What's the point in chomping if you only going to put it back with -l?

perl -e"$_=`echo butter`;print"

but that becomes

perl -e"print `echo butter`"

but hang on, we can simplify that further

echo butter

Oh dear! Now I've done away with the need for perl altogether, which means this thread becomes off topic and is reaper bait:)

Levity aside, I think the OP's question really comes down to "Why can't I do..."

print chomp( `some system command` );

Which is certainly something I have tried more than once, and the only answers I have come up with, and there is probably better wisdom on this kicking around somewhere, is that if chomp returned the result of the thing it chomped, then

chomp(@lines) would have to become

@lines = chomp(@lines) which would be less efficient.

and if you used it in a while loop

while(my $line = chomp(<>) ) {
   #do stuff;
}
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The loop would terminate early on zero-length blank lines as chomp would return '', which would test false.