Perl 6 Deep Dive

Element access operators

The next group of operators include { }, < >, <<  >>, and « ».

The main operator { } is used to access values of a hash.

my %h = alpha => 'a',         beta  => 'b',         gamma => 'c';say %h{'beta'}; # b

Similar to the [ ] operator, multiple keys are accepted by { }:

say %h{'alpha', 'beta'}; # (a b)

In previous examples, keys of the %h were quoted. The postcircumfix operator, < >, allows us to avoid quoting in the manner the < > circumfix does:

say %h<beta>;       # bsay %h<alpha beta>; # (a b)

The << >> operator and its Unicode synonym, « », interpolate the operands as if they are strings in double quotes, as you can see here:

my $name = 'gamma';say %h«$name»;   # (c)say %h<<$name>>; # (c)