How about this (untested):

$!/usr/bin/perl
@A=map{abs}@ARGV;for($y=9;$y>0;$y--){print$A[1]-$y>$A[0]-$_?$A[1]-$y:(
+$A[0]-$_)for(1..9);print$/}
[download]

Basically all I did was eliminate the redundant use of 'abs', and shortened the name of ARGV. Oh, and used $/ instead of "\n" to save two keystrokes. It's about 15 keystrokes shorter, I believe.

UPDATE:

Many apologies for bungling my untested attempt. As you pointed out, the abs wasn't exactly redundant. I just read precidence wrong. Actually, it was redundant, but its parameters weren't. In the spirit of "do it once and once only" I broke the common functionality out into a subroutine. And as before, I used $/ instead of "\n". The following IS tested, works, and saves you ten keystrokes (for 98 total, plus the shebang line).

sub a{abs$ARGV[shift]-pop}for($y=9;$y;$y--){print a(1,$y)>a(0,$_)?a 1,
+$y:a(0,$_)for 1..9;print$/}
[download]

Dave

"If I had my life to do over again, I'd be a plumber." -- Albert Einstein