It's much easier to put the file into a string first and then remove the line separators, like so: 
use strict;
use warnings;

$_ = join '',<DATA>; s/\n//g;
print;

__DATA__
line 1
line 2
line 3

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In reply to Re: How to slurp files and join lines by TedPride
in thread How to slurp files and join lines by alecclews

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