=over

=item chop VARIABLE

=item chop LIST

=item chop

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 C<s/\n//> because it neither
scans nor copies the string.  If VARIABLE is omitted, chops C<$_>.
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 C<chop()> is returned.

Note that C<chop()> returns the last character.  To return all but the last
character, use C<substr($string, 0, -1)>.

=back