hmm, I don't get the warm fuzzy feeling I got from reading A1. I was hoping that with stronger typing we would be able to do away to $ @ and % to instroduce variables. That doesn't look like it's going to happen.

I like the idea of being able to interpolate scalars and lists into strings (to whit: "foo $(scalar exp)" and "foo @(list exp)".

On the other hand, replacing __END__ with =begin END strikes me as being akin to using the Start menu in Windows to shut down the machine.