printf doesn't really care whether the arguments are integers or not, it cares about what the size flags immediately precede. If you use the following code:

use warnings;
printf "%4.4i\n", 1;
printf "%4.4li\n", 1;
printf "%4.4hi\n", 1;
printf "%4.4qi\n", 1;
printf "%4.4Li\n", 1;
printf "%4.4lli\n", 1;
[download]

You then almost get the results that are predicted in the perldocs:

0001
0001
0001
Invalid conversion in printf: "%q" at - line 5.
%4.4qi
0001
0001
[download]

(the zeroes are there because 4.4 ensures that the number will be 4 digits long in the case of an int)

Of course, there's still that rogue q that doesn't work in 5.6.1 or 5.8.0. However, since q should be the same as L and ll, it's not like Perl is lacking some feature--they just lie about q being a valid alias.

Again: l and h should only be used when followed by i, never by f. Perl, C, and GNU all appear to agree on this.