I was anxious to start reading Apocalypse 5, but by the time I reached page 3 I was wondering how much thing will change. As we know, thing will change a lot.

Personally I use regexes regularly (and not the simple ones). My first thought was converting all of my old code (it may be time to look for a new job ;-). Then I read how you can assign variables in the regexes. I especially liked %hash:=[(…)…(…)] construct for filling hashes. If this is close to the same speed as doing a loop with split, I’ll be very happy. I also think that having /x on be default is a good choice and will help make things easier to read. The option to have a non-assigning group is also welcome.

I’m undecided on how well the grammar rules will work, and if they will solve more problems then they create. I’m sure that Damian’s Exegesis 5 will shed some more light and give us even more to talk about.

In all, I’m looking forward to playing with the new regexes, but dreading the day I move my code to perl6 and will have to change and test (again) all of those regexes.

What are some of your reactions to the change?