chomp erases the last character only if it's a newline

This safer version of "chop" removes any trailing string that corresponds to the current value of $/ ...

Well to be quite honest I got this sentence ("chomp erases the last...") from the Camel book. It's not a direct quote, that's just what I remembered. I would have looked it up again if I haven't returned the book to my university library last week.
And about the documentation link, I'll do that from now on.

-------------------------
Live fat, die young

Actually ido50 the description of chomp I get from perldoc -f chomp is as follows:

chomp   This safer version of "chop" removes any trailing string that
        corresponds to the current value of $/ (also known as
        $INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR in the "English" module).  It returns
        the total number of characters removed from all its arguments.
        It’s often used to remove the newline from the end of an input
        record when you’re worried that the final record may be missin
+g
        its newline.  When in paragraph mode ("$/ = """), it removes
        all trailing newlines from the string.  When in slurp mode ("$
+/
        = undef") or fixed‐length record mode ($/ is a reference
+ to an
        integer or the like, see perlvar) chomp() won’t remove anythin
+g
        thing.  If VARIABLE is omitted, it chomps $_.
[download]

Meaning that if you want to get rid of the newlines chomp is your better bet over chop.

The command "perldoc" is your friend.

---

Peter @ Berghold . Net

Sieze the cow! Bite the day!

Nobody expects the Perl inquisition!

Test the code? We don't need to test no stinkin' code!
All code posted here is as is where is unless otherwise stated.

Brewer of Belgian style Ales

Thus quoth the Camel-book on chomp:

This function (normally) deletes a trailing newline from the end of a string contained in a variable. This is a slightly safer version of chop (described next) in that it has no effect upon a string that doesn't end in a newline. More specifically, it deletes the terminating string corresponding to the current value of $/, and not just any last character.

CountZero

"If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law