what do you think about this alternative? 
my @files =  map { /^\s*(\S.*?)\s*$/ && $1 || "" } <$FILES>;

[download]
Quite bad actually. s/^\s+//; s/\s+$//; is common idiom enough that people instantly see what is being done (it is for instance mentioned in the perlfaq) - your solution requires more thinking to see what it does.

And then there's performance. 

use Benchmark 'cmpthese';

our @data = ('foo', 'foo bar', ' foo', 'foo  ', ' foo ', ' foo bar ');
+ 

cmpthese -1, {
  faq    => 'for my $x (@::data) {$_ = $x; s/^\s+//; s/\s+$//}',
  Skeeve => 'for my $x (@::data) {$_ = $x; $_ = /^\s*(\S.*?)\s*$/ && $
+1 || ""}' 
}; 
__END__
          Rate Skeeve    faq
Skeeve 19139/s     --   -68%
faq    59077/s   209%     --

[download]

In reply to Re^2: PerlCritic, $_ and map by JavaFan
in thread PerlCritic, $_ and map by chexmix

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