Well I was able to cut it down to the following. I don't know that it's any faster or not but it's less to look at. :)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $line;
my $maxline = 0; # make sure you get the length of the first line

while($line = <DATA>) {
    chomp($line);
    print "$line\n";
    $maxline = length($line) if length($line)>$maxline;
    $maxline -= 1 if $line =~ m/.*\032$/;
}
#-----------------------------------------------
# using the char X to see it print a space based on maxline count
# in this case it's 29
#-----------------------------------------------
print "X" for (1..$maxline);
print "\n";

__DATA__
This is my file
it doesn't have
a blank line at the end
of it based on
the maxline count of the file
that it read.
<P>
[download]

A couple of things I did notice though:

1. If you're chomping the line coming in, why are you checking it for \r again? Maybe I'm overlooking something there and if so, I know someone will point it out.

2. Why are you checking the first line of data outside your loop?

3. What is all the ( what appears to be - to me anyway ) extraneous code at the top or is that another part of your program that you didn't post?

Hope that helps!

Some people fall from grace. I prefer a running start...