How does chomp vs chop affect performance or memory usage?

In Perl, both `chomp` and `chop` are used to remove characters from the end of a string, but they do so in different ways. Understanding the performance implications and memory usage for each can help in writing more efficient Perl scripts.

Difference between chomp and chop

• chomp - Removes the newline character (`\n`) from the end of a string. It only removes the trailing whitespace/newline characters. If there is no newline, the string remains unchanged.
• chop - Removes the last character from a string, regardless of what it is. This means that it could theoretically remove more than just a newline character.

Performance and Memory Usage

In terms of performance, `chomp` is generally faster than `chop`, especially when dealing with large strings or files, as it performs a targeted operation. `chop` may result in additional operations because it does not discriminate between characters. Memory usage is similar for both since they operate on the same string object in place.

Example

# Example of chomp
my $string_with_newline = "Hello, World!\n";
chomp($string_with_newline);
print $string_with_newline; # Outputs: Hello, World!

# Example of chop
my $string_with_char = "Hello, World!";
chop($string_with_char);
print $string_with_char; # Outputs: Hello, World