I was a full time perl coder with plenty of regex back in the day and never appreciated that (sorry) - so maybe making it the default is a good call PS. raku h

I was a full time perl coder with plenty of regex back in the day and never appreciated that (sorry) - so maybe making it the default is a good call PS. raku has added quite a lot to the regex facilities we are familiar with, not least a straight line to using them in Grammars with rule and token methods that give you control over handling of whitespace in the target