Typically, in GIS, we work with data that influences other data in some form due to their inherit spatial relationship. This means that we need to work with one dataset to edit, update, and even delete another dataset. A typical example of this is an administrative boundary, which is a polygon that you cannot see on a physical surface but that influences feature information it crosses such as a lake. If we have a lake polygon and an administrative boundary, we might want to know how many square meters of lake belongs to each administrative boundary.

Another example could be a forest polygon that contains one species of trees that crosses a river. We might want to know the area on either side of the river. In the first scenario, we need to transform our administrative boundaries into LineStrings and then perform the cut.

To see what this looks like, take a look at this spoiler on how the results will look up front since we all like a good visual.