%s"
(F) — this error is likely to show up if you run a perl5 script through a perl4 interpreter, especially if the next 2 tokens are use strict, or my $var, or our $var. 🌈
Syntax error in (?[...]) in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — Perl could not figure out what you meant inside this construct. This is just the formal notice that she's giving up trying. 💀
%s syntax OK
(F) — the final summary message when a perl -c succeeds. Ate. 🔥
sysread() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) — you tried to read from a closed filehandle. She's gone, babe. 🚪
sysread() on unopened filehandle %s
(W unopened) — you tried to read from a filehandle that was never opened. 👻
System V %s is not implemented on this machine
(F) — you tried to do something with a function starting with sem, shm, or msg, but System V IPC isn't implemented on your machine. On some machines the functionality can exist but be unconfigured. Consult your system support. 🛠️
syswrite() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) — the filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now. Check your control flow, bestie. 🎀
"-T" and -B not implemented on filehandles 💅
(F) so Perl literally cannot peek at the stdio buffer of filehandles when it doesn't know about your particular kind of stdio. no cap. you're gonna have to use a filename instead, bestie.
Target of goto is too deeply nested
(F) you tried to use goto to reach a label that was way too deeply nested for Perl to actually reach. Perl is doing you a favor by refusing. honestly? thank it. 🙏
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. it's giving ghosted. 👻
The crypt() function is unimplemented due to excessive paranoia.
(F) Configure couldn't find the crypt() function on your machine — probably because your vendor didn't supply it, probably because they think the U.S. Government thinks it's a secret, or at least that they will continue to pretend that it is. and if you quote me on that, I will deny it. 💀
The experimental declared_refs feature is not enabled
(F) if you wanna declare references to variables, like my \%x, you gotta enable the feature first, bestie:
no warnings "experimental::declared_refs";
use feature "declared_refs";The %s function is unimplemented
(F) the function in question isn't implemented on this architecture, according to the probings of Configure. it's not you, it's the architecture. 🫶
The private_use feature is experimental
(S experimental::private_use) this feature is actually a hook for future use. iconic of it to just. exist. ✨
The stat preceding %s wasn't an lstat
(F) it makes zero 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, queen. 🎀
The Unicode property wildcards feature is experimental
(S experimental::uniprop_wildcards) this feature is experimental and its behavior may in any future release of perl. see "Wildcards in Property Values" in perlunicode. ⚠️
The 'unique' attribute may only be applied to 'our' variables
(F) this attribute was never supported on my or sub declarations. periodt.
This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
(W internal) warnings peculiar to VMS, bestie. you tried to change or delete an element of the CRTL's internal environ array, but your copy of Perl wasn't built with a CRTL that contained the setenv() function. you'll need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or redefine PERL_ENV_TABLES (see perlvms) so that the environ array isn't the target of the change to %ENV which produced the warning.
This Perl has not been built with support for randomized hash key traversal but something called Perl_hv_rand_set().
(F) something has attempted to use an internal API call which depends on Perl being compiled with the default support for randomized hash key traversal, but this Perl has been compiled without it. you should report this warning to the relevant upstream party, or recompile perl with default options. go tell somebody. 📢
This use of my() in false conditional is no longer allowed
(F) you used a declaration similar to my $x if 0. there has been a long-standing bug in Perl that causes a lexical variable not to be cleared at scope exit when its declaration includes a false conditional. some people have exploited this bug to achieve a kind of static variable. since we intend to fix this bug, we don't want people relying on this behavior. you can achieve a similar static effect by declaring the variable in a separate block outside the function, eg
sub f { my $x if 0; return $x++ }becomes
{ my $x; sub f { return $x++ } }beginning with perl 5.10.0, you can also use state variables to have lexicals that are initialized only once (see feature):
sub f { state $x; return $x++ }this use of my() in a false conditional was deprecated beginning in Perl 5.10 and became a fatal error in Perl 5.30. fr fr, it's gone.
Timeout waiting for another thread to define \p{%s}
(F) the first time a user-defined property ("User-Defined Character Properties" in perlunicode) is used, its definition is looked up and converted into an internal form for more efficient handling in subsequent uses. there could be a race if two or more threads tried to do this processing nearly simultaneously. instead, a critical section is created around this task, locking out all but one thread from doing it. this message indicates that the thread that is doing the conversion is taking an unexpectedly long time. the timeout exists solely to prevent deadlock; it's long enough that the system was likely thrashing and about to crash. there is no real remedy but rebooting. 💀 sorry bestie.
times not implemented
(F) your version of the C library apparently doesn't do times(). I suspect you're not running on Unix. 🤨
-T is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line
(X) the #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the -T option (or the -t option), but Perl was not invoked with -T in its command line. this is an error because, by the time Perl discovers a -T in a script, it's too late to properly taint everything from the environment. so Perl gives up. dramatic? yes. valid? also yes. 💅
if the Perl script is being executed as a command using the #! mechanism (or its local equivalent), this error can usually be fixed by editing the #! line so that the -%c option is a part of Perl's first argument: e.g. change perl -n -%c to perl -%c -n.
if the Perl script is being executed as perl scriptname, then the -%c option must appear on the command line: perl -%c scriptname.
To%s: illegal mapping '%s'
(F) you tried to define a customized To-mapping for lc(), lcfirst, uc(), or ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions), but you specified an illegal mapping. see "User-Defined Character Properties" in perlunicode. 🦋
Too deeply nested ()-groups
(F) your template contains ()-groups with a ridiculously deep nesting level. like, ridiculously. 🙈
Too few args to syscall
(F) there has to be at least one argument to syscall() to specify the system call to call, silly dilly. 🍓
Too few arguments for subroutine '%s' (got %d; expected %d)
(F) a subroutine using a signature got fewer arguments than required by the signature. the caller of the subroutine is presumably at fault. (it's giving "not me, it's them".) 😭
the message attempts to include the name of the called subroutine. if the subroutine has been aliased, the subroutine's original name will be shown, regardless of what name the caller used. it will also indicate the number of arguments given and the number expected.
Too few arguments for subroutine '%s' (got %d; expected at least %d)
similar to the previous message but for subroutines that accept a variable number of arguments. same vibe, different math. ✨
Too late for "-%s" option
(X) the #! line (or local equivalent) in a Perl script contains the -M, -m or -C option.
in the case of -M and -m, this is an error because those options are not intended for use inside scripts. use the use pragma instead. 👑
the -C option only works if it is specified on the command line as well (with the same sequence of letters or numbers following). either specify this option on the command line, or, if your system supports it, make your script executable and run it directly instead of passing it to perl.
Too late to run %s block
(W void) a CHECK or INIT block is being defined during run time proper, when the opportunity to run them has already passed. perhaps you are loading a file with require or do when you should be using use instead. or perhaps you should put the require or do inside a BEGIN block. timing is everything, bestie. ⏰
Too many args to syscall
(F) Perl supports a maximum of only 14 args to syscall(). fourteen. that's the number. 🔢
Too many arguments for %s
(F) the function requires fewer arguments than you specified. calm down, it doesn't need all that. 😌
Too many arguments for subroutine '%s' (got %d; expected %d)
(F) a subroutine using a signature received more arguments than permitted by the signature. the caller of the subroutine is presumably at fault.
the message attempts to include the name of the called subroutine. if the subroutine has been aliased, the subroutine's original name will be shown, regardless of what name the caller used. it will also indicate the number of arguments given and the number expected.
