What's the purpose of (dollar) slashy string in Groovy

Question

Why there are (dollar) slashy strings since they can be interchanged with quote ones and then can be spared for other syntax usage? Is there any proof of their irreplaceability?

Answer 1

If you're defining a regular expression pattern, then slashy strings are useful as you don't need to escape backslashes, e.g.

/\s+/

However, if you need a forward slash in your pattern, you'd need a dollar slashy string, e.g.

$/([a-z]+)/([a-z]+)/$

Or see the docs