Yes, the evolution of Raku multilines is from shell (heredoc) > perl > raku, and a LOT of experience went into the design. Not sure I understand why that's a bad thing?

Some benefits of the Raku solution are:

  - multiline is just a superset of the standard quoting method (with the "to:/CLOSER/" adverb) 
  - indent level is set by the left edge of the closer, in the example 'END' ... so you can consistently indent / unindent your source and do not have to crowd all your heredoc to the left margin
  - you can pick any delimiter or closer to avoid conflict with the text content
  - there's a large selection of quoting adverbs - q (like single quotes), qq (like double quotes), qw (quote word), qx (shell quoting), etc.

Even with perverse patterns (which you cannot guarantee against in variable text), there is a way to gracefully handle:

  q«say '''hi"""»       #say '''hi"""