[ruby-talk:03370] Re: chomp!

> I would have described chomp and chomp! as removing a new line,
> if present, otherwise not affecting the string at all.

Well, the biggest difference compared to your description is that one can
specify "the new line". And compared to Perl you can accomplish it without
using $/.

Moreover I'm interested in why Kernel.chomp is profoundly different than
String.chomp (the former doesn't return nil in any case). It might cause
these two programs to work differently and I, for one, wouldn't expect it.

  while gets
    # change $/
    foo = chomp
    # do something and return $/ (foo is always something)
  end

  while line = gets
    # change $/
    foo = line.chomp
    # do something and return $/ (most of all, beware, foo might be nil)
  end

For symmetry, while I can't say I see need for it, maybe we should have
String.chomped (and it's chop, !, and Kernel variations) returning the part
which has been removed.

	- Aleksi