What warnings would you like a "warnins" pragma to throw?

Question

Recently on the Perl5 Porters list a spelling error in a doc patch made me laugh: use warnins; I now feel compelled to write a "warnins" pragma which such sage advice as

Yer usin' a variable that ain't got a value in addition (+) at z.pl line 8.

instead of

Use of uninitialized value in addition (+) at z.pl line 8.

What other warning messages would you like to see modified, and what should they say?

Version 0.0.3 of the warnin's pragma is now available.
Version 0.0.4 is now available through github.

Answer 1

Not PHP related, but Checkstyle reports on our code and gives us warnings like:

'101' is a magic number.

I'd like to see something like:

'101' is a magical number and may only be used by the most careful of wizards.

I think it would make me smile.

Answer 2

Unquoted string "haha" may clash with future reserved word at z.pl line 8.

Change to:

I got dibs on "haha". Pick yer own name at z.pl line 8.

Answer 3

I got another one! This fits in with the name of everyone's favorite website, too!

Deep recursion on subroutine "main::haha" at z.pl line 8.

Change to:

Man, I'm gettin' a headache in subroutine "main::haha" at z.pl line 8.

(The code to produce this error is sub haha { &haha } &haha; What's everybody's favorite error?)

Answer 4

You can git your list o' warnings at perldoc perldiag.

Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"

becomes:

Whoa there "%s"! Don't be running in circles like chickin with it's head cut off.

And:

Bareword found in conditional

becomes:

Might wanna put your clothes on. Maybe.

Answer 5

doing this right would involve creating a gettext catalog for perl warnings, so "use warnins" would simply load it. Maybe perl::critic could go gettext first, and warnins could be a critic catalog?

Answer 6

package warnins;

use strict;
no  warnings;
use Scalar::Util qw'reftype';

*import   = warnings::import;
*unimport = warnings::unimport;

my %jokes = (
  '^Use of uninitialized value'     => "Yer usin' a variable that ain't got a value",
  '^Argument (".*") isn\'t numeric' => [
    'Suffering sukkatash! Ya used da strin\' "$1"',
    'Even I know that "$1" ain\'t no number'
  ],
);


$SIG{__WARN__} = sub {
  my $message = join '', @_;

  for my $joke (keys %jokes) {
    if( $message =~ /$joke/ ){
      my $replace = $jokes{$joke};

      if( reftype $replace eq 'ARRAY' ){
        $replace = $replace->[ rand(@$replace) ];
      }

      $message =~ s/$joke/$replace/ee;

      last;
    }
  }

  warn $message;
};

Answer 7

If you call the pragma warnin::s, then you can use it like this:

use warnin's;

The old package delimiter is only good for bad jokes.

Answer 8

Where I think some of these are going wrong is that they don't actually convey the semantic content of the original warning. IMO it should be more like:

Warning: something’s wrong

becomes

Warning: WHAT the HECK

---

Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package

becomes

I got no damn idear what this "%s" sposta be

---

\1 better written as $1

becomes

do it the Perl way, son: $1, not \1

---

close() on unopened filehandle %s

becomes

Yer tryna close() %s what ain't never been opened

Answer 9

Change something's wrong to somethin' ain't right.

Change BEGIN failed--compilation aborted to I can't even get started. Screw it.

Change Deep recursion on subroutine "%s" to We're goin' t'hell in a handbasket named "%s"

Change Died to Kicked the bucket.

Change Out of memory! to What was I talking about again?

Change panic to Oh sh*t!

Answer 10

Yer forgot a semicolon, I've added it for ya. Try and get it right next time.

Answer 11

Attempt to set length of freed array
--> Yer tryin' to set the length of an array dat's been freed

Can't call method "%s" in empty package "%s"
--> Ain't no way you gonna call method "%s" in this empty package "%s"

Died
--> Ach, I am slain

Document contains no data
--> Ain't nothing in the document, pardner

And similarly all the other "Can't call...", "Can't do..." messages can be phrased similarly:

Can't do inplace edit: %s would not be unique
--> Ain't no way you can do an inplace edit here: %s wouldn't be special no more

Can't do setuid
--> Ain't no way you can setuid