perldoc -lf whatever
[download]

$ perldoc -lf anomaly
/home/choroba/localperl/lib/5.43.9/pod/perlfunc.pod
/home/choroba/localperl/lib/5.43.9/pod/perlop.pod
[download]

returns perlfunc and perlop regardless of what "whatever" is.

$ perldoc -lf anomaly
/home/choroba/localperl/lib/5.43.9/pod/perlfunc.pod
/home/choroba/localperl/lib/5.43.9/pod/perlop.pod

Thanks for looking into it choroba. These results clearly contradict the perldoc documentation:

perldoc perldoc (and man perldoc) says:
-l   Display only the file name of the module found.

perldoc --help says:
-l   Display the module's file name

Here's another anomaly:

% perldoc -lf splice    
/Users/u/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.42.0/lib/5.42.0/pods/perlfunc.pod
/Users/u/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.42.0/lib/5.42.0/pods/perlop.pod

% perldoc $_        
No documentation found for "splice".

% perldoc -v $_
'splice' does not look like a Perl variable

% perldoc -v '$_'
$_      The default input and pattern-searching space...

And another one:

% perldoc -v '$_'
$_      The default input and pattern-searching space...

% perldoc -v '@_' 
@_      Within a subroutine the array @_ contains the parameters...

% perldoc -v '%_'
No documentation for perl variable '%_' found

I'm not sure about the "another anomaly". You get the documentation of splice for $_, as $_ without quotes is the shell variable which contains the last argument of the last command.
map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]||0,1}[\*||{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^*ARGV,3]

These results clearly contradict the perldoc documentation:

That's not true. The docs don't say what happens if you use -l with -f func instead of a module.

Here's another anomaly

What do you think is anomalous? That it's looking up splice instead of $_? That's your error. You interpolated shell variable $_ into your shell command, and it apparently had the value splice.

And another one:

What do you think is anomalous? That output is correct too, and I have no idea what you think is wrong.

These results clearly contradict the perldoc documentation:

That's not true. The docs don't say what happens if you use -l with -f func instead of a module.

Here's another anomaly

What do you think is anomalous? That it's looking up splice instead of $_? That's your error. You interpolated shell variable $_ into your shell command, and it apparently had the value splice.

And another one:

What do you think is anomalous? That output is correct too, and I have no idea what you think is wrong.

What do you expect -lf to produce???

If anything this undefined behaviour should be rejected.

Anyway my best guess is that

• -f is always (only) searching those two docs for snippets
• -l is always listing the full path of parsed pods

So this "anomaly" makes IMHO perfect sense.

Edit

Usage demo

$ perldoc -l perldoc
/data/data/com.termux/files/usr/lib/perl5/5.40.3/pod/perldoc.pod
$ perldoc -l Data::Dumper
/data/data/com.termux/files/usr/lib/perl5/5.40.3/aarch64-android/Data/
+Dumper.pm
$ perldoc -f x
    x
    xor     These operators are documented in perlop.

$
[download]

Update

If your intention was to find every perldoc documenting a certain keyword :

I once wrote a script which will parse them all for X<keyword> tags.

See Perldoc Keyword Search (update3)

What do you expect -lf to produce???

I expected -lf to only return the name of the file "splice" was found in (perlfunc), instead of all the files it searched (perlfunc and perlop), but I guess it just doesn't work that way.

> You are combining two unrelated options.

Thanks for the clarification!

For clarification, depending on the paths in the ENV perldoc might "find" different documents to generate doc.

This is particular relevant if there is a NAME.pod file, forcing perldoc to ignore NAME.pl or NAME.pm.

-l is supposed to show the path of the original files.

In the case of -f both perlfunc and perlop must be "found" (and parsed) and -l will show their paths.

This is actually relevant for debugging a messed up environment with multiple Perl installations.

Edit

According to perldoc the paths in PERL5LIB and PATH are searched for matching files.

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
see Wikisyntax for the Monastery}