Raku Tips ‘n Tricks

After a few weeks getting in the rhythm of editing the weekly, I feel that we could do a bit more to present the good stuff that Raku can do. Therefore, this is the start of a hopefully-to-become-regular section where we can share Raku tips and tricks with one another.

# RTnT#1: Using prefix // to test for definedness

##in Raku v6.d you can already write:

my $x = 1;
my $y = $x ?? 'set' !! 'unset';
say $y;   #set

##now, in Raku v6.e, you can also write:

use v6.e.*;

my $x;
my $y = //$x ?? 'defined' !! 'undefined';
say $y;   #undefined

~librasteve

I hope many of you like this idea. To contribute please make a gist and share via the raku channel IRC or Discord using the weekly robot like this… weekly: link-to-gist. Deciding the winner will be completely arbitrary and preference will be given to short things and things that highlight v6.e new features.

Londoner (or nearby)?

The call has gone out for a 2025 London Perl and Raku Workshop in late November https://www.londonperlworkshop.com … please indicate your interest if you would like to attend.

PodLite New Release

Breaking news: just came to my attention that there is a new release of podlite … https://github.com/podlite/podlite-desktop/releases/tag/v0.6.1

Weeklies

Weekly Challenge #345 is available for your edification.

New Problem Solving Issues

• What makes unit be too late?

New Docs Pull Requests

• Add documentation for method new in Range by timo
• document named arrays, and add some second-level headings by Eric Forste
• Extensions and fix in glossary.rakudoc. Some fixes and rewording in signatures.rakudoc by David Schultze
• linkfix in pragmas.rakudoc by David Schultze
• move a slightly misplaced =head2 in create-cli.rakudoc by Eric Forste
• linkfix in signatures.rakudoc by David Schultze
• In Capture.rakudoc: “are still Lists” → “are still like Lists”; typos by David Schultze
• some work on language/list by David Schultze

New Pull Requests

• Add libffi as a 3rdparty submodule by MasterDuke
• fix a minor typo by jakebman
• RakuAST/v6.e – Fix subset type defaults in containers by John Longwalker
• Only check flappers 2 times. by Will Coleda
• Split -errata akefile target into 6c/6d by Will Coleda

New Core Developments

• Make a definitely bad situation throw an exception by timo
• Add lots of comments to nqp_nfa_run by timo
• RakuAST: fix =table checks for numbered tables by Elizabeth Mattejson
• Merge pull request #5993 from rakudo/coke/antiflap by Will Coleda
• Merge pull request #5992 from rakudo/coke/errata-split by Will Coleda

Questions About Raku

• I need regex last instance help by ToddAndMargo
• Grammar: “match anything that is not this thing” by Mark Devine
• I need sub returns help by ToddAndMargo
• Do I have to repeat this run? by ToddAndMargo

Comments About Raku

• Perl and Raku Community Roundtable by TPRF
• Clean and nice. I’ll probably try this. by bsenftner
• Sorta of surprising with Raku beating out Perl. by elcritch
• otherwise APL or Perl/Raku would be more Pythonic by eesmith

New Raku Modules

• CoreHackers::NfaChainsaw by zef:timo

Updated Raku Modules

• Ecosystem by Elizabeth Mattijsen
• Terminal::Tests, Terminal::Capabilities by Geoffrey Broadwell
• Math::SparseMatrix by Anton Antonov
• App::Crag by Steve Roe
• YAMLScript by Ingy döt Net
• Data::Dump::Tree by Nadim Khemir
• Logic::Ternary by Fernando Correa de Oliveira

Winding down

Hope that you like the new Tips & Tricks section – it’s success rides on a steady flow of interesting quirks from you … so don’t be shy and lets make it a regular feature to help bring newcomers up to speed on all the cool stuff we have in our bushel.

Please keep staying safe and healthy, and keep up the good work! Even after week 40 of hopefully only 209.

Meanwhile, still: Слава Україні!  Героям слава!

~librasteve (editor-in-chief)