PERLLEXWARN(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLLEXWARN(1)
NAME
perllexwarn - Perl Lexical Warnings
DESCRIPTION
The "use warnings" pragma is a replacement for both the command line flag -w and the equivalent Perl
variable, $^W.
The pragma works just like the existing "strict" pragma. This means that the scope of the warning
pragma is limited to the enclosing block. It also means that the pragma setting will not leak across
files (via "use", "require" or "do"). This allows authors to independently define the degree of warn-ing warning
ing checks that will be applied to their module.
By default, optional warnings are disabled, so any legacy code that doesn't attempt to control the
warnings will work unchanged.
All warnings are enabled in a block by either of these:
use warnings;
use warnings 'all';
Similarly all warnings are disabled in a block by either of these:
no warnings;
no warnings 'all';
For example, consider the code below:
use warnings;
my @a;
{
no warnings;
my $b = @a[0];
}
my $c = @a[0];
The code in the enclosing block has warnings enabled, but the inner block has them disabled. In this
case that means the assignment to the scalar $c will trip the "Scalar value @a[0] better written as
$a[0]" warning, but the assignment to the scalar $b will not.
Default Warnings and Optional Warnings
Before the introduction of lexical warnings, Perl had two classes of warnings: mandatory and
optional.
As its name suggests, if your code tripped a mandatory warning, you would get a warning whether you
wanted it or not. For example, the code below would always produce an "isn't numeric" warning about
the "2:".
my $a = "2:" + 3;
With the introduction of lexical warnings, mandatory warnings now become default warnings. The dif-ference difference
ference is that although the previously mandatory warnings are still enabled by default, they can
then be subsequently enabled or disabled with the lexical warning pragma. For example, in the code
below, an "isn't numeric" warning will only be reported for the $a variable.
my $a = "2:" + 3;
no warnings;
my $b = "2:" + 3;
Note that neither the -w flag or the $^W can be used to disable/enable default warnings. They are
still mandatory in this case.
What's wrong with -w and $^W
Although very useful, the big problem with using -w on the command line to enable warnings is that it
is all or nothing. Take the typical scenario when you are writing a Perl program. Parts of the code
you will write yourself, but it's very likely that you will make use of pre-written Perl modules. If
you use the -w flag in this case, you end up enabling warnings in pieces of code that you haven't
written.
Similarly, using $^W to either disable or enable blocks of code is fundamentally flawed. For a start,
say you want to disable warnings in a block of code. You might expect this to be enough to do the
trick:
{
local ($^W) = 0;
my $a =+ 2;
my $b; chop $b;
}
When this code is run with the -w flag, a warning will be produced for the $a line -- "Reversed +=
operator".
The problem is that Perl has both compile-time and run-time warnings. To disable compile-time warn-ings warnings
ings you need to rewrite the code like this:
{
BEGIN { $^W = 0 }
my $a =+ 2;
my $b; chop $b;
}
The other big problem with $^W is the way you can inadvertently change the warning setting in unex-pected unexpected
pected places in your code. For example, when the code below is run (without the -w flag), the second
call to "doit" will trip a "Use of uninitialized value" warning, whereas the first will not.
sub doit
{
my $b; chop $b;
}
doit();
{
local ($^W) = 1;
doit()
}
This is a side-effect of $^W being dynamically scoped.
Lexical warnings get around these limitations by allowing finer control over where warnings can or
can't be tripped.
Controlling Warnings from the Command Line
There are three Command Line flags that can be used to control when warnings are (or aren't) pro-duced: produced:
duced:
-w This is the existing flag. If the lexical warnings pragma is not used in any of you code, or
any of the modules that you use, this flag will enable warnings everywhere. See "Backward Com-patibility" Compatibility"
patibility" for details of how this flag interacts with lexical warnings.
-W If the -W flag is used on the command line, it will enable all warnings throughout the program
regardless of whether warnings were disabled locally using "no warnings" or "$^W =0". This
includes all files that get included via "use", "require" or "do". Think of it as the Perl
equivalent of the "lint" command.
