There will be backwards compatibility, so us 'old timers' of perl5 will be happy. However, I suspect that if implemented, the first few 6.0.x releases will be solving a lot of problems with breaking the old code, thanks to how this RFC suggests that "//" and "=~" will be treated. Most interesting, "=~" appears to be more general, and will take the lhs arguement, use it as the 'next' arguement on the rhs, then set the rhs result back to the variable on the lhs, much like =+ and friends. Eg (as the RFC gives):

@array =~ sort { $a <=> $b };
#eqivalent to:
# @array = sort { $a <=> $b } @array;
[download]

But I agree with tye that subst and substr are too dang close and are going to cause more problems than this RFC alone. "Sub" or "subs" might be good enough, but that's up to the Perl 6 committee.

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Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain