Hi all, On 13.07.2014 00:15, David Warring wrote: > Hi Marc, > This looks like a Perl 5 complementary character match: [^:]* > > But it means something quite different in Perl6. From S05 > <http://perlcabal.org/syn/S05.html> > > Bracket rationalization > <http://perlcabal.org/syn/S05.html#Bracket_rationalization> [ ... ] is > no longer a character class. It now delimits a non-capturing group. > > |Changed metacharacters > <http://perlcabal.org/syn/S05.html#Changed_metacharacters>^| and |$| now > always match the start/end of a string > > Backtracking control > <http://perlcabal.org/syn/S05.html#Backtracking_control>To force the > preceding atom to do no backtracking, use a single |:| > > In summary, this pattern is repeatably matching an empty start-of-string. > > A Perl 6 equivalent is: > > token gecos { <- [':']>* }
... but without the quotes. In character classes, quotes have no special meaning, so <-[':']> is the same as <-[:']>, so it excludes the quote character. To just exclude the colon, simply say <-[:]> (Note that the rules of http://perlcabal.org/syn/S05.html#Simplified_lexical_parsing_of_patterns about what is and what isn't metacharacter don't apply inside character classes). Cheers, Moritz
