Everybody should be aware that in an ASCII file, the last line may NOT contain a '\n' character. This means the following code:

while (sysread FILE, $buffer, 4096) {
        $lines += ($buffer =~ tr/\n//);
    }
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will never count the last line! Please do not use the above code !!!

Use:

while (<FILE>) {
  $lines++
}
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