For the same reason Perl 5 has '+'and '.': because of the extremely convenient auto-conversion of strings to numbers:

# in Perl 5
$i=10;         # could be $i="10";
$j=1;          # could be $j="1";
print $i + $j; # 11
print $i . $j; # 101

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In reply to Re^2: Perl 6 - Operator renaming by mirod
in thread Perl 6 - Operator renaming by ghenry

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