http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=303

chop

See the current Perl documentation for chop.

Here is our local, out-dated (pre-5.6) version:

chop - remove the last character from a string

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chop VARIABLE

chop LIST

chop

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Chops off the last character of a string and returns the character chopped. It's used primarily to remove the newline from the end of an input record, but is much more efficient than s/\n// because it neither scans nor copies the string. If VARIABLE is omitted, chops $_. Example:

    while (<>) {
        chop;   # avoid \n on last field
        @array = split(/:/);
        #...
    }

You can actually chop anything that's an lvalue, including an assignment:

    chop($cwd = `pwd`);
    chop($answer = <STDIN>);

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 substr($string, 0, -1).

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