chopping lots of characters

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

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Re: chopping lots of characters by hmerrill (Friar) on Jun 24, 2004 at 12:12 UTC
Yeah you can do that by calling chop 4 times, but that's 4 function calls. Without actually checking performance on this I would think(?) that one call to substring would be faster, but... `$string = substr($string, 0, -4);` [download] that will give you $string containing all but the last 4 characters of what it started with. HTH.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: chopping lots of characters by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Jun 24, 2004 at 12:38 UTC
A quicky test shows that 3-arg substr is faster than chop, but a 4-arg substr is even faster - and that's to be expected because it saves a copy. Differences aren't dramatic though. #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Benchmark qw /cmpthese/; chomp (our @strings = <DATA>); cmpthese -5 => { chop => 'my @copy = @strings; foreach my $str (@copy) { chop $str; chop $str; chop $str; chop $str; }', substr3 => 'my @copy = @strings; foreach my $str (@copy) { $str = substr $str => 0, -4; }', substr4 => 'my @copy = @strings; foreach my $str (@copy) { substr $str => -4, 4 => ""; }', }; __DATA__ asdfjas;dfjas;dfjas;dkfjasdfasdf asd sdfajsd;flaks Rate chop substr3 substr4 chop 152166/s -- -11% -14% substr3 170187/s 12% -- -4% substr4 176800/s 16% 4% -- [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: chopping lots of characters by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Jun 24, 2004 at 11:45 UTC
As you said, substr is the way to go. `chop` chops off one character, and not more than one. So, if you want to chop off 4 characters using `chop`, you need to `chop` 4 times. Either by duplicating the line, or by using a loop. You might want to bail out if the string is empty: `my $i = 4; chop $string while $i -- && length $string;` [download] Or `my $i = 4; 1 while $i -- && defined chop $string;` [download] although the latter might want to chop an empty string (but only once). Abigail	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: chopping lots of characters by Anonymous Monk on Jun 24, 2004 at 11:52 UTC
thanks thats cool, think I might just stick with chop repeated 4 times though - easier to read and about the same number of characters anyway ;-)	[reply]
Re: chopping lots of characters by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Jun 24, 2004 at 12:33 UTC
I realise I can probably use substr, but wondered if there was a cool way to do it with chop. You mean, "I realize I probably should use substr, . . ." right? In other words, if I was your maintenance programmer, I would be very confused why you chose to repeat the same line four times instead of using substr. Memes develop for a reason. ------ We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age. Then there are Damian modules.... sigh* ... that's not about being less-lazy -- that's about being on some really good drugs -- you know, there is no spoon.* - flyingmoose I shouldn't have to say this, but any code, unless otherwise stated, is untested	[reply]
Re^2: chopping lots of characters by Anonymous Monk on Jun 25, 2004 at 08:39 UTC
Not sure what Memes are...? But yes you are right, I just couldn't be bothered to look up the syntax ;-) but now you've made me feel bad i'll change it! thanks	[reply]
Re: chopping lots of characters by japhy (Canon) on Jun 24, 2004 at 12:50 UTC
`chop($x) for 1 .. 4;` _____________________________________________________ Jeff`[japhy]`Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker, who'd like a job (NYC-area) `s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;`	[reply] [d/l]
Re: chopping lots of characters by Fletch (Bishop) on Jun 24, 2004 at 11:57 UTC
If the four characters are always the same you might consider setting `$/` and using `chomp` instead.	[reply] [d/l] [select]