The last time I used chop() was to solve a word puzzle. Find pairs of words that can be turned into one another by slicing in "half" and swapping the pieces... i.e.

vessel becomes selves:
   vessel => SLICE => 'ves' | 'sel' 
             SWAP  => 'sel' | 'ves' 
             NEW   => 'selves'

loyal becomes alloy
   loyal  => SLICE => 'loy' | 'al'  
             SWAP  => 'al'  | 'loy'  
             NEW   => 'alloy'
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The code that looped through the transformations looked something like:

$word = chop($word) . $word;
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I can't say that I'll miss chop() but if it was up to me, I wouldn't remove it.

-Blake