-X Does the exact opposite to the -W flag, i.e. it disables all warnings.
Backward Compatibility
If you are used with working with a version of Perl prior to the introduction of lexically scoped
warnings, or have code that uses both lexical warnings and $^W, this section will describe how they
interact.
How Lexical Warnings interact with -w/$^W:
1. If none of the three command line flags (-w, -W or -X) that control warnings is used and neither
$^W or the "warnings" pragma are used, then default warnings will be enabled and optional warn-ings warnings
ings disabled. This means that legacy code that doesn't attempt to control the warnings will
work unchanged.
2. The -w flag just sets the global $^W variable as in 5.005 -- this means that any legacy code
that currently relies on manipulating $^W to control warning behavior will still work as is.
3. Apart from now being a boolean, the $^W variable operates in exactly the same horrible uncon-trolled uncontrolled
trolled global way, except that it cannot disable/enable default warnings.
4. If a piece of code is under the control of the "warnings" pragma, both the $^W variable and the
-w flag will be ignored for the scope of the lexical warning.
5. The only way to override a lexical warnings setting is with the -W or -X command line flags.
The combined effect of 3 & 4 is that it will allow code which uses the "warnings" pragma to control
the warning behavior of $^W-type code (using a "local $^W=0") if it really wants to, but not
vice-versa.
Category Hierarchy
A hierarchy of "categories" have been defined to allow groups of warnings to be enabled/disabled in
isolation.
The current hierarchy is:
all -+
|
+- closure
|
+- deprecated
|
+- exiting
|
+- glob
|
+- io -----------+
| |
| +- closed
| |
| +- exec
| |
| +- layer
| |
| +- newline
| |
| +- pipe
| |
| +- unopened
|
+- misc
|
+- numeric
|
+- once
|
+- overflow
|
+- pack
|
+- portable
|
+- recursion
|
+- redefine
|
+- regexp
|
+- severe -------+
| |
| +- debugging
| |
| +- inplace
| |
| +- internal
| |
| +- malloc
|
+- signal
|
+- substr
|
+- syntax -------+
| |
| +- ambiguous
| |
| +- bareword
| |
| +- digit
| |
| +- parenthesis
| |
| +- precedence
| |
| +- printf
| |
| +- prototype
| |
| +- qw
| |
| +- reserved
| |
| +- semicolon
|
+- taint
|
+- threads
|
+- uninitialized
|
+- unpack
|
+- untie
|
+- utf8
|
+- void
|
+- y2k
Just like the "strict" pragma any of these categories can be combined
use warnings qw(void redefine);
no warnings qw(io syntax untie);
Also like the "strict" pragma, if there is more than one instance of the "warnings" pragma in a given
scope the cumulative effect is additive.
use warnings qw(void); # only "void" warnings enabled
...
use warnings qw(io); # only "void" & "io" warnings enabled
...
no warnings qw(void); # only "io" warnings enabled
To determine which category a specific warning has been assigned to see perldiag.
Note: In Perl 5.6.1, the lexical warnings category "deprecated" was a sub-category of the "syntax"
category. It is now a top-level category in its own right.
Fatal Warnings
The presence of the word "FATAL" in the category list will escalate any warnings detected from the
categories specified in the lexical scope into fatal errors. In the code below, the use of "time",
"length" and "join" can all produce a "Useless use of xxx in void context" warning.
use warnings;
time;
{
use warnings FATAL => qw(void);
length "abc";
}
join "", 1,2,3;
print "done\n";
When run it produces this output
Useless use of time in void context at fatal line 3.
Useless use of length in void context at fatal line 7.
The scope where "length" is used has escalated the "void" warnings category into a fatal error, so
the program terminates immediately it encounters the warning.
