Perl 6 Deep Dive

Matching word boundaries

To match with the word edges, use one of the following anchors:

Anchor	Description
<|w>	Any word border
<<	Start of a word
>>	End of a word

 

These anchors match on the edges of words and do not consume characters. For example, / <|w> apple / will match with apple but not with pineapple.

The <|w> anchor has its opposite pair, <!|w>, that matches with anything that is not a word border. This anchor also does not consume characters, so / o <!|w> p / matches with opera.

To specify the border more precisely, use either << or >>:

my @words = 'fourty-four' ~~ m:g/ << four /;say +@words;@words = 'fourty-four' ~~ m:g/ four >> /;say +@words;

In these examples, the first match will find two words, while in the second ...