Too many arguments for subroutine '%s' (got %d; expected at most %d)
similar to the previous message but for subroutines that accept a variable number of arguments. the "at most" of it all. 🌸
Too many nested open parens in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) you have exceeded the number of open ( parentheses that haven't been matched by corresponding closing ones. this limit prevents eating up too much memory. it is initially set to 1000, but may be changed by setting ${^RE_COMPILE_RECURSION_LIMIT} to some other value. this may need to be done in a BEGIN block before the regular expression pattern is compiled. 💅
Too many nested BEGIN blocks, maximum of %d allowed
(F) you have executed code that nests too many BEGIN blocks inside of each other, either explicitly as BEGIN{} or implicitly as use statements. this limit defaults to a rather high number which should not be exceeded in normal circumstances, and triggering likely indicates something is very wrong in your code. for instance infinite recursion of eval and BEGIN blocks is known to trigger this error. 🚨
if you know that you have good reason to exceed the limit you can change it by setting ${^MAX_NESTED_EVAL_BEGIN_BLOCKS} to a different value from the default of 1000.
Too many capture groups (limit is %d) in regex m/%s/
(F) you have too many capture groups in your regex pattern. you need to rework your pattern to use less capture groups. yeah, really. trim it. ✂️
Too many )'s
(A) you've accidentally run your script through csh instead of Perl. check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself. classic. 🙈
Too many ('s
(A) you've accidentally run your script through csh instead of Perl. check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself. (yes, same energy, opposite paren. the paren family is unwell.) 🫠
Trailing \ in regex m/%s/
(F) the regular expression ends with an unbackslashed backslash. backslash it. see perlre. 🦋
Transliteration pattern not terminated
(F) the lexer couldn't find the interior delimiter of a tr/// or tr[][] or y/// or y[][] construct. missing the leading $ from variables $tr or $y may cause this error. check your delimiters bestie, they're not optional 💅
💀 Transliteration replacement not terminated
(F) bestie the lexer literally could not find the final delimiter of a tr///, tr[][], y/// or y[][] construct. it's looking. it's searching. it's not finding. 😭
🎀 Treating %s::INIT block as BEGIN block as workaround
(S) so a package is out here using an old version of Module::Install::DSL to install, and that ancient thing makes unsafe assumptions about when INIT blocks get called. because Module::Install::DSL is used to install other modules and is lowkey impossible to upgrade, there's a special workaround in place to deal with it. unless you're a maintainer of an affected module, you can genuinely ignore this warning. it's emitted purely as a sanity check. 💅
🚫 '%s' trapped by operation mask
(F) you tried to use an operator from a Safe compartment where it's not allowed. see Safe. no cap, that op is on the banned list.
✂️ truncate not implemented
(F) your machine doesn't implement a file truncation mechanism that Configure knows about. it's giving "your platform said no" energy.
🧪 try/catch/finally is experimental
(S experimental::try) this warning shows up if you use the try and catch syntax with a finally block. this syntax is currently experimental and its behaviour may change in future releases of Perl. so enjoy it but don't get too attached, bestie. 🦋
🌸 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, periodt — so a reference to an object that isn't the specified type, even if it has overloading to handle it, will still not be accepted. 🙈
💜 Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)
(F) this function needs the argument in that position to be of a certain type. arrays must be @NAME or "@{EXPR}". hashes must be %NAME or "%{EXPR}". no implicit dereferencing is allowed — use the {EXPR} forms as an explicit dereference. see perlref. 🙏
🔒 umask not implemented
(F) your machine doesn't implement the umask function, and you tried to use it to restrict permissions for yourself (EXPR & 0700). the platform said "not today." 💀
👑 UNIVERSAL does not export anything
(F) you asked UNIVERSAL to export something, but UNIVERSAL is the base class for all classes and contains no exportable symbols. it's the main character, not your personal assistant. 💅
⚖️ 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. math not mathing. 😭
⚖️ Unbalanced saves: %d more saves than restores
(S internal) the exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many values were temporarily localized. receipts not balanced.
⚖️ Unbalanced scopes: %d more ENTERs than LEAVEs
(S internal) the exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many blocks were entered and left.
🧵 Unbalanced string table refcount: (%d) for "%s"
(S internal) on exit, Perl found some strings still remaining in the shared string table used for copy on write and for hash keys. those entries should have been freed, so this indicates a bug somewhere. 👀
⚖️ Unbalanced tmps: %d more allocs than frees
(S internal) the exit code detected an internal inconsistency in how many mortal scalars were allocated and freed.
📭 Undefined format "%s" called
(F) the format indicated doesn't seem to exist. perhaps it's really in another package? see perlform. bestie check your scoping. 🔍
📭 Undefined sort subroutine "%s" called
(F) the sort comparison routine specified doesn't seem to exist. perhaps it's in a different package? see "sort" in perlfunc.
📭 Undefined subroutine &%s called
(F) the subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has since been undefined. rip. 💀
📭 Undefined subroutine &%s called, close to label '%s'
(F) the subroutine indicated hasn't been defined, or if it was, it has since been undefined.
this error could also indicate a mistyped package separator, when a single colon was typed instead of two colons. for example, Foo:bar() would be parsed as the label "Foo" followed by an unqualified function name: "foo: bar()".
bestie. count your colons. two. always two. 🙈
📭 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. the invisible function is invisible-ing. ✨
📭 Undefined subroutine in sort
(F) the sort comparison routine specified is declared but doesn't seem to have been defined yet. see "sort" in perlfunc. it's giving "coming soon" but never arriving. 🦋
📭 Undefined top format "%s" called
(F) the format indicated doesn't seem to exist. perhaps it's really in another package? see perlform.
🫥 Undefined value assigned to typeglob
(W misc) an undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, à la *foo = undef. this does nothing. it's possible that you really mean undef *foo. no cap, those are two different things. 💅
🐚 %s: Undefined variable
(A) you've accidentally run your script through csh instead of Perl. check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself. classic mixup, we've all been there. 😭
💅 Unescaped left brace in regex is illegal here in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) ok so the simple rule to remember: if you want to match a literal { character (U+007B LEFT CURLY BRACKET) in a regular expression pattern, escape each literal instance of it in some way. generally easiest is to precede it with a backslash, like \{, or enclose it in square brackets ([{]). if the pattern delimiters are also braces, any matching right brace (}) should also be escaped to avoid confusing the parser, for example,
qr{abc\{def\}ghi}forcing literal { characters to be escaped enables the Perl language to be extended in various ways in future releases. to avoid needlessly breaking existing code, the restriction is not enforced in contexts where there are unlikely to ever be extensions that could conflict with the use there of { as a literal. those that are not potentially ambiguous don't warn; those that are do raise a non-deprecation warning.
