Note that chomp can act on an array so you can:

use strict;
use warnings;

my $file1 = <<FILE;
apple
goat
chocolate
newyork
FILE

open IN, '<', \$file1;
my @lines = <IN>;
close IN;

chomp @lines;
print "@lines1\n";
[download]

Prints:

apple goat chocolate newyork
[download]