Thanks for the report! Unfortunately the fix you provided is a no-op, because empty arrays are falsy, so the check doesn't add anything extra.
The issue was the nextsame candidate was the one with the slurpy that called the current candidate back again, resulting in an infiniloop. The issue has now been resolved in https://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/commit/804bf671f8 Tests added in the same commit. Cheers, ZZ
