Sometimes, you do not want the entire
value that has been assigned to a scalar variable. For example,
it is often the case that the lines you retrieve from a data file
will incorporate a new line character at the end of the line.
Data files often take advantage of the new line character as a
"database row delimiter". That is, every line in a database file
is a new database item. For example, here is a snippet from an
address book data file:
Sol|Selena|sol@foobar.com|456-7890
Birznieks|Gunther|gunther@foobar.com|456-7899
When the script reads each line, it also
reads in the new line information. Thus, the first line is
actually represented as:
Sol|Selena|sol@foobar.com|456-7890\n
The final "\n" is a new line. Since we
do not actually want the "\n" character included with the last
database field, we use the chop function. The chop function chops
off the very last character of a scalar variable using the syntax:
chop ($variable_name);
Thus, we would take off the final new line
character as follows:
$database_row = "Sol|Selena|sol@foobar.com|456-7890\n";
chop ($database_row);
