In Perl 6 most normal operators are subroutines: @a[1..3] &postcircumfix:« [ ] »( @a, 1..3 ) # same as above
Since they are just subroutines they often just call something else. # an overly simplified version sub postcircumfix:« [ ] » ( @array, **@indicies ) { gather { for @indicies -> $index { take @array.AT-POS( $index ) } } } When you define such a subroutine for the first time, it modifies the parser. In the case of &postcircumfix:« [ ] », it can take ANY VALUE as its first argument. On `Positional` arguments it calls `.AT-POS`. If it isn't `Positional`, it will pretend that it is a list of one value. 1[0]; # pretend that `1` is the same as `(1,)` This means it can be found everywhere throughout the language. --- We do not want to describe every bit of the language that interacts with the `.words` method. This is because that would be the entire language on one page. When you talked about [], this is inadvertently what you asked for. --- In the case of the `.words()` document we say that it is called on `Str` and returns a `Seq`. (The docs were wrong about it returning a `Positional`) We document that it returns the parts of the string that aren't whitespace. We document that you can give a limit to how many values it returns. (arguably, this isn't needed because you can just call `.head($limit)` instead) If we changed it to `selection` it would make it seem more complicated than it really is. Selection could mean that it could select the second and third values. `.words()` doesn't do that. The closest synonyms would be: cap maximum upper bound cutoff point farthest point end max count We do not document every single operator that operates on a `Seq`, on that page. (Almost every single one of them.) Again, [] is one of them. We do not document on that page all of the methods of `Seq`. (There is a page specifically for that) On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 9:18 PM ToddAndMargo <toddandma...@zoho.com> wrote: > > On 9/26/18 7:11 PM, Brandon Allbery wrote: > > That's not helping. What didn't you understand? > > >> It just improves error messages. > > My understanding it that if it uses "--Positinal" > I can use []