TITLE

chomp() changes.

VERSION

  Maintainer: Ted Ashton <ashted@southern.edu>
  Date: 7 Aug 2000
  Mailing List: perl6-language@perl.org
  Number: 58
  Version: 1
  Status: Developing

ABSTRACT

The current return value of chomp() is little-used and tends to confuse those learning perl. Here is presented a change to chomp()'s return value and to the while(<FILEHANDLE>) construction.

DESCRIPTION

This RFC contains two proposed changes. First, as it is common to want to removed newlines upon reading a file,

  while (chomp(<FILEHANDLE>)) {
    . . .
  }

should become the equivalent of

  while (<FILEHANDLE>) {
    chomp;
    . . .
  }

or, to put it more explicitly,

  while (defined($_ = <FILEHANDLE>)) {
    chomp $_;
    . . .
  }

where the various equivalent constructions would, of course, work as expected.

Second, as it seems common for someone learning perl to expect

  $without_newline = chomp($previous_form);

to put a copy of the text in $previous_form, sans newline, into $without_newline while not modifying $previous_form, Perl should do just that.

chomp() called in void context would remove the newline from the variable (or members of the list) upon which it was called. chomp() called in a scalar context would leave its argument variable untouched and instead return a chomp()ed version of that variable's contents. Likewise and furthermore for other contexts.

IMPLEMENTATION

As I know little about perl5 internals and even less about perl6, I shall simply present the following notes:

This proposal does not speak to what should happen with chop().
The proposed demise of $/ and stated determination that there will be no default filehandle will have an effect on chomp(). After all, that's how it determines which character to seek at the end of the line.

REFERENCES