It would be a cold hearted Perl monger who didn’t raise a wry smile at the black poetry of

Useless use of a constant in void context at perl_module.pm line 159.

Perl’s error reporting is generally poor because it’s an interpreted language, but sometimes Larry Wall’s idiosyncratic use of English shines. Many Perl errors are of the type “Somethings wrong somewhere between line 10 and line 600 but I’ll be damned if i know what, sorry”. This example is the exact opposite, it tells you the exact location of your mistake and rather than saying something about incorrect usage, or bad syntax, or something similarly formal, it just comes straight out and tells you that the line is useless, and by extension you the programmer are useless.

“Useless use of a constant in a void context”

The way the first couple of words flow together and seem to contradict one another, can there be such a thing as a “Useless use”? (This is particularly interesting when considered alongside the superficial exactitude of the message.) The bleakness and existential despair engendered by the words useless and void as they boom their message of run time failiure from the dark, infinite depths of your terminal window. Truely this is one of the great error messages of our time.