Generally when I'm reading files that have the potential for comments or blank lines, a simple regular expression or two does the trick: 
while (<DATA>) {
   s/\s#.*//;
   next unless /\S/;
   do_something($_);
}

__DATA__
# This is my file
# with a few lines of comments

data=here        # another comment
more=data
                 # more comments
and=more

# end of file

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In reply to Re: How do I strip lines prefixed by a by Fastolfe
in thread How do I strip lines prefixed by a "#" by Coplan

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