All:
I would like to revisit the following question as there was no
decision reached AFAICT.

http://groups.google.ca/group/perl.perl6.language/browse_thread/thread/766c1b32c57a56f6/3296f0d6cad75548?q=list+context+.chars&rnum=1&hl=en#3296f0d6cad75548

What I would like to be able to do is:

my $str = 'hello';
my @chars = $str.chars; # <h e l l o>

There were some good points raised in that thread that I think are
valid, but I think it digressed from the intent of the original
question.  Perhaps that is because "unicode" prefaced chars which
clouded the waters.  I don't know anything about unicode and leaving
the hard choices for doing the "right thing" up to you all.  Whatever
the "right thing" is, will there be a way to do what my code snippet
showed?

Cheers,
Joshua Gatcomb
a.k.a. L~R