syntax ^
Documentation for syntax ^
assembled from the following types:
language documentation Traps to avoid
From Traps to avoid
(Traps to avoid) twigil ^
Using the ^
twigil can save a fair amount of time and space when writing out small blocks of code. As an example:
for 1..8 -> ,
can be shortened to just
for 1..8
The trouble arises when a person wants to use more complex names for the variables, instead of just one letter. The ^
twigil is able to have the positional variables be out of order and named whatever you want, but assigns values based on the variable's Unicode ordering. In the above example, we can have $^a
and $^b
switch places, and those variables will keep their positional values. This is because the Unicode character 'a' comes before the character 'b'. For example:
# In ordersub f1f1 "Hello", "there"; # OUTPUT: «Hello there»
# Out of ordersub f2f2 "Hello", "there"; # OUTPUT: «there Hello»
Due to the variables allowed to be called anything, this can cause some problems if you are not accustomed to how Perl 6 handles these variables.
# BAD NAMING: alphabetically `four` comes first and gets value `1` in it:for 1..4 # OUTPUT: «2 4 3 1»# GOOD NAMING: variables' naming makes it clear how they sort alphabetically:for 1..4 # OUTPUT: «1 2 3 4»
language documentation Regexes
From Regexes
(Regexes) regex ^
The ^
anchor only matches at the start of the string:
say so 'properly' ~~ / perl/; # OUTPUT: «True»say so 'properly' ~~ /^ perl/; # OUTPUT: «False»say so 'perly' ~~ /^ perl/; # OUTPUT: «True»say so 'perl' ~~ /^ perl/; # OUTPUT: «True»
The $
anchor only matches at the end of the string:
say so 'use perl' ~~ / perl /; # OUTPUT: «True»say so 'use perl' ~~ / perl $/; # OUTPUT: «True»say so 'perly' ~~ / perl $/; # OUTPUT: «False»
You can combine both anchors:
say so 'use perl' ~~ /^ perl $/; # OUTPUT: «False»say so 'perl' ~~ /^ perl $/; # OUTPUT: «True»
Keep in mind that ^
matches the start of a string, not the start of a line. Likewise, $
matches the end of a string, not the end of a line.
The following is a multi-line string:
my = chomp# 'safe' is at the end of the stringsay so ~~ /safe $/; # OUTPUT: «True»# 'secret' is at the end of a line, not the stringsay so ~~ /secret $/; # OUTPUT: «False»# 'Keep' is at the start of the stringsay so ~~ /^Keep /; # OUTPUT: «True»# 'and' is at the start of a line -- not the stringsay so ~~ /^and /; # OUTPUT: «False»