From @zoffixznet

It seems that when q​:w is used with a pair of open-close delimiters AND those delimiters appear inside the stuff it's quoting, all whitespace is trimmed between the opening(closing) inner delimiter and the next(previous) thing
and only then does the stuff inside gets split into quote words; leading to the delimiters being, incorrectly, joined with other stuff​:

16​:29 m​: dd q​:w { [ ] { } }
16​:29 camelia rakudo-moar 054aca​: OUTPUT«("[", "]", "\{}")␤»
16​:30 m​: dd q​:w / [ ] { } /
16​:30 camelia rakudo-moar 054aca​: OUTPUT«("[", "]", "\{", "}")␤»
16​:30 viki I don't get what that { } variant is doing...
16​:31 m​: dd q​:w [ [ ] { } ]
16​:31 camelia rakudo-moar 054aca​: OUTPUT«("[]", "\{", "}")␤»
16​:31 viki m​: dd q​:w [ [ ] { } ]
16​:31 camelia rakudo-moar 054aca​: OUTPUT«("[]", "\{", "}")␤»
16​:31 viki m​: dd q​:w [ [ lulzwat ] { } ]
16​:31 camelia rakudo-moar 054aca​: OUTPUT«("[lulzwat]", "\{", "}")␤»
16​:41 m​: q​:w “ 12 “ lulzwat ” 42 ”
16​:41 camelia rakudo-moar 054aca​: ( no output )
16​:42 viki m​: dd q​:w “ 12 “ lulzwat ” 42 ”
16​:42 camelia rakudo-moar 054aca​: OUTPUT«("12", "“lulzwat”", "42")␤»
16​:42 viki m​: dd q​:w “ 12 “ lulz wat ” 42 ”
16​:42 camelia rakudo-moar 054aca​: OUTPUT«("12", "“lulz", "wat”", "42")␤»

From @LLFourn

20​:51 < llfourn> m​: .say for qw<a < b > c > # looks like a bug
20​:51 <+camelia> rakudo-moar b19df9​: OUTPUT​: «a␤<b>␤c␤»
20​:51 -!- mcmillhj [~huntermcm@​c-71-62-149-7.hsd1.va.comcast.net] has
joined #perl6
20​:52 < Ven> m​: .say for qw<<a < b > c >>
20​:52 <+camelia> rakudo-moar b19df9​: OUTPUT​: «a␤<␤b␤>␤c␤»
20​:52 < Ven> m​: say <a < b > c>.perl
20​:52 <+camelia> rakudo-moar b19df9​: OUTPUT​: «Value of type List uselessly
passed to val()␤ in block <unit> at <tmp>
  line 1␤("a", "<b>", "c")␤»
20​:52 < Ven> ...interesting.
20​:52 < llfourn> huh o.O

From @samcv

This is happening because it appears to split it up at the matching delimiter and then concat it back together again, concatting it back together after the word split.

From @skids

On Sun, 08 Oct 2017 17​:35​:21 -0700, samantham@​posteo.net wrote​:

This is happening because it appears to split it up at the matching
delimiter and then concat it back together again, concatting it back
together after the word split.

Might be the same bug as RT#​119401

The RT System itself - Status changed from 'new' to 'open'