This and other RFCs are available on the web at http://dev.perl.org/rfc/ =head1 TITLE Retire chop(). =head1 VERSION Maintainer: Nathan Torkington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: 5 Sep 2000 Last Modified: 18 Sep 2000 Mailing List: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Number: 195 Version: 3 Status: Frozen =head1 ABSTRACT Remove chop() from the core. Its purpose is better served by chomp(), so its remaining applications are few and limited. =head1 CHANGES * fixed perl526 translation. (v3) * Added mention of how per-filehandle autochomping would affect this RFC. (v2) =head1 DESCRIPTION chop()'s original purpose was to remove trailing line terminators. However, chop() is dangerous: it always removes the last character, and it doesn't care whether the last character is a line terminator or not. So chomp() was introduced. This only removes the value of $/, and if there's no $/ at the end of the string then it doesn't remove anything. This makes it safer: if you don't know whether your string is chomp()ed or not, you can chomp() it anyway. With chop() you had to have a separate explicit test. chop() also doesn't know about $/ and the different values it might have. chop() is still occasionally used, but very rarely. Not enough, in my opinion, for chop() to stay in the core. Its functionality might be available in a library. If filehandles gain the ability to automatically remove their record separators, then chomp() will still be needed. =head1 IMPLEMENTATION The perl526 translator can simply use do { my ($foo) = s/(.)\z//s; $foo } for a chop() action. If there were a chop() in a standard library then the conversion would simply be a matter of putting: use String::Chop; # or whatever at the top of any converted program that uses chop(). Implementation in perl6 is very straightforward: don't implement chop(). =head1 REFERENCES RFC 58: C<chomp()> changes. perlfunc manpage for discussion of chomp() and chop()
