Also checkout substr. Setting the second argument to a negative number (-1) and the fourth (optional) argument to '' can achieve the same thing, or you can use it like an lvalue and assign a value to it.

my $foo="foo";
my $bar=substr($foo, -1, 1, '');
print "Foo: $foo\tBar: $bar\n";
# or
substr($foo,-1)=''; 
print "Foo: $foo\n";
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Results:
Foo: fo        Bar: o
Foo: f
Comment on Re: Stripping characters from strings
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