printf;
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The current printf (16.2) has the same information. This may be worthy of a perlbug.

UPDATE: This doc first appeared on 14.2 (it wasn't there on 14.0, or before), but I don't see a change to printf behavior in perl5141delta or perl5142delta.

It seems the warning is triggered if $_ contains %

$_ = "%d 42";
printf;
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I believe that the document is correct. The default $_ is treated as a FORMAT. The warning is triggered (or not) the same as it is for an explicit FORMAT. Subtle isn't it?

Bill

G'day Neutron Jack,

While I agree the documentation for printf is not really up to scratch; I also think your comments are based on a false premise.

The documentation shows four forms that the function can take; two have no LIST (printf FILEHANDLE and printf):

$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -E '$_ = 42; printf STDERR'
42

$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -E '$_ = 42; printf'
42
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However, the documentation uses list and LIST in an ambiguous manner; furthermore, use of the lowercase list is, at best, misleading (but, more likely, an error).

list (lowercase)

An equivalence is shown:

print FILEHANDLE sprintf(FORMAT, LIST)
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followed by "... The first argument of the list will be interpreted as the printf format."

My best guess is that this is supposed to refer to the list of arguments to sprintf — but that's all that is, a complete guess. The documentation would be greatly improved if that was clarified.

LIST (uppercase)

The "If you omit the LIST, $_ is used; to use FILEHANDLE without a LIST, ..." text follows the sprintf ambiguity. I believe this refers to the two printf forms (shown at the top) which do not contain LIST. Without the confusing text before it, I think would be somewhat more obvious; however, additional clarification might not go astray here either.

I think kcott is on the right track, it's a documentation error.

In

If you omit the LIST, $_ is used; to use FILEHANDLE without a LIST, you must use a real filehandle like FH , not an indirect one like $fh

LIST is meant to describe the ARGUMENTS ( i.e. FORMAT, VALUES) to the function (or method i.e. FILEHANDLE->printf(ARGUMENTS) ), like you can see in the following example

  DB<100> $_=42
 => 42

  DB<101> printf
42
  DB<102> printf STDOUT
42
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(tested with 5.10 which didn't even document the use of $_)

So LIST should be replaced with "ARGUMENTS" in the quoted part.

IMHO the other occurrences of LIST should be replaced with "VALUES".

that is

 printf FILEHANDLE FORMAT, VALUES
...
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As per perl document, printf function used without arguments will take value of $_ and it gets printed. When you specify format, need to give LIST argument and it won't take $_ value by default.