Why is this?
Because The Free Manual says so. According to perlop (search for <<EOF):
If the terminating identifier is on the last line of the program, you must be sure there is a newline after it; otherwise, Perl will give the warning Can't find string terminator "END" anywhere before EOF....

In reply to Re: Why do here-docs have to end with a newline, not EOF? by toolic
in thread Why do here-docs have to end with a newline, not EOF? by Cody Pendant

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