This safer version of /chop removes any trailing string
that corresponds to the current value of $/ (also known as
$INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR in the English module). It returns the total
number of characters removed from all its arguments. It's often used to
remove the newline from the end of an input record when you're worried
that the final record may be missing its newline. When in paragraph
mode ($/ = ""), 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.
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).
Take our 
