It does work on lvalues. But the return value of join() is not an lvalue. You can't assign to it. join('x', qw( a b c )) = "foo"; is a syntax error, whereas substr($x, 2, 4) = "ouch"; is not, so you can say chop(substr($x, 2, 4)).

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Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker, who'd like a job (NYC-area)
s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;