perhaps that line was written by someone used to Perl, where they would have had
@a_list_of_words = qw/my list of words/;
there
@a_list_of_words = qw/my list of words/;
there
a_list_of_words = %w{my list of words} >>> qw = str.split
>>> qw('my list of words')
['my', 'list', 'of', 'words']