I expect many native English speakers would get a chuckle out of "chomp". At least, I find it mildly amusing. The other day I found an experienced Java/C# programmer, who is currently learning Perl, rolling on the floor laughing at the Carp module function names: carp, croak, confess and cluck. He loved these names, finding them hilarious, perhaps because you would never see such names in more serious "politically correct" "corporate" languages like Java and C#. Good luck with the etymology of those four. :)

You may need to ask Larry (I tried googling just now without luck), but my guess is that some of the early names were chosen simply because Larry found them amusing. Remember, these names were chosen by the guy who wrote Black Perl in 1990. It was a different era back then and perhaps these amusing early names are just a reflection of those times. I doubt they would be chosen today because I've noticed that Larry has recently been outvoted (or changed his mind) on a number of "amusing" or at least "cute" names. For example, the Perl 5 porters objected to "err" and in Perl 6 land "comb" (to "comb" the words out of a string, get it?) was later changed to the less amusing and less evocative "words".

In reply to Re: Etymology of chomp? by eyepopslikeamosquito
in thread Etymology of chomp? by tankee

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