I'd say that 15 years of programming in Perl must have given us tons of code that uses %h, and expect it not to be interpolated as a hash. Suddenly changing the meaning of how strings are parsed would break that code.

And it's not just printf formats that use lots of % characters. URIs use % to escape characters as well.

But why make such a fuss? Why argue to break tons of programs just to save a few characters of typing for a not so very useful feature? The difference between "%{hash}" and "@{[%hash]}" is a whopping three characters.

Abigail