Re: RFC 331 (v1) Consolidate the $1 and C<\1> notations

[Bart Lateur]

On 28 Sep 2000 20:57:39 -0000, Perl6 RFC Librarian wrote:

>Currently, C<\1> and $1 have only slightly different meanings within a
>regex.  Let's consolidate them together, eliminate the differences, and
>settle on $1 as the standard.

I wrote this before, but apparently you didn't hear it. Let me repeat:
$foo on the LHS allows metacharacter matching, for example "a.*b" can
match "a foo b". But \1 only allows literal strings. If $1 captured
"a.*b", then \1 will only match the literal string "a.*b", as if the
regex contained "a\.\*b".

I don't see how you can possibly consider this a "tiny difference".

-- 
        Bart.