To explicitly turn off a "FATAL" warning you just disable the warning it is associated with. So, for
example, to disable the "void" warning in the example above, either of these will do the trick:
no warnings qw(void);
no warnings FATAL => qw(void);
If you want to downgrade a warning that has been escalated into a fatal error back to a normal warn-ing, warning,
ing, you can use the "NONFATAL" keyword. For example, the code below will promote all warnings into
fatal errors, except for those in the "syntax" category.
use warnings FATAL => 'all', NONFATAL => 'syntax';
Reporting Warnings from a Module
The "warnings" pragma provides a number of functions that are useful for module authors. These are
used when you want to report a module-specific warning to a calling module has enabled warnings via
the "warnings" pragma.
Consider the module "MyMod::Abc" below.
package MyMod::Abc;
use warnings::register;
sub open {
my $path = shift;
if ($path !~ m#^/#) {
warnings::warn("changing relative path to /var/abc")
if warnings::enabled();
$path = "/var/abc/$path";
}
}
1;
The call to "warnings::register" will create a new warnings category called "MyMod::abc", i.e. the
new category name matches the current package name. The "open" function in the module will display a
warning message if it gets given a relative path as a parameter. This warnings will only be displayed
if the code that uses "MyMod::Abc" has actually enabled them with the "warnings" pragma like below.
use MyMod::Abc;
use warnings 'MyMod::Abc';
...
abc::open("../fred.txt");
It is also possible to test whether the pre-defined warnings categories are set in the calling module
with the "warnings::enabled" function. Consider this snippet of code:
package MyMod::Abc;
sub open {
warnings::warnif("deprecated",
"open is deprecated, use new instead");
new(@_);
}
sub new
...
1;
The function "open" has been deprecated, so code has been included to display a warning message when-ever whenever
ever the calling module has (at least) the "deprecated" warnings category enabled. Something like
this, say.
use warnings 'deprecated';
use MyMod::Abc;
...
MyMod::Abc::open($filename);
Either the "warnings::warn" or "warnings::warnif" function should be used to actually display the
warnings message. This is because they can make use of the feature that allows warnings to be esca-lated escalated
lated into fatal errors. So in this case
use MyMod::Abc;
use warnings FATAL => 'MyMod::Abc';
...
MyMod::Abc::open('../fred.txt');
the "warnings::warnif" function will detect this and die after displaying the warning message.
The three warnings functions, "warnings::warn", "warnings::warnif" and "warnings::enabled" can
optionally take an object reference in place of a category name. In this case the functions will use
the class name of the object as the warnings category.
Consider this example:
package Original;
no warnings;
use warnings::register;
sub new
{
my $class = shift;
bless [], $class;
}
sub check
{
my $self = shift;
my $value = shift;
if ($value % 2 && warnings::enabled($self))
{ warnings::warn($self, "Odd numbers are unsafe") }
}
sub doit
{
my $self = shift;
my $value = shift;
$self->check($value);
# ...
}
1;
package Derived;
use warnings::register;
use Original;
our @ISA = qw( Original );
sub new
{
my $class = shift;
bless [], $class;
}
1;
The code below makes use of both modules, but it only enables warnings from "Derived".
use Original;
use Derived;
use warnings 'Derived';
my $a = new Original;
$a->doit(1);
my $b = new Derived;
$a->doit(1);
When this code is run only the "Derived" object, $b, will generate a warning.
Odd numbers are unsafe at main.pl line 7
Notice also that the warning is reported at the line where the object is first used.
TODO
perl5db.pl
The debugger saves and restores C<$^W> at runtime. I haven't checked
whether the debugger will still work with the lexical warnings
patch applied.
diagnostics.pm
I *think* I've got diagnostics to work with the lexical warnings
patch, but there were design decisions made in diagnostics to work
around the limitations of C<$^W>. Now that those limitations are gone,
the module should be revisited.
document calling the warnings::* functions from XS
SEE ALSO
warnings, perldiag.
AUTHOR
Paul Marquess
perl v5.8.8 2006-01-07 PERLLEXWARN(1)
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