the contexts where no warnings or errors are raised are:
- as the first character in a pattern, or following
^indicating to anchor the match to the beginning of a line. - as the first character following a
|indicating alternation. - as the first character in a parenthesized grouping like
/foo({bar)/
/foo(?:{bar)/- as the first character following a quantifier
/\s*{/🌈 Unescaped left brace in regex is passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) the simple rule to remember: if you want to match a literal { character (U+007B LEFT CURLY BRACKET) in a regular expression pattern, escape each literal instance of it in some way. generally easiest is to precede it with a backslash, like \{, or enclose it in square brackets ([{]). if the pattern delimiters are also braces, any matching right brace (}) should also be escaped to avoid confusing the parser, for example,
qr{abc\{def\}ghi}forcing literal { characters to be escaped enables the Perl language to be extended in various ways in future releases. to avoid needlessly breaking existing code, the restriction is not enforced in contexts where there are unlikely to ever be extensions that could conflict with the use there of { as a literal. those that are not potentially ambiguous do not warn; those that are raise this warning. this makes sure that an inadvertent typo doesn't silently cause the pattern to compile to something unintended. 🫶
the contexts where no warnings or errors are raised are:
- as the first character in a pattern, or following
^indicating to anchor the match to the beginning of a line. - as the first character following a
|indicating alternation. - as the first character in a parenthesized grouping like
/foo({bar)/
/foo(?:{bar)/- as the first character following a quantifier
/\s*{/🔍 Unescaped literal '%c' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) (only under use re 'strict')
within the scope of use re 'strict' in a regular expression pattern, you included an unescaped } or ] which was interpreted literally. these two characters are sometimes metacharacters, and sometimes literals, depending on what precedes them in the pattern. this is unlike the similar ) which is always a metacharacter unless escaped. the duality is giving chaos. 😭
this action at a distance, perhaps a large distance, can lead to Perl silently misinterpreting what you meant, so when you specify that you want extra checking by use re 'strict', this warning is generated. if you meant the character as a literal, simply confirm that to Perl by preceding the character with a backslash, or make it into a bracketed character class (like [}]). if you meant it as closing a corresponding [ or {, you'll need to look back through the pattern to find out why that isn't happening. 🔎
💥 unexec of %s into %s failed!
(F) the unexec() routine failed for some reason. see your local FSF representative, who probably put it there in the first place. 💀
🚨 Unexpected binary operator '%c' with no preceding operand in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) you had something like this:
(?[ | \p{Digit} ])where the | is a binary operator with an operand on the right, but no operand on the left. left side said "im leaving." 🙈
❓ Unexpected character in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) you had something like this:
(?[ z ])within (?[ ]), no literal characters are allowed unless they are within an inner pair of square brackets, like
(?[ [ z ] ])another possibility is that you forgot a backslash. Perl isn't smart enough to figure out what you really meant. bestie it's a compiler, not a mind reader. 🫶
🚧 Unexpected characters while parsing class :isa attribute: %s
(F) you tried to specify something other than a single class name with an optional trailing version number as the value for a class :isa attribute. this confused the parser. it's giving "that's not what I asked for." 😵💫
🚪 Unexpected exit %u
(S) exit() was called or the script otherwise finished gracefully when PERL_EXIT_WARN was set in PL_exit_flags.
🚪 Unexpected exit failure %d
(S) an uncaught die() was called when PERL_EXIT_WARN was set in PL_exit_flags. 😬
🙃 Unexpected ')' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) you had something like this:
(?[ ( \p{Digit} + ) ])the ) is out-of-place. something apparently was supposed to be combined with the digits, or the + shouldn't be there, or something like that. Perl can't figure out what was intended. it's not you, it's the parenthesis. ok it's a little bit you. 💅
Unexpected ']' with no following ')' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — okay so the regex parser was out here parsing an extended character class and ran into a ']' at a point where the only legal thing a ']' can do is close the class definition as part of a '])'. Bestie you may have simply forgotten the close paren, or you confused the parser in some other way. It happens to the best of us 💅
Unexpected '(' with no preceding operator in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — you had something like this:
(?[ \p{Digit} ( \p{Lao} + \p{Thai} ) ])There needs to be an operator before that "(", because literally nothing tells Perl how the digits are supposed to combine with the characters in the Lao and Thai scripts. The parser is like "okay and? and??" 😭
Unicode non-character U+%X is not recommended for open interchange
(S nonchar) — so certain codepoints, like U+FFFE and U+FFFF, are defined by the Unicode standard to be non-characters. They're legal codepoints, sure, but they're reserved for internal use, so applications really shouldn't be trying to exchange them. An app might not be expecting any of these characters at all, and receiving them can lead to bugs. If you genuinely know what you're doing you can turn this warning off with no warnings 'nonchar';.
This isn't really a "severe" error, but it's supposed to be raised by default even if warnings aren't enabled, and rn the only way to do that in Perl is to mark it as serious. Periodt.
Unicode property wildcard not terminated
(F) — a Unicode property wildcard looks like a delimited regular expression pattern (all of it living inside the braces of the enclosing "\p{...}"). The closing delimiter matching the opening one was not found. And heads up: if the opening one is escaped by preceding it with a backslash, the closing one has to be escaped too. ✨
Unicode string properties are not implemented in (?[...]) in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — a Unicode string property is one that expands to a sequence of multiple characters. Example time: "\p{name=KATAKANA LETTER AINU P}", which is the sequence "\N{KATAKANA LETTER SMALL H}" followed by "\N{COMBINING KATAKANA-HIRAGANA SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK}". Extended character classes, "(?[...])", currently cannot handle these. It's giving "not yet, babes" 🙈
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. Perl internally allows all unsigned integer code points (up to the size limit available on your platform), surrogates included. But they can cause problems when being input or output, which is probably exactly where this message came from. If you really really know what you're doing you can turn this warning off with no warnings 'surrogate';.
Unimplemented
(F) — in Perl 5.12 and above, you have executed an ellipsis statement. This is a bare "...;", meant to let you outline code that is yet to be written, but is not complete, similar to the following:
sub not_done_yet {
my($self, $arg1, $arg2) = @_;
...
}If not_done_yet() is called, Perl will die with an "Unimplemented" error at the line containing "...". So like, the placeholder has main character energy but it will absolutely end you 💀
Unknown charname '%s'
(F) — the name you used inside "\N{}" is unknown to Perl. Check the spelling. You can say use charnames ":loose" to not have to be so precise about spaces, hyphens, and capitalization on standard Unicode names. (Any custom aliases that have been created must be specified exactly, regardless of whether ":loose" is used or not.) This error may also happen if the "\N{}" is not in the scope of the corresponding use charnames. 🎀
Unknown '(*...)' construct '%s' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — the "(*" was followed by something the regular expression compiler does not recognize. Check your spelling, bestie.
Unknown error
(P) — Perl was about to print an error message in $@, but the $@ variable did not exist, even after an attempt to create it. Imagine trying to deliver bad news and the news channel just… isn't there 😭
Unknown locale category %d
Unknown locale category %d; can't set it to %s
(W locale) — you used a locale category that perl doesn't recognize, so it cannot carry out your request. Check that you are using a valid category. If so, see "Multi-threaded" in perllocale for advice on reporting this as a bug, and for modifying perl locally to accommodate your needs.
Unknown open() mode '%s'
(F) — the second argument of 3-argument open() isn't among the list of valid modes: "<", ">", ">>", "+<", "+>", "+>>", "-|", "|-", "<&", ">&". That's the whole menu, no substitutions 🫶
Unknown PerlIO layer "%s"
(W layer) — an attempt was made to push an unknown layer onto the Perl I/O system. (Layers take care of transforming data between external and internal representations, iykyk.) Note that some layers, such as "mmap", are not supported in all environments. If your program didn't explicitly request the failing operation, it may be the result of the value of the environment variable PERLIO.
Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
(P) — an error peculiar to VMS. Perl was reading values for %ENV before iterating over it, and someone else stuck a message in the stream of data Perl expected. Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to subvert Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes 👀
Unknown regexp modifier "/%s"
(F) — alphanumerics immediately following the closing delimiter of a regular expression pattern are interpreted by Perl as modifier flags for the regex. One of the ones you specified is invalid. One way this can happen is if you didn't put in white space between the end of the regex and a following alphanumeric operator:
if ($x =~ /foo/and $bar == 3) { ... }The "a" is a valid modifier flag, but the "n" is not, and raises this error. Likely what was meant instead was:
if ($x =~ /foo/ and $bar == 3) { ... }Not the parser misreading your vibe — just a missing space 🦋
Unknown "re" subpragma '%s' (known ones are: %s)
(W) — you tried to use an unknown subpragma of the "re" pragma.
Unknown switch condition (?(...)) in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — the condition part of a (?(condition)if-clause|else-clause) construct is not known. The condition must be one of the following:
(1) (2) ... true if 1st, 2nd, etc., capture matched
(<NAME>) ('NAME') true if named capture matched
(?=...) (?<=...) true if subpattern matches
(*pla:...) (*plb:...) true if subpattern matches; also
(*positive_lookahead:...)
(*positive_lookbehind:...)
(*nla:...) (*nlb:...) true if subpattern fails to match; also
(*negative_lookahead:...)
(*negative_lookbehind:...)
(?{ CODE }) true if code returns a true value
(R) true if evaluating inside recursion
(R1) (R2) ... true if directly inside capture group 1, 2,
etc.
(R&NAME) true if directly inside named capture
(DEFINE) always false; for defining named subpatternsThe <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Unknown Unicode option letter '%c'
(F) — you specified an unknown Unicode option. See perlrun documentation of the "-C" switch for the list of known options.
Unknown Unicode option value %d
(F) — you specified an unknown Unicode option. See perlrun documentation of the "-C" switch for the list of known options.
Unknown user-defined property name \p{%s}
(F) — you specified to use a property within the "\p{...}" which was a syntactically valid user-defined property, but no definition was found for it by the time one was required to proceed. Check your spelling. See "User-Defined Character Properties" in perlunicode.
Unknown verb pattern '%s' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — you either made a typo or have incorrectly put a "*" quantifier after an open brace in your pattern. Check the pattern and review perlre for details on legal verb patterns. 💅
Unknown warnings category '%s'
(F) — an error issued by the "warnings" pragma. You specified a warnings category that is unknown to perl at this point.
Note that if you want to enable a warnings category registered by a module (e.g. use warnings 'File::Find'), you must have loaded this module first. Order matters, bestie 🎀
Unmatched [ in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — the brackets around a character class have to match. If you wish to include a closing bracket in a character class, backslash it or put it first. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Unmatched ( in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
Unmatched ) in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — unbackslashed parentheses must always be balanced in regular expressions. If you're a vi user, the % key is valuable for finding the matching parenthesis. The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See perlre.
Unmatched right %s bracket
(F) — the lexer counted more closing curly or square brackets than opening ones, so you're probably missing a matching opening bracket. As a general rule, you'll find the missing one (so to speak) near the place you were last editing. Classic 🙈
Unquoted string "%s" may clash with future reserved word
(W reserved) — you used a bareword that might someday be claimed as a reserved word. It's best to put such a word in quotes, or capitalize it somehow, or insert an underbar into it. You might also declare it as a subroutine.
Unrecognized character %s; marked by <-- HERE after %s near column %d
(F) — the Perl parser has no idea what to do with the specified character in your Perl script (or eval) near the specified column. Perhaps you tried to run a compressed script, a binary program, or a directory as a Perl program. Sir, this is a Wendy's 😭
Unrecognized class attribute %s
(F) — you attempted to add a named attribute to a "class" definition, but perl does not recognise the name of the requested attribute.
Unrecognized escape \%c in character class in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) — you used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized by Perl inside character classes. This is a fatal error when the character class is used within (?[ ]). 💀
Unrecognized escape \%c in character class passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) bestie you drop a backslash + character combo inside a character class and Perl's like "…never heard of her?" 💀 That character got read literally, but heads up — that could totally change in a future version of Perl. The <-- HERE bit points at exactly where in the regex this escape got caught. 😭
Unrecognized escape \%c passed through
(W misc) same energy, different aisle: you used a backslash-character combo that Perl just doesn't recognize, periodt. The character got understood literally, but again — this may change in a future version of Perl. 🙈
Unrecognized escape \%s passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) okay so this one's the plural sibling. You used a backslash-character combo Perl doesn't recognize. The character(s) were understood literally, but bestie, this may change in a future version of Perl. And the <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the escape was discovered. ✨
Unrecognized field attribute %s
(F) you tried to add a named attribute to a "field" definition, and nope — perl does not recognize the name of the attribute you asked for. Not the vibe. 💅
Unrecognized named parameter '%s' to subroutine '%s'
Unrecognized named parameters '%s' to subroutine '%s'
(F) so a subroutine got invoked that uses a signature declaring named parameters, but it has no slurpy parameter, and the caller handed over at least one name that didn't match any declared named parameter. Lowkey the caller of the subroutine is at fault here. 🫶
The message tries to include the name of the called subroutine. But if the subroutine has been aliased? Then the subroutine's original name gets shown, no matter what name the caller used. Fidelity. Iconic. 👑
Unrecognized parameters for "%s" constructor: %s
(F) you called new on a class but supplied a parameter name that didn't match a class field name. It's giving "wrong name in the group chat." 😭
Unrecognized signal name "%s"
(F) you gave kill() a signal name that was not recognized. Say kill -l in your shell to see the valid signal names on your system. Slay, go look. 🔥
Unrecognized switch: -%s (-h will show valid options)
(F) bestie you specified an illegal option to Perl. Don't do that. 🚫 (And if you're sitting there like "not me, I didn't do that" — go check the #! line and see if it's supplying the bad switch on your behalf. Sneaky.) 🙈
Unsuccessful %s on filename containing newline
(W newline) a file operation was attempted on a filename, and it failed — PROBABLY because the filename contained a newline, PROBABLY because you forgot to chomp() it off. The way that newline ruins everything 😭 see "chomp" in perlfunc.
Unsupported directory function "%s" called
(F) your machine doesn't support opendir() and readdir(). Tragic. 💀
Unsupported function %s
(F) this machine doesn't implement the indicated function, apparently. At least, Configure doesn't think so. 🧚
Unsupported function fork
(F) your version of the executable does not support forking. No forks for you, bestie. 🍴
Note that under some systems, like OS/2, there may be different flavors of Perl executables, some of which may supportfork, some not. Try changing the name you call Perl by to"perl_","perl__", and so on. ✨
Unsupported script encoding %s
(F) your program file begins with a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) which declares it to be in a Unicode encoding that Perl cannot read. It said "trust me" and Perl said "I literally can't." 😭
Unsupported socket function "%s" called
(F) your machine doesn't support the Berkeley socket mechanism — or at least that's what Configure thought. 🫶
Unterminated '(*...' argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) you used a pattern of the form "(*...:...)" but did not terminate the pattern with a ")". Fix the pattern and retry. Close your parentheses, queen. 👑
Unterminated attribute list
(F) the lexer found something other than a simple identifier at the start of an attribute, and it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a block. Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the previous attribute too soon? 😬 See attributes.
Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
(F) the lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis while parsing an attribute list, but the matching closing (right) parenthesis was not found. You may need to add (or remove) a backslash to get your parentheses to balance. Balance is the whole vibe. See attributes. ⚖️
Unterminated compressed integer
(F) an argument to unpack("w",...) was incompatible with the BER compressed integer format and could not be converted to an integer. See "pack" in perlfunc. 💅
Unterminated '(*...' construct in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) you used a pattern of the form "(*...)" but did not terminate the pattern with a ")". Fix the pattern and retry. That's it. That's the whole thing. 🎀
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:
<<"fooinstead of:
<<"foo"Not me leaving the closing quote at home 🙈
Unterminated \g... pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
Unterminated \g{...} pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) in a regular expression, you had a "\g" that wasn't followed by a proper group reference. In the "\g{" case, the closing brace is missing; otherwise the "\g" must be followed by an integer. Fix the pattern and retry. 🦋
Unterminated <> operator
(F) the lexer saw a left angle bracket in a place where it was expecting a term, so it's looking for the corresponding right angle bracket, and not finding it. 👀 Chances are you left some needed parentheses out earlier in the line, and you really meant a "less than". Classic.
Unterminated verb pattern argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) you used a pattern of the form "(*VERB:ARG)" but did not terminate the pattern with a ")". Fix the pattern and retry. 💜
Unterminated verb pattern in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) you used a pattern of the form "(*VERB)" but did not terminate the pattern with a ")". Fix the pattern and retry. 🔥
untie attempted while %d inner references still exist
(W untie) a copy of the object returned from "tie" (or "tied") was still valid when "untie" was called. Girl you gotta let go first 😭
Usage: POSIX::%s(%s)
(F) you called a POSIX function with incorrect arguments. See "FUNCTIONS" in POSIX for more information. 🎀
Usage: Win32::%s(%s)
(F) you called a Win32 function with incorrect arguments. See Win32 for more information. 💅
$[ used in %s (did you mean $] ?)
(W syntax) you used $[ in a comparison, such as:
if ($[ > 5.006) {
...
}You probably meant to use $] instead, bestie. FYI: $[ is the base for indexing arrays. $] is the Perl version number in decimal. One character apart, completely different lives. 😭
Use "%s" instead of "%s"
(F) the second listed construct is no longer legal. Use the first one instead. It's giving glow-up instructions. ✨
Useless assignment to a temporary
(W misc) you assigned to an lvalue subroutine, but what the subroutine returned was a temporary scalar about to be discarded, so the assignment had no effect. Literal wasted motion. 💀
Useless (?-%s) - don't use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) you've used an internal modifier such as (?-o) that has no meaning unless it's removed from the entire regexp:
if ($string =~ /(?-o)$pattern/o) { ... }must be written as:
if ($string =~ /$pattern/) { ... }The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See perlre. 🧚
Useless localization of %s
(W syntax) the localization of lvalues such as local($x=10) is legal, but in fact the local() currently has no effect. This may change at some point in the future, but in the meantime such code is discouraged. I said what I said. 💅
Useless (?%s) - use /%s modifier in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) you've used an internal modifier such as (?o) that has no meaning unless applied to the entire regexp:
if ($string =~ /(?o)$pattern/) { ... }must be written as:
if ($string =~ /$pattern/o) { ... }The <-- HERE shows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. See perlre. 👑
Useless use of attribute "const"
(W misc) the "const" attribute has no effect except on anonymous closure prototypes. You applied it to a subroutine via attributes.pm — but bestie, this is only useful inside an attribute handler for an anonymous subroutine. Wrong place, no effect. 🫶
Useless use of /d modifier in transliteration operator
(W misc) you've used the /d modifier where the searchlist has the same length as the replacelist. See perlop for more information about the /d modifier. Same length = nothing to do. 💀
Useless use of \E
(W misc) you have a \E in a double-quotish string without a "\U", "\L" or "\Q" preceding it. Out here terminating nothing. 😭
Useless use of greediness modifier '%c' in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) you specified something like these:
qr/a{3}?/
qr/b{1,1}+/The "?" and "+" don't have any effect, because 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. No choice, no modifier, no vibes. ✨
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 — and scalar context does not accept a list. Awkward. 🙈
For example:
my $x = sort @y;This is not very useful, and perl currently optimizes this away. Gone. Poof. 💨
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 — like 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];Parentheses vs brackets, the eternal struggle 😭 gotcha every time.
The square brackets are doing the most here — they explicitly turn a list value into a scalar value, whereas parentheses simply do not. So when a parenthesized list gets evaluated in scalar context, the comma acts like C's comma operator, which yeets the left argument, which is literally not what you want. More on this in perlref, bestie.
This warning will not be issued for numerical constants equal to 0 or 1 since they are often used in statements like
1 while sub_with_side_effects();String constants that would normally evaluate to 0 or 1 are warned about.
Useless use of (?-p) in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) The "p" modifier cannot be turned off once set. Trying to do so is futile. Truly giving "no takebacks" energy. 💅
Useless use of "re" pragma
(W) You did use re; without any arguments. That isn't very useful. It's giving decorative. 🎀
Useless use of %s with no values
(W syntax) You used the push() or unshift() function with no arguments apart from the array, like push(@x) or unshift(@foo). That won't usually have any effect on the array, so it is completely useless, fr fr.
That said, it's possible in principle that push(@tied_array) could have some effect if the array is tied to a class which implements a PUSH method. If so, you can write it as "push(@tied_array,())" to avoid this warning. 🫶
"use" not allowed in expression
(F) The "use" keyword is recognized and executed at compile time, and returns no useful value. See perlmod. She's compile-time only, babe. ✨
Use of @_ in %s with signatured subroutine is experimental
(S experimental::args_array_with_signatures) An expression involving the @_ arguments array was found in a subroutine that uses a signature. This is experimental because the interaction between the arguments array and parameter handling via signatures is not guaranteed to remain stable in any future version of Perl, and such code should be avoided.
Lowkey just don't. The vibes between @_ and signatures are unstable. 😭
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. Rip bozo 🪦
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. It's giving nothing. 💀
Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g
(W regexp) You used the /c modifier with a regex operand, but didn't use the /g modifier. Currently, /c is meaningful only when /g is used. (This may change in the future.) 👀
Use of code point 0x%s is not allowed; the permissible max is 0x%X
Use of code point 0x%s is not allowed; the permissible max is 0x%X in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You used a code point that is not allowed, because it is too large. Unicode only allows code points up to 0x10FFFF, but Perl allows much larger ones. Earlier versions of Perl allowed code points above IV_MAX (0x7FFFFFF on 32-bit platforms, 0x7FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF on 64-bit platforms), however, this could possibly break the perl interpreter in some constructs, including causing it to hang in a few cases. 😱
If your code is to run on various platforms, keep in mind that the upper limit depends on the platform. It is much larger on 64-bit word sizes than 32-bit ones.
The use of out of range code points was deprecated in Perl 5.24, and became a fatal error in Perl 5.28.
Use of each() on hash after insertion without resetting hash iterator results in undefined behavior
(S internal) The behavior of each() after insertion is undefined; it may skip items, or visit items more than once. Consider using keys() instead of each().
Undefined behavior means exactly that, bestie. No promises, no takesies backsies. 😭
Use of := for an empty attribute list is not allowed
(F) The construction "my $x := 42" used to parse as equivalent to "my $x : = 42" (applying an empty attribute list to $x). This construct was deprecated in 5.12.0, and has now been made a syntax error, so ":=" can be reclaimed as a new operator in the future. ✨
If you need an empty attribute list, for example in a code generator, add a space before the "=".
