PS, perldoc is your friend...
laptop:~> perldoc -f chop
chop VARIABLE
chop LIST
chop Chops off the last character of a string and
returns the character chopped. It is much more
efficient than "s/.$//s" because it neither scans
nor copies the string. If VARIABLE is omitted,
chops $_. If VARIABLE is a hash, it chops the
hash's values, but not its keys.
You can actually chop anything that's an lvalue,
including an assignment.
If you chop a list, each element is chopped. Only
the value of the last "chop" is returned.
Note that "chop" returns the last character. To
return all but the last character, use "sub-
str($string, 0, -1)".