Comparing and Manipulating Strings in Ruby

The chop (or chop!) method chops off the last character of a string, and thechomp(chomp!) method chomps off the record separator ($/)—usually just a newline—from a string. Consider the stringjoe, a limerick created as a here document:

  joe = <<limerick
  There once was a fellow named Joe
  quite fond of Edgar Allen Poe 
    He read with delight
    Nearly half the night
  When his wife said "Get up!" he said "No."
  limerick # => "There once was a fellow named Joe\nquite fond of Edgar Allen Poe\n
  He read with delight\n  Nearly half the night\nWhen his wife said "Get up!" he
  said "No."\n"

Applychomp!to remove the last record separator (\n):

  joe.chomp! # => "There once was a fellow named Joe\nquite fond of Edgar Allen Poe\n
  He read with delight\n Nearly half the night\nWhen his wife said "Get up!" he said "No.""

Now apply it again, andchomp!returnsnilwithout altering the string because there is no record separator at the end of the string:

  joe.chomp! # => nil

chop,chomp’s greedy twin, shows no mercy on the string, removing the last character (a quote) with abandon:

  joe.chop! = "There once was a fellow named Joe\nquite fond of Edgar Allen Poe\n He
  read with delight\n  Nearly half the night\nWhen his wife said "Get up!" he said \
  "No"