sidhekin@blackbox:~$ perl -v

This is perl, v5.8.7 built for i486-linux

Copyright 1987-2005, Larry Wall

Perl may be copied only under the terms of either the Artistic License or the
GNU General Public License, which may be found in the Perl 5 source kit.

Complete documentation for Perl, including FAQ lists, should be found on
this system using `man perl' or `perldoc perl'.  If you have access to the
Internet, point your browser at http://www.perl.org/, the Perl Home Page.

sidhekin@blackbox:~$ perl
sub mychop(\$) {  chop ${shift()} }

foreach my $thing (qw/foo bar baz/) {
   print "$thing -> ";
   my $c = mychop $thing;
   print " $thing,$c\n";
}
__END__
Modification of a read-only value attempted at - line 1.
foo ->