Use of %s for non-UTF-8 locale is wrong. Assuming a UTF-8 locale
(W locale) You are matching a regular expression using locale rules, and the specified construct was encountered. This construct is only valid for UTF-8 locales, which the current locale isn't. This doesn't make sense. Perl will continue, assuming a Unicode (UTF-8) locale, but the results are likely to be wrong. 🙈
Use of freed value in iteration
(F) Perhaps you modified the iterated array within the loop? This error is typically caused by code like the following:
@a = (3,4);
@a = () for (1,2,@a);You are not supposed to modify arrays while they are being iterated over. For speed and efficiency reasons, Perl internally does not do full reference-counting of iterated items, hence deleting such an item in the middle of an iteration causes Perl to see a freed value. 💀
Use of "goto" to jump into a construct is no longer permitted
(F) You have used "goto LABEL;" or "goto EXPR;" in an attempt to jump into the body of a loop or other block construct from the outside. As of Perl 5.44, this throws an exception. No sneaking in through the back door, girl. 🚫
Use of /g modifier is meaningless in split
(W regexp) You used the /g modifier on the pattern for a "split" operator. Since "split" always tries to match the pattern repeatedly, the "/g" has no effect. Redundant queen, we still love her. 👑
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. Heads up bestie, the countdown has started. ⏳
Use of inherited AUTOLOAD for non-method %s::%s() is no longer allowed
(F) As an accidental feature, "AUTOLOAD" subroutines were looked up as methods (using the @ISA hierarchy), even when the subroutines to be autoloaded were called as plain functions (e.g. Foo::bar()), not as methods (e.g. "Foo->bar()" or "$obj->bar()").
This was deprecated in Perl 5.004, and was made fatal in Perl 5.28. An accidental feature is still a bug, iykyk. 💅
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. Bestie, we have better ways. 🌸
Use of '%s' is deprecated as a string delimiter
(D deprecated::delimiter_will_be_paired) You used the given character as a starting delimiter of a string outside the scope of "use feature 'extra_paired_delimiters'". This character is the mirror image of another Unicode character; within the scope of that feature, the two are considered a pair for delimiting strings. It is planned to make that feature the default, at which point this usage would become illegal; hence this warning. 👀
For now, you may live with this warning, or turn it off, but this code will no longer compile in a future version of Perl. Or you can turn on "use feature 'extra_paired_delimiters'" and use the character that is the mirror image of this one for the closing string delimiter. Slay, but prepare. ✨
Use of '%s' is experimental as a string delimiter
(S experimental::extra_paired_delimiters) This warning is emitted if you use as a string delimiter one of the non-ASCII mirror image ones enabled by "use feature 'extra_paired_delimiters'". Simply suppress the warning if you want to use the feature, but know that in doing so you are taking the risk of using an experimental feature which may change or be removed in a future Perl version: 🧚
Use of %s is not allowed in Unicode property wildcard subpatterns in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You were using a wildcard subpattern a Unicode property value, and the subpattern contained something that is illegal. Not all regular expression capabilities are legal in such subpatterns, and this is one. Rewrite your subpattern to not use the offending construct. See "Wildcards in Property Values" in perlunicode. 🦋
Use of -l on filehandle%s
(W io) A filehandle represents an opened file, and when you opened the file it already went past any symlink you are presumably trying to look for. The operation returned "undef". Use a filename instead. 🎀
Use of non-ASCII character 0x%X illegal when 'use source::encoding "ascii"' is in effect
(F) This pragma forbids non-ASCII characters within its scope. That's the whole point, babe. 🚫✨
Use of reference "%s" as array index
(W misc) You tried to use a reference as an array index; this probably isn't what you mean, because references in numerical context tend to be huge numbers, and so usually indicates programmer error. 😭
If you really do mean it, explicitly numify your reference, like so: $array[0+$ref]. This warning is not given for overloaded objects, however, because you can overload the numification and stringification operators and then you presumably know what you are doing. 👑
Use of strings with code points over 0xFF as arguments to %s operator is not allowed
(F) You tried to use one of the string bitwise operators ("&" or "|" or "^" or "~") on a string containing a code point over 0xFF. The string bitwise operators treat their operands as strings of bytes, and values beyond 0xFF are nonsensical in this context. 💀
Certain instances became fatal in Perl 5.28; others in perl 5.32.
Use of strings with code points over 0xFF as arguments to vec is forbidden
(F) You tried to use "vec" on a string containing a code point over 0xFF, which is nonsensical here.
This became fatal in Perl 5.32.
Use of tainted arguments in %s is deprecated
(W taint, deprecated) You have supplied system() or exec() with multiple arguments and at least one of them is tainted. This used to be allowed but will become a fatal error in a future version of perl. Untaint your arguments. See perlsec. 🔥
Use of unassigned code point or non-standalone grapheme for a delimiter is not allowed 🚫💅
(F) Okay so bestie, a grapheme is what a native speaker of a language perceives as one single character. In Unicode (and therefore in Perl), a grapheme can actually be several characters chilling next to each other that together make one complete grapheme. Like, you can have a base character, say "R", plus an accent, say a circumflex "^", that when rendered looks like one character with the circumflex floating over the "R". Perl currently lets stuff like that circumflex be a delimiter for strings, patterns, etc. But when it's displayed, the circumflex looks like it belongs to the character just to the left of it. So in order to move the language toward accepting graphemes as delimiters, we can't allow delimiters that aren't graphemes all by themselves. Also, a delimiter has to already be assigned (or known to never be assigned) to future-proof things — because otherwise code that compiles today could fail to compile if that currently-unassigned delimiter ends up being something that isn't a stand-alone grapheme. Since Unicode is never ever going to assign non-character code points, nor code points above the legal Unicode maximum, those can be delimiters, and using them is totally legal. ✨
Use of uninitialized value%s 😭
(W uninitialized) An undefined value got used somewhere the value actually matters — like as a number, a string, or a reference. It was interpreted as an empty string or zero.
If you weren't expecting this value to be undefined, you can initialise it before you use it. If you did expect it could be undefined and you just wanna silence this particular instance of the warning, you can use the "//" (defined-or) operator to hand it an alternative that only kicks in when the value is undefined. 🫶
Otherwise, if you genuinely don't care about undefined values, you can just disable this warning.
To help you figure out what was undefined, perl tries to tell you the name of the variable (if there is one) that was undefined. Sometimes it can't, so it also tells you which operation you used the undefined value in. But heads up: perl optimizes your program, so the operation shown in the warning may not literally appear in your program. For example, "that $foo" is usually optimized into ""that " . $foo", and the warning will talk about the "concatenation (.)" operator, even though there's no . anywhere in your program. 😅
"use re 'strict'" is experimental 🧪
(S experimental::re_strict) The stuff that behaves differently when a regular expression pattern is compiled under 'strict' is subject to change in future Perl releases in incompatible ways. Which means a pattern that compiles today might not compile in a future Perl release. This warning is here to alert you to that risk. 👑
use VERSION is not permitted while another use VERSION of 5.39 or above is in scope
(F) Once you've got a use VERSION declaration that calls for a Perl version of at least 5.39, you can't have another one after it while the first one is still visible — even if the second one asks for a later version. Nope. Not allowed. 💀
use VERSION of 5.39 or above is not permitted while another use VERSION is in scope
(F) Once you've got a use VERSION declaration in scope, you can't follow it with another one that calls for a Perl version of at least 5.39 while the first one is still visible. Same energy, flipped around. 🙈
Use \x{...} for more than two hex characters in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) In a regular expression, you said something like
(?[ [ \xBEEF ] ])Perl isn't sure whether you meant this
(?[ [ \x{BEEF} ] ])or whether you meant this
(?[ [ \x{BE} E F ] ])You need to add either braces or blanks to disambiguate. No cap, perl is just confused. 😵💫
Using just the first character returned by \N{} in character class in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) Named Unicode character escapes (\N{...}) may return a multi-character sequence. Even though a character class is supposed to match just one character of input, perl will match the whole thing correctly — EXCEPT when the class is inverted ([^...]), or when the escape is the beginning or final end point of a range. For those cases, what should even happen isn't clear at all. In these circumstances, Perl discards all but the first character of the returned sequence, which is probably not what you wanted. 🥲
Using just the single character results returned by \p{} in (?[...]) in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) Extended character classes currently can't handle operands that evaluate to more than one character. Those get removed from the results of expanding the \p{}.
