How can I remove the last character of a file in unix?

Question

Say I have some arbitrary multi-line text file:

sometext
moretext
lastline

How can I remove only the last character (the e, not the newline

Answer 1

Here's another using ex, which I find not as cryptic as the sed solution:

 printf '%s\n' '$' 's/.$//' wq | ex somefile

The $ goes to the last line, the s deletes the last character, and wq is the well known (to vi users) write+quit.