Re: RFC: Filehandle type-defining punctuation

[Tom Christiansen]

>Point taken, I did actually think of most of these. The difference is
>all of these return something still:

>   $object  = tie %hash, $class;
>   $chopped = chop($var);
>   $chomped = chomp($var);
>   $ref     = bless {}, $class;

I'd've written that more like

    $data_axed = chop($var);
    $charcount = chomp($var);

Or something.  People really do find those two functions confusing.
Is this something we'd like to address by having versions that don't
take LVALUES?

Then again, I like the symmetry here:

    while ($data = chop $string) { } 
    while ($item = pop  @array)  { } 

But people always think of it as working

    $newstring = chomp $oldstring;

where $oldstring is untouched, analogous to nearly all the
other functions, like

    $toward_zero = int $floating_number;

--tom