Try chomp
this remove the last character of a string, if it's a newline.
this work also for an array ( processing each entry ).
Becarefull, this function return true or false ( newline or not ) ! not the modified line.
so

my $date = chomp( `date ...` );
[download]

will not return what you want, but

chomp( my $date = `date ...` );
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does.
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Hope this helps