Hmmmm. Thought I was going to agree with ikegami (or, at least ++ the parent)...
but for some unknown reason, decided to check (with a little elaboration)... and got this surprise:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
# from thread 770979

my $discard ="|";

$discard .=  <DATA> for 1 .. 2;

print " " . "-" x19 . "\n \$discard: $discard\n" ." " . "-" x19 . "\n"
+;

print while <DATA>;

=head  OUTPUT:
 -------------------
 $discard: |Header 1
Header 2

 -------------------
Data 1
Data 2
Data 3
=cut

__END__
Header 1
Header 2
Data 1
Data 2
Data 3
[download]

Now, yes, for real-world tasks, there's no need to stick the skipped lines into a $var, but johngg's reply to citromatik reflects a mindset I frequently favor, too, when responding to what appears to be either a newbie question or one that could have been answered with a bit of searching (i.e." ?node_id=3989;BIT=skip%2C%20first%20line%2C%20file;BIS=%20%2C).