A more normal way to do this is to skip the blank lines and then process those lines further. 
while (my $line = <$fh_in>)
{ 
   next if ($line ~ m/^\s*$/); #skip blank lines
   #more processing of this non-blank line
}

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In reply to Re^5: Remove whitespace between lines by Marshall
in thread Remove whitespace between lines by wrkrbeee

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