You want to do this:

cat access.log | perl -ne '#stuff#'
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Or, if you want to print the result after every line:

cat access.log | perl -nep '#stuff#'
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The -n switch puts the while (<>) loop around your input file for you: see perlrun.

And, to really spoil you for choice, Perl is smart enough to decide where its input is coming from, so you can do this as well:

perl -ne '#stuff#' access.log
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CU
Robartes-