I sent a pull request to nqp that fixes this, please review: https://github.com/perl6/nqp/pull/368
On Mon, 28 Aug 2017 05:53:36 -0700, coke wrote: > At this stage, something's presence in one of the SYN doesn't mandate > that it needs to be present in rakudo. I'd say this particular issue is pretty clearly a fix for an unintended oversight/bug in Rakudo's implementation of the interaction between two existing features: 1) `:r` which controls backtracking for the rest of the lexical scope it's in. 2) `:` / `:!` which controls backtracking for a single atom. The reasonable way for these to interact, is for the the more general one (which also by necessity comes first in the source code) to be overridden by the more specific one (which also comes later in the source code). The opposite (current Rakudo behavior in the demonstrated edge case) makes no sense, because if combining the general and specific modifier has the same effect as just the general one on its own, then there is not point in combining them in the first place. (And indeed this is also why I don't expect any negative fallout from this change.) A third option would theoretically be possible: *Forbid* combining the two features altogether, i.e. throw an exception. But there would have to be a pretty un-obvious reason to choose this over option A, and if there was one, the S05 authors would have probably thought of it. More importantly, Rakudo *already* does the common-sensical option A for other backtrackable atoms (i.e. quantifiers) - it's just for *alternation* atoms that atom-specific backtracking control is silently ignored when a lexical `:ratchet` is active. My patch to fix this¹ also tracked the current behavior to a probable thinko in a nested logic expression. TL;DR: This shouldn't be fixed *because* S05 says so, S05 is merely supporting evidence for there not being some obscure reason to not consider this a bug when it looks, quacks, etc. like a bug. But point taken, I'll learn to de-emphasize² the synopsis viewpoint in future bug reports... :) --- 1) https://github.com/perl6/nqp/pull/368/commits/ba165c8d9a1a5bb17841a0fcf2334b8993251155 2) I'd also like to point out, though, that not all synopses are created equal - S05 is one of the ones to which Perl 6 has ended up adhering most faithfully (not counting some NYI features). Not consulting it at all, when deciding what is or isn't an unintended bug in Perl 6 regex land, would be a mistake...
