Course of Raku / Advanced / More about built-in types / Quoting constructs 🆕

q, qq, and Q

There are three base quoting operators, differing in how much they process the text inside:

• q — like single quotes: almost everything is literal
• qq — like double quotes: variables and escapes are interpolated
• Q — the most literal of all: nothing is processed

Each takes the text between a pair of delimiters. The familiar '…' is a shorthand for q, and "…" is a shorthand for qq:

my $name = 'Anna';

say q{Hello $name};  # Hello $name
say qq{Hello $name}; # Hello Anna

q leaves $name untouched; qq interpolates it. Backslash escapes such as \n behave the same way: only qq (and "…") turns \n into a real newline, while both q and Q leave it as the two characters \ and n:

say qq{line\nbreak}; # line<newline>break
say q{line\nbreak};  # line\nbreak
say Q{line\nbreak};  # line\nbreak

So where do q and Q differ? q, like single quotes, still handles a small set of escapes — a doubled backslash \\ becomes one, and you can escape the closing delimiter — whereas the plain Q form processes nothing at all:

say q{a\\b}; # a\b   — q collapses the escaped backslash
say Q{a\\b}; # a\\b  — Q keeps both characters

You can choose any delimiters — q{…}, q[…], q/…/, q!…! — which is handy when the text itself contains quotes. The three operators are the foundation; the next topic shows how adverbs let you mix and match exactly which features are active.

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