As a general rule, perl error messages try to be as short as possible while still conveying all of the neccessary info that sets *this* type of error apart from *that* type of error.

The main motivation for this (as i understand it) is to keep them short for people who allready understand the various classes of problems, and just need a quick pointer to the line number and the type of think they screwed up.

If/when people are confused by perl error messages, they should ALWAYS consult perldiag, or use diagnostics 

laptop:~> perl -Mdiagnostics -e 'my @x; $x[-1]->meth'
Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, subscript -1 at -
+e line 1 (#1)
    (F) You tried to make an array value spring into existence, and th
+e
    subscript was probably negative, even counting from end of the arr
+ay
    backwards.
    
Uncaught exception from user code:
        Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, subscript
+ -1 at -e line 1.

[download]

In reply to Re: Negative array subscript method call bug? by hossman
in thread Negative array subscript method call bug? by BUU

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.