I have one in my utils library called chip which seems appropriate.

sub chip{ substr $_[ 0 ], 0, 1, '' }

my $s = 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog';

print chip( $s ), ' : ', $s while $s;

t  :  he quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
h  :  e quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
e  :   quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
   :  quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
q  :  uick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
u  :  ick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
i  :  ck brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
c  :  k brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
k  :   brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
   :  brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
b  :  rown fox jumps over the lazy dog
r  :  own fox jumps over the lazy dog
o  :  wn fox jumps over the lazy dog
w  :  n fox jumps over the lazy dog
n  :   fox jumps over the lazy dog
   :  fox jumps over the lazy dog
f  :  ox jumps over the lazy dog
o  :  x jumps over the lazy dog
x  :   jumps over the lazy dog
   :  jumps over the lazy dog
j  :  umps over the lazy dog
u  :  mps over the lazy dog
m  :  ps over the lazy dog
p  :  s over the lazy dog
s  :   over the lazy dog
   :  over the lazy dog
o  :  ver the lazy dog
v  :  er the lazy dog
e  :  r the lazy dog
r  :   the lazy dog
   :  the lazy dog
t  :  he lazy dog
h  :  e lazy dog
e  :   lazy dog
   :  lazy dog
l  :  azy dog
a  :  zy dog
z  :  y dog
y  :   dog
   :  dog
d  :  og
o  :  g
g  :
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To complete the theme: sub chimp (@) { s!^$/+!! for @_ }

Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! :)

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks.

"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"Think for yourself!" - Abigail
"Memory, processor, disk in that order on the hardware side. Algorithm, algorithm, algorithm on the code side." - tachyon

sub chimp (@) {s!^$/+!! for (@_ ? @_ : $_)}
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chomp() does not remove all trailing record separators, just one. The special case is paragraph mode where all trailing newlines are removed. When in fixed-length record mode ($/ = \$some_int) or slurp mode ($/ = undef) chomp() does nothing. All these special cases aren't handled by &chimp.

Also, the return value isn't analoguous with chomp()'s.

ihb

See perltoc if you don't know which perldoc to read!

The naive approach of

perl -le "$f='hello world'; chop reverse $f; print $f"
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doesn't work sadly, and the correct approach of

perl -le "$f='hello world'; $f=reverse $f;chop $f;$f=reverse $f; print
+ $f"
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is far too clumsy, so relying on the fact that substr returns an lvalue, I'd use:

perl -le "$f='hello world'; substr($f,0,1)=''; print $f"
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Of course, there are many many more methods of removing the first character of a string:

perl -le "$f='hello world'; $f=~s!^.!!; print $f"
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or

perl -le "$f='hello world'; $f=~s!.!!; print $f"
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which I guess is the shortest variant, clocking in at 9 characters.

perl -le "$f='hello world'; $f=~s!^.!!; print $f"
perl -le "$f='hello world'; $f=~s!.!!; print $f"
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should be

perl -le "$f='hello world'; $f=~s!^.!!s; print $f"
perl -le "$f='hello world'; $f=~s!.!!;s print $f"
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The first character could be a newline.

$_="monkey" ; 
s/^.(.*)$/$1/; 
print
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Actually you want s/^.//s You need the /s to make a . match *anything* - it does not by default. Also why capture to $1 only to replace it with an exact replica?

i don't know... i'm just a beginner, beginners make mistakes :-D
so i'm sorry: i just assumed the first character would never be a newline (that's the only thing the /s does actually.. it allows you to also match a newline with the .)
--
to ask a question is a moment of shame
to remain ignorant is a lifelong shame

I meant chomp of course

Then you will have to test whether the first character has the value of Perl's special variable   $/   to be removed. See   chomp.

Cheers, Sören

$varname = substr($varname, 1);
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Hi!

Chop removes only whitespace...


What you mean is chomp. chop removes any character.

EDIT: TedPride: Please don't just delete what you wrote. Now nobody knows what I have been talking about ... as usual :)

mawe

Because you have quoted it we know what was there. As a minor pedant chomp will remove any char that corresponds to $/ aka the $INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR. For example if you undef $/ but don't localise (or restore) it chomp will mysteriously fail. Not only that it is a global.....

cheers

tachyon

$textvar =~ s/^\s+//;
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