What does ^5 (caret + number) mean?

Question

Using ^5, one can get the first five elements of an array:

my @foo = 10..20;
say @foo[^5].join(',');

10,11,12,13,14

What is ^5 actually? Indexing syntax, a shortcut for lists, ... ?

Answer 1

The prefix ^ operator is the upto operator. It generates a Range from 0 upto N (exclusive)

See also prefix:<^>.

In the example it is used as a specification of an array slice, so it is equivalent to @foo[0,1,2,3,4].