perlfunc.pod -- clarifying sprintf array argument issues

Message-ID: <20000818031336.B14165@ilmd.chetlin.org>

p4raw-id: //depot/perl@6695

diff --git a/pod/perlfunc.pod b/pod/perlfunc.pod
index cef469f..fd724a1 100644 (file)
--- a/pod/perlfunc.pod
+++ b/pod/perlfunc.pod
@@ -4414,6 +4414,12 @@ numbers, and even then only the standard modifiers are allowed).  As a
 result, any non-standard extensions in your local C<sprintf> are not
 available from Perl.
 
+Unlike C<printf>, C<sprintf> does not do what you probably mean when you
+pass it an array as your first argument. The array is given scalar context,
+and instead of using the 0th element of the array as the format, Perl will
+use the count of elements in the array as the format, which is almost never
+useful.
+
 Perl's C<sprintf> permits the following universally-known conversions:
 
    %%  a percent sign