perllexwarn - Perl Lexical Warnings
The use warnings pragma is a replacement for both the command line flag -w and the equivalent Perl variable, $^W.
use warnings
$^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 that the pragma setting will not leak across files (via use, require or do). This allows authors to independently define the degree of warning checks that will be applied to their module.
use
require
do
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 ; my $b ; { no warnings ; $b = 2 if $a EQ 3 ; } $b = 1 if $a NE 3 ;
The code in the enclosing block has warnings enabled, but the inner block has them disabled. In this case that means that the use of the EQ operator won't trip a "Use of EQ is deprecated" warning, but the use of NE will produce a "Use of NE is deprecated" warning.
EQ
"Use of EQ is deprecated"
NE
"Use of NE is deprecated"
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:".
"isn't numeric"
my $a = "2:" + 3;
though the result will be 5.
With the introduction of lexical warnings, mandatory warnings now become default warnings. The difference 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 "integer overflow" warning will only be reported for the $a variable.
"integer overflow"
$a
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.
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".
"Reversed += operator"
The problem is that Perl has both compile-time and run-time warnings. To disable compile-time warnings 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 that way you can inadvertently change the warning setting in unexpected 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.
doit
"Use of uninitialized value"
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.
There are three Command Line flags that can be used to control when warnings are (or aren't) produced:
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 Compatibility" for details of how this flag interacts with lexical warnings.
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.
no warnings
$^W =0
Does the exact opposite to the -W flag, i.e. it disables all warnings.
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:
If none of the three command line flags (-w, -W or -X) that control warnings is used and neither $^W or lexical warnings are used, then default warnings will be enabled and optional warnings disabled. This means that legacy code that doesn't attempt to control the warnings will work unchanged.
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.
Apart from now being a boolean, the $^W variable operates in exactly the same horrible uncontrolled global way, except that it cannot disable/enable default warnings.
If a piece of code is under the control of the lexical warning pragma, both the $^W variable and the -w flag will be ignored for the scope of the lexical warning.
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 will allow code which uses the lexical 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.
local $^W=0
The features described in this section are experimental, and so subject to change.
A tentative hierarchy of "categories" have been defined to allow groups of warnings to be enabled/disabled in isolation. The current hierarchy is:
all - +--- unsafe -------+--- taint | | | +--- substr | | | +--- signal | | | +--- closure | | | +--- overflow | | | +--- portable | | | +--- untie | | | +--- utf8 | +--- io ---------+--- pipe | | | +--- unopened | | | +--- closed | | | +--- newline | | | +--- exec | +--- syntax ----+--- ambiguous | | | +--- semicolon | | | +--- precedence | | | +--- reserved | | | +--- digit | | | +--- parenthesis | | | +--- deprecated | | | +--- printf | +--- severe ----+--- inplace | | | +--- internal | | | +--- debugging | |--- uninitialized | +--- void | +--- recursion | +--- redefine | +--- numeric | +--- once | +--- misc
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
The presence of the word "FATAL" in the category list will escalate any warnings from the category/categories specified that are detected in the lexical scope into fatal errors. In the code below, there are 3 places where a deprecated warning will be detected, the middle one will produce a fatal error.
use warnings ; $a = 1 if $a EQ $b ; { use warnings FATAL => qw(deprecated) ; $a = 1 if $a EQ $b ; } $a = 1 if $a EQ $b ;
The experimental features need bottomed out.
perldiag.pod Need to add warning class information and notes on how to use the class info with the warnings pragma. perl5db.pl The debugger saves and restores C<$^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.
warnings.
Paul Marquess
To install lib, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm
cpanm lib
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install lib
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.