The reason for % not interpolating has got to be something other than "because printf would be harder to use". chromatic's answer seems to provide a better explanation.

Update: What I meant to say is that if Larry wanted hashes to interpolate, he could've easily done so without having a major problem with printf (either by chosing another sigil for hashes or by changing printf's meta character).

I never claimed that was the reason they don't interpolate. But it is a reason to not start interpolating them now.

Abigail

Sorry if I misread your comment in Re: Why doesn't % interpolate? which stated:

It would be very annoying though, as you would not be able to write

    printf "%d %s %f\n", $int, $str, $float;
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because that would try to interpolate three hashes.

Update: Sorry, that was very rude of me.