Why use a regex that changes the behavior for whitespace-only lines? Matching "something other than newline" can be written as /[^\n]/ or more succinctly as </code>/./</code>

chomp $line if $line =~ /./;
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Note: this wont behave the same as the original for strings consisting entirely of multiple newlines. i.e. original chomped "\n\n\n\n", this will not.;

-Blake