"Redundant argument in printf" warning

Question

Why am I getting this error "Redundant argument in printf" in Perl? This signifies that the format string requires more values than are contained in. Is the format string I provided right?

Input file:

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<playlist>
  <movie id="tt0112384">
    <title>Apollo 13</title>
    <director>Ron Howard</director>
    <release-date>1995-06-30</release-date>
    <mpaa-rating>PG</mpaa-rating>
    <running-time>140</running-time>
    <genre>adventure</genre>
    <genre>drama</genre>
    <cast>
      <person name="Tom Hanks" role="Jim Lovell" />
      <person name="Bill Paxton" role="Fred Haise" />
      <person name="Kevin Bacon" role="Jack Swigert" />
      <person name="Gary Sinise" role="Ken Mattingly" />
      <person name="Ed Harris" role="Gene Kranz" />
    </cast>
    <imdb-info url="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112384/">
      <synopsis>
        NASA must devise a strategy to return Apollo 13 to Earth safely
        after the spacecraft undergoes massive internal damage putting
        the lives of the three astronauts on board in jeopardy.
      </synopsis>
      <score>7.6</score>
    </imdb-info>
  </movie>
  <movie id="tt0307479">
    <title>Solaris</title>
    <director>Steven Soderbergh</director>
    <release-date>2002-11-27</release-date>
    <mpaa-rating>PG-13</mpaa-rating>
    <running-time>99</running-time>
    <genre>drama</genre>
    <genre>mystery</genre>
    <genre>romance</genre>
    <cast>
      <person name="George Clooney" role="Chris Kelvin" />
      <person name="Natascha McElhone" role="Rheya" />
      <person name="Ulrich Tukur" role="Gibarian" />
    </cast>
    <imdb-info url="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307479/">
      <synopsis>
        A troubled psychologist is sent to investigate the crew of an
        isolated research station orbiting a bizarre planet.
      </synopsis>
      <score>6.2</score>
    </imdb-info>
  </movie>
</playlist>

My code:

use warnings;
use XML::LibXML;
my $filename = 'playlist.xml';
my $dom = XML::LibXML->load_xml(location => $filename);
printf("%-20s %-35s %-10s %-10s\n", "Title: ", "Director: ", "Rating: ", "Duration: ");
foreach my $movie ($dom->findnodes('//movie')) {
    printf("%-20s %-35s %-10s %-10s\n",   # <-- This is line 7
           $movie->findvalue('./title'), 
           $movie->findvalue('./director'), 
           $movie->findvalue('./mpaa-rating'), 
           $movie->findvalue('./running-time'), 
           " minutes");  
}

Expected Output:

Title:          Director:       Rating:         Duration:
Apollo 13       Ron Howard      PG              140
Solaris         Steven Soderbergh PG-13           99
Ender's Game    Gavin Hood      PG-13           114
Interstellar    Christopher Nolan PG-13           169
The Martian     Ridley Scott    PG-13           144

Getting Output:

Title:                    Director:                 Rating:                   Duration:
Redundant argument in printf at movie.pl line 7.
Apollo 13                 Ron Howard                PG                        140
Redundant argument in printf at movie.pl line 7.
Solaris                   Steven Soderbergh         PG-13                     99
Redundant argument in printf at movie.pl line 7.
Ender's Game              Gavin Hood                PG-13                     114
Redundant argument in printf at movie.pl line 7.
Interstellar              Christopher Nolan         PG-13                     169
.
.
.

Why is Perl behaving this way?

Answer 1

This printf:

printf("%-20s %-35s %-10s %-10s\n", 
       $movie->findvalue('./title'), 
       $movie->findvalue('./director'), 
       $movie->findvalue('./mpaa-rating'), 
       $movie->findvalue('./running-time'), 
       " minutes");

Expects 4 arguments since it contains 4 %<something>. However, you are providing 5 arguments. You can put minutes in the format string (and remove it from the arguments):

printf("%-20s %-35s %-10s %-10s minutes\n", 
       $movie->findvalue('./title'), 
       $movie->findvalue('./director'), 
       $movie->findvalue('./mpaa-rating'), 
       $movie->findvalue('./running-time'));

Or, if you want minutes to be right next to the number of minutes, concatenate it to $movie->findvalue('./running-time'):

printf("%-20s %-35s %-10s %-10s\n", 
       $movie->findvalue('./title'), 
       $movie->findvalue('./director'), 
       $movie->findvalue('./mpaa-rating'), 
       $movie->findvalue('./running-time') . " minutes");

What may have confused you is that print takes a list of arguments to print, while printf takes a format string and a list of arguments to substitute and format inside the format string. It would have been fine to do:

print($movie->findvalue('./title'), 
      $movie->findvalue('./director'), 
      $movie->findvalue('./mpaa-rating'), 
      $movie->findvalue('./running-time'), 
      " minutes\n");

(although that would not format the output as you'd like)