What does ‘serial’ do?

Question

From the docs that say,

Returns the self-reference to the instance itself:
    my $b; # defaults to Any 
    say $b.serial.^name;   # OUTPUT: «Any␤» 
    my $breakfast = 'food';
    $breakfast.serial.say; # OUTPUT: «food␤» 

I do not have the foggiest what this routine does, please can someone explain?

Answer 1

On Supplys, it is an informational method that is supposed to indicate whether there will never be any concurrent emit on that Supply.

On HyperSeq and RaceSeq, it returns a serialized Seq, so you could consider it the opposite of the hyper and race method.

In general, it appears to return itself, which seems to make sense from the HyperSeq and RaceSeq point of view.

And yes, these should be documented properly, so please create a documentation issue. Thank you!