This can happen, for example, in
(?[ \p{name=/KATAKANA/} ])"KATAKANA LETTER AINU P" is a legal Unicode name (technically a "named sequence"), but it's actually two characters. So the expression above will only match the Unicode names containing KATAKANA that represent single characters. 💜
Using /u for '%s' instead of /%s in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(W regexp) You used a Unicode boundary ("\b{...}" or "\B{...}") in part of a regular expression where the character set modifiers /a or /aa are in effect. Those two modifiers mean "interpret this as ASCII", and that just doesn't make sense for a Unicode definition. The generated regular expression will compile so that the boundary uses all of Unicode. No other portion of the regular expression is affected. 🌈
Using !~ with %s doesn't make sense
(F) Using the !~ operator with s///r, tr///r or y///r is currently reserved for future use, because the exact behaviour hasn't been decided yet. (Simply returning the boolean opposite of the modified string is usually not particularly useful anyway.) 🤷♀️
UTF-16 surrogate U+%X ⚠️
(S surrogate) You had a UTF-16 surrogate in a context where they're 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're doing, you can turn off this warning with no warnings 'surrogate';. 👀
Value of %s can be "0"; test with defined()
(W misc) In a conditional expression, you used <HANDLE>, <*> (glob), each(), or readdir() as a boolean value. Each of these constructs can return a value of "0", which would make the conditional expression false — and that's probably not what you intended. When you use these constructs in conditional expressions, test their values with the defined operator. 💅
Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
(W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS. Perl tried to read the value of an %ENV element from a CLI symbol table, and found a resultant string longer than 1024 characters. The return value has been truncated to 1024 characters. ✂️
Variable "%s" is not available
(W closure) During compilation, an inner named subroutine or eval is trying to capture an outer lexical that isn't currently available. This can happen for one of two reasons.
First, the outer lexical may be declared in an outer anonymous subroutine that hasn't been created yet. (Remember: named subs are created at compile time, while anonymous subs are created at run-time.) For example,
sub { my $x; sub f { $x } }At the time f is created, it can't capture the current value of $x, since the anonymous subroutine hasn't been created yet. Conversely, the following won't give a warning, since the anonymous subroutine has by now been created and is live:
sub { my $x; eval 'sub f { $x }' }->();The second situation is caused by an eval accessing a variable that has gone out of scope, for example,
sub f {
my $x;
sub { eval '$x' }
}
f()->();Here, when the '$x' in the eval is being compiled, f() isn't currently being executed, so its $x isn't available for capture. 😭
Variable "%s" is not imported%s
(S misc) With use strict in effect, you referred to a global variable that you apparently thought was imported from another module, because something else of the same name (usually a subroutine) is exported by that module. It usually means you put the wrong funny character on the front of your variable. It's also possible you used an our variable whose scope has ended. 🙈
Variable length lookbehind not implemented in regex m/%s/
(F) This message no longer should be raised as of Perl 5.30. It's kept in this document as a convenience for people using an earlier Perl version.
In Perl 5.30 and earlier, lookbehind is allowed only for subexpressions whose length is fixed and known at compile time. For positive lookbehind, you can use the \K regex construct as a way to get the equivalent functionality. See (?<=pattern) and \K in perlre.
Starting in Perl 5.18, there are non-obvious Unicode rules under /i that can match variably, but which you might not think could. For example, the substring "ss" can match the single character LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S. Here's a complete list of the current ones affecting ASCII characters:
ASCII
sequence Matches single letter under /i
FF U+FB00 LATIN SMALL LIGATURE FF
FFI U+FB03 LATIN SMALL LIGATURE FFI
FFL U+FB04 LATIN SMALL LIGATURE FFL
FI U+FB01 LATIN SMALL LIGATURE FI
FL U+FB02 LATIN SMALL LIGATURE FL
SS U+00DF LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S
U+1E9E LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S
ST U+FB06 LATIN SMALL LIGATURE ST
U+FB05 LATIN SMALL LIGATURE LONG S TThis list is subject to change, but is quite unlikely to. Each ASCII sequence can be any combination of upper- and lowercase.
You can avoid this by using a bracketed character class in the lookbehind assertion, like
(?<![sS]t)
(?<![fF]f[iI])This fools Perl into not matching the ligatures. 🎀
Another glow-up option if you're on a Perl starting with 5.16 and you only care about ASCII matches: just slap the /aa modifier onto the regex 💅. That excludes all these non-obvious matches, so the message yeets itself. You can also say
use if $] ge 5.016, re => '/aa';to apply /aa to every regular expression compiled inside its scope. See re.
Variable length positive lookbehind with capturing is experimental in regex m/%s/
(W) Variable length positive lookbehind with capturing is not well defined, bestie. This warning is literally tapping you on the shoulder to say you're using a construct that may change in a future version of perl 😭. See the documentation of Positive Lookbehind in perlre for the details. You can silence this warning like this:
no warnings 'experimental::vlb';Variable length negative lookbehind with capturing is experimental in regex m/%s/
(W) Variable length negative lookbehind with capturing is not well defined either. This warning alerts you to the fact that you are using a construct which may change in a future version of perl. See the documentation of Negative Lookbehind in perlre for details. Silence it with:
no warnings 'experimental::vlb';"%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
(W shadow) A "my", "our", "state" or "field" variable has been redeclared in the current scope or statement, which effectively eliminates all access to the previous instance 🙈. This is almost always a typographical error, no cap. Heads up though: the earlier variable will still exist until the end of the scope, or until all closure references to it are destroyed.
Variable syntax
(A) You've accidentally run your script through csh instead of Perl 💀. Check the #! line, or manually feed your script into Perl yourself.
Variable "%s" will not stay shared
(W closure) An inner (nested) named subroutine is referencing a lexical variable defined in an outer named subroutine.
When the inner subroutine is called, it will see the value of the outer subroutine's variable as it was before and during the first call to the outer subroutine. In this case, after the first call to the outer subroutine is complete, the inner and outer subroutines will no longer share a common value for the variable. In other words, the variable will no longer be shared. ✨ It's giving "we used to be close."
This problem can usually be solved by making the inner subroutine anonymous, using the sub {} syntax. When inner anonymous subs that reference variables in outer subroutines are created, they are automatically rebound to the current values of such variables. slay 🫶
vector argument not supported with alpha versions
(S printf) The %vd (s)printf format does not support version objects with alpha parts.
Verb pattern '%s' has a mandatory argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You used a verb pattern that requires an argument. Supply an argument or check that you are using the right verb 🙏.
Verb pattern '%s' may not have an argument in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/
(F) You used a verb pattern that is not allowed an argument. Remove the argument or check that you are using the right verb.
