http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=369294


in reply to chopping lots of characters

As you said, substr is the way to go. chop chops off one character, and not more than one. So, if you want to chop off 4 characters using chop, you need to chop 4 times. Either by duplicating the line, or by using a loop. You might want to bail out if the string is empty:
my $i = 4; chop $string while $i -- && length $string;
Or
my $i = 4; 1 while $i -- && defined chop $string;
although the latter might want to chop an empty string (but only once).

Abigail