Course of Raku / Essentials / Data type conversion

Converting types with prefix operators

Another way of transforming the type of an object is to use prefix operators. Those are one-character operators that are placed immediately before the value (or a variable).

Consider an example of creating a Boolean value out of an integer:

say ?42; # True

Converting to a string is similar:

my $n = -30;
my $s = ~$n;
say $s.chars; # 3, as "-30" has 3 characters

Notice that with numeric conversion, the type of the converted value differs depending on the number in question. Compare the following conversions from strings:

say (+'100').WHAT;   # (Int)
say (+'3.14').WHAT;  # (Rat)
say (+'27E-1').WHAT; # (Num)

For Boolean conversions, there is another routine called so. You can use it as a prefix operator or as a method:

my $value = 42;
say so $value; # True
say $value.so; # True