update: In the original node, I'm probably not as clear I should be that much of the second sub is ovid's

Yes, while the chomp better than the no chomp, it is not perfect. If the string is something like "asadf\r\n" and the OS is \r\n orriented, the chomp gives us "<p>asdf</p>" instead of "<p>asdf</p><p></p>". If we are processing the string on a \n orriented OS, We are out of luck...

If I understand  perldoc perlre the "/s" or "!s" at the end of the regular expression means "Treat string as single line. "

However, in tadman's node, I'm not getting how s/\r\n//s ( or s!\r\n!!s ) means "take off the \r\n at the end of the string" ???