Version control conflict marker
(F) The parser found a line starting with "<<<<<<<", ">>>>>>>", or "=======". These may be left by a version control system to mark conflicts after a failed merge operation 😭 (git said "good luck bestie").
Version number must be a constant number
(P) The attempt to translate a use Module n.n LIST statement into its equivalent BEGIN block found an internal inconsistency with the version number.
Version string '%s' contains invalid data; ignoring: '%s'
(W misc) The version string contains invalid characters at the end, which are being ignored.
Warning: something's wrong
(W) You passed warn() an empty string (the equivalent of warn "") or you called it with no args and $@ was empty.
Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly
(S) The implicit close() done by an open() got an error indication on the close(). This usually indicates your file system ran out of disk space 👀.
Warning: unable to close filehandle properly: %s Warning: unable to close filehandle %s properly: %s
(S io) There were errors during the implicit close() done on a filehandle when its reference count reached zero while it was still open, e.g.:
{
open my $fh, '>', $file or die "open: '$file': $!\n";
print $fh $data or die "print: $!";
} # implicit close hereBecause various errors may only be detected by close() (e.g. buffering could allow the print in this example to return true even when the disk is full), it is dangerous to ignore its result. So when it happens implicitly, perl will signal errors by warning 🚨.
Prior to version 5.22.0, perl ignored such errors, so the common idiom shown above was liable to cause silent data loss. 💀
Warning: Use of "%s" without parentheses is ambiguous
(S ambiguous) You wrote a unary operator followed by something that looks like a binary operator that could also have been interpreted as a term or unary operator. For instance, if you know that the rand function has a default argument of 1.0, and you write
rand + 5;you may THINK you wrote the same thing as
rand() + 5;but in actual fact, you got
rand(+5);So put in parentheses to say what you really mean 🙏. Ambiguity is not the vibe.
Wide character in %s
(S utf8) Perl met a wide character (ordinal >255) when it wasn't expecting one. This warning is by default on for I/O (like print).
If this warning does come from I/O, the easiest way to quiet it is simply to add the ":utf8" layer, e.g., "binmode STDOUT, ':utf8'". Another way to turn off the warning is to add "no warnings 'utf8';" but that is often closer to cheating 🙈. In general, you are supposed to explicitly mark the filehandle with an encoding, see open and "binmode" in perlfunc.
If the warning comes from other than I/O, this diagnostic probably indicates that incorrect results are being obtained. You should examine your code to determine how a wide character is getting to an operation that doesn't handle them.
Wide character (U+%X) in %s
(W locale) While in a single-byte locale (i.e., a non-UTF-8 one), a multi-byte character was encountered. Perl considers this character to be the specified Unicode code point. Combining non-UTF-8 locales and Unicode is dangerous 😱. Almost certainly some characters will have two different representations. For example, in the ISO 8859-7 (Greek) locale, the code point 0xC3 represents a Capital Gamma. But so also does 0x393. This will make string comparisons unreliable.
You likely need to figure out how this multi-byte character got mixed up with your single-byte locale (or perhaps you thought you had a UTF-8 locale, but Perl disagrees 👑).
Within []-length '%c' not allowed
(F) The count in the (un)pack template may be replaced by "[TEMPLATE]" only if "TEMPLATE" always matches the same amount of packed bytes that can be determined from the template alone. This is not possible if it contains any of the codes @, /, U, u, w or a *-length. Redesign the template 🔧.
While trying to resolve method call %s->%s() can not locate package "%s" yet it is mentioned in @%s::ISA (perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
(W syntax) It is possible that the @ISA contains a misspelled or never loaded package name, which can result in perl choosing an unexpected parent class's method to resolve the method call 😬. If this is deliberate you can do something like
@Missing::Package::ISA = ();to silence the warnings, otherwise you should correct the package name, or ensure that the package is loaded prior to the method call.
%s() with negative argument
(S misc) Certain operations make no sense with negative arguments. Warning is given and the operation is not done. (We love a graceful refusal ✨.)
write() on closed filehandle %s
(W closed) The filehandle you're writing to got itself closed sometime before now. Check your control flow 🔍.
wrong alignment in free()
(P) An invalid pointer was passed to "Perl_mfree" (also known as "Safefree").
%s "\x%X" does not map to Unicode
(S utf8) When reading in different encodings, Perl tries to map everything into Unicode characters. The bytes you read in are not legal in this encoding. For example
utf8 "\xE4" does not map to Unicodeif you try to read in the a-diaereses Latin-1 as UTF-8.
\x{%X} is a \w char that isn't valid in a name "%s"
(F) There are fewer than 200 characters in Unicode that you might expect to be able to appear in an identifier or other name, but are actually illegal 😭. Perl encountered one of them when parsing the name given by the %s. Its Unicode code point is shown. You'll need to choose a different name, bestie.
Most of the illegal ones involve a character enclosed in some shape, such as CIRCLED LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M. But others are because of problematic semantics. MIDDLE DOT, for example, is punctuation in some languages, but is a word letter in others. You can generate a complete list of the current ones by running this program
perl -le 'use re qw(Debug COMPILE); qr/(?[ \w ^ \p{XIDC} ])/'Look near the final line. The one that begins "stclass" contains a list of 4 and 5 digit hexdecimal numbers. These are the Unicode code points that are illegal in names. You can use charnames::viacode or many internet search engines to look up their names if desired. 🕵️♀️
'X' outside of string
(F) You had a (un)pack template that specified a relative position before the beginning of the string being (un)packed. See "pack" in perlfunc.
'x' outside of string in unpack
(F) You had an unpack template that specified a relative position after the end of the string being unpacked. See "pack" in perlfunc.
YOU HAVEN'T DISABLED SET-ID SCRIPTS IN THE KERNEL YET!(F) — And bestie, you probably never will, because you probably don't have the sources to your kernel, and your vendor probably doesn't give a rip about what you want. There is a vulnerability anywhere that you have a set-id script, and to close it you need to remove the set-id bit from the script that you're attempting to run. To actually run the script set-id, your best bet is to put a set-id C wrapper around your script. 💅You need to quote "%s"(W syntax) — You assigned a bareword as a signal handler name:
$SIG{...} = foo;However, this will not make "sub foo" the signal handler. Instead, Perl will call the subroutine when the assignment is executed and use the returned value as the signal handler, which is probably not what you want. (If it is what you want, put "()" after the subroutine name to avoid the warning.)
To register the subroutine as the signal handler, take a reference to it:
$SIG{...} = \&foo;Your random numbers are not that random(F) — When trying to initialize the random seed for hashes, Perl could not get any randomness out of your system. This usually indicates Something Very Wrong. 😭Zero length \N{} in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/(F) — Named Unicode character escapes ("\N{...}") may return a zero-length sequence. Such an escape was used in an extended character class, i.e."(?[...])", or under"use re 'strict'", which is not permitted. Check that the correct escape has been used, and the correct charnames handler is in scope. The<-- HEREshows whereabouts in the regular expression the problem was discovered. 🔍
👀 SEE ALSO 👀
if you wanna peek at warnings and diagnostics, they're right there 💖
this page is from perl v5.44.0, dated 2026-10-17, and it's part of PERLDIAG(1perl). stay slay! 💅✨
📦 where this page comes from
- arch rolling: perl 5.44.0-1 · Artistic-1.0-Perl AND GPL-1.0-or-later
- 💖 girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash on : a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms