Chop and Chomp

chop function :

$number = <STDIN>;
chop ($number);
$result = $number + 1;

This is what is happening: When $number is assigned a line of standard input, it really is being assigned a string. For instance, if you enter 22, $number is assigned the string 22\n (the \n represents the newline character). The chop function removes the \n, leaving the string 22, and this string is converted to the number 22 in the arithmetic expression.


chomp function : chomp VARIABLE or chomp LIST

This safer version of "chop" removes any trailing string that corresponds to the current value of $/ (also known as $INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR.It returns the total number of characters removed from all its arguments. It's often used to remove the newline from the end of an input record when you're worried that the final record may be missing its newline. When in paragraph mode ("$/ = """), it removes all trailing newlines from the string. When in slurp mode ("$/ = undef") or fixed-length record mode ($/ is a reference to an integer or the like, see perlvar) chomp() won't remove anything. If VARIABLE is omitted, it chomps $_. Example:

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

If VARIABLE is a hash, it chomps the hash's values, but not its keys.You can actually chomp anything that's an lvalue, including an assignment:

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

If you chomp a list, each element is chomped, and the total number of characters removed is returned.If the "encoding" pragma is in scope then the lengths returned are calculated from the length of $/ in Unicode characters, which is not always the same as the length of $/ in the native encoding.

Note that parentheses are necessary when you're chomping anything that is not a simple variable. This is because "chomp $cwd = `pwd`;" is interpreted as "(chomp $cwd) = `pwd`;", rather than as "chomp( $cwd = `pwd` )" which you might expect. Similarly, "chomp $a, $b" is interpreted as "chomp($a), $b" rather than as "chomp($a, $b)".


For further info: go to unix prompt and type perldoc -f <ANY FUNCTION>