Re: Regular expressions, PCRE [was: Relation(s) between/among Kate, Kwrite, and Katepart]

[Tom Browder <tom.browder@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2025 at 09:20 Nicolas George <george@nsup.org> wrote:
>
> Tom Browder (HE12025-04-21):
> >     $ time raku -e ‘my $s = “a” x 25; my $r = “a?” x 25 ~ “a” x 25; if
> > ($s ~= $r) { say “yes” } ‘
>
> I almost asked if Raku uses pairs of Unicode quotes instead of the
> symmetrical ASCII one; then I noticed the single quotes, and I know the
> shell does not.
>
> > Raku’s regular expression grammar is much better than Perl’s. Larry
> > was very picky about that.
>
> This is a good occasion to ask:
>
> As a long-time Perl 5 programmer, I often wonder whether learning Raku
> would be worth it. Does it take a lot of time or is it close enough to
> be easy? What are the benefit? Will I find a trove of package already
> implementing network protocols and standard algorithms, or be able to
> run Perl 5 packages somehow? And so on.

Nicolas, I appreciate your interest. I can only speak for myself, but,
as a former Perl programmer (since 1993) I can say that when I
revisited Perl 6 development in late 2015, I saw it was the Perl I
always wanted, and I've been using it ever since then. Syntax is
really much easier after untraining old habits, and the introspection
capabilities are wonderful.

As a hunt-and-peck typist I really appreciate having less parens and
curlies to use, and classes are very easy to create and use. I love
the kebab-case naming ability ('my $dog's-name-is-Gus;' is a valid
variable).

I recommend two things: (1) visit <https://raku.org/resources> (esp.
top-right at "Newcomers") and (2) visit us at IRC #raku.

Also see the Raku published modules at <https://Raku.land> (my auth
name there and on #raku is 'tbrowder').

The Wikipedia article is good, too.

The Raku community is very friendly and welcoming!

Best regards,

-Tom