What is your definition of "doesn't work" here?

The goal was a replacement for <FILE>, so anything that doesn't return what <FILE> is buggy. In hangon's favour, I didn't consider autochomping a bug.

my $data = "\n"        # 1
         . "abc\n"     # 2
         . "def\n"     # 3
         . "\n"        # 4
         . "\n"        # 5
         . "ghi\n"     # 6
         . "\n"        # 7
         . "\n";       # 8

{
   print("<FILE>\n");
   my $lines = 0;
   open(my $fh, '<', \$data);
   while (<$fh>) {
      ++$lines;
      chomp;
      print("[$_]\n");
   }
   print($lines, "\n");
}

print("\n");

{
   print("split(/\n/, \$data)\n");
   my $lines = 0;
   foreach (split(/\n/, $data)) {
      ++$lines;
      print("[$_]\n");
   }
   print($lines, "\n");
}

print("\n");

{
   print("split(/\n/, \$data, -1)\n");
   my $lines = 0;
   foreach (split(/\n/, $data, -1)) {
      ++$lines;
      print("[$_]\n");
   }
   print($lines, "\n");
}

print("\n");

{
   print("split(/^/m, \$data)\n");
   my $lines = 0;
   foreach (split(/^/m, $data, -1)) {
      ++$lines;
      chomp;
      print("[$_]\n");
   }
   print($lines, "\n");
}
[download]

outputs

<FILE>
[]
[abc]
[def]
[]
[]
[ghi]
[]
[]
8       <-- This is what <FILE> gives.

split(/\n/, $data)
[]
[abc]
[def]
[]
[]
[ghi]
6       <-- Not 8. Failed to emulate <FILE>.

split(/\n/, $data, -1)
[]
[abc]
[def]
[]
[]
[ghi]
[]
[]
[]      <-- Extra line
9       <-- Not 8. Failed to emulate <FILE>.

split(/^/m, $data)
[]
[abc]
[def]
[]
[]
[ghi]
[]
[]
8       <-- Bingo!
[download]

wc -l says 8 as well, by the way.

Perl doesn't do this on my system:

uh, yes it does... $VAR4 = '';. Lines aren't *seperated* by newlines, they are *terminated* by them.