Yeah, that is badly ambiguous. Thanks for quoting it. I think it also suffers from stressing unimportant aspects too much, making it more confusing beyond the ambiguity. The minimal change I'd make would be to go more like:

Setting $/ to a reference to an integer (or a reference to a scalar that contains an integer or that is convertible to an integer) will attempt to read records instead of lines, with the maximum record size being the referenced integer.

You should submit a doc patch request.

Just please forgive me if I don't patch the hardcopy right away...

I seriously considered not posting at all, going back and forth several times before finally deciding. I liked your tattoo (that you recently linked to a photo of in chatter) but I didn't understand what $/-- was meant to do so I went looking for some context. It is still a great tattoo. Now you just know that it has some extra "character" and of a variety that most will be completely unaware of. In some ways that makes it more interesting, more subtle.

IMHO, you don't need to ever patch the hardcopy. I'm still jealous that you came up with such a cool tattoo idea and I'm still waiting to come up with one cool enough for me to do.