Thank you all-- ikegami, rvosa, sgifford, cdarke, starbolin, graff, GrandFather, and eff_i_g -- for your great comments on this.

open(my $fh, '<', $filename)
   or die("Unable to open ...: $!\n");

while (<$fh>) {
   chomp;
   ...
}
[download]

... did the trick.