NAME

chop - remove the last character from a string

SYNOPSIS

chop VARIABLE

chop LIST

chop

DESCRIPTION

Chops off the last character of a string and returns the character chopped. It's used primarily to remove the newline from the end of an input record, but is much more efficient than s/\n// because it neither scans nor copies the string. If VARIABLE is omitted, chops $_. Example:

    while (<>) {
	chop;	# avoid \n on last field
	@array = split(/:/);
	...
    }

You can actually chop anything that's an lvalue, including an assignment:

    chop($cwd = `pwd`);
    chop($answer = <STDIN>);

If you chop a list, each element is chopped. Only the value of the last chop is returned.

Note that chop returns the last character. To return all but the last character, use substr.