In Glossary§
See primary documentation in context for Adverbial pair.
A generalized form of pair notation. They all start with the colon, as shown in the following examples:
| adverbial pair | pair notation |
|---|---|
| :foo<hi hello> | foo => <hi hello> |
| :foo('bar') | foo => 'bar' |
| :foo(42) | foo => 42 |
| :42foo | foo => 42 |
| :foo | foo => True |
| :!foo | foo => False |
| :$foo | foo => $foo |
Similarly to the angle brackets <…> in the first line, other circumfix operators with their usual semantics can be used for stating the value, e.g. :foo[…] for an array and :foo{…} for a hash or even a Block. With parentheses like in the second and third line, nearly all constructs can be used inside, notably quoting constructs and regexes.
Also see the sections Adverb and Colon pair and colon list.