I ran some benchmarks and I the real answer is that while <..> has been finely tuned. On a large file it is almost as fast as foreach over a list.

/dev/null
               Rate        for     whyfor      while while_list   for_list
for        374878/s         --       -13%       -15%       -55%       -62%
whyfor     433016/s        16%         --        -2%       -48%       -56%
while      442469/s        18%         2%         --       -47%       -55%
while_list 833025/s       122%        92%        88%         --       -16%
for_list   991880/s       165%       129%       124%        19%         --

/usr/share/dict/words
             Rate        for while_list     whyfor      while   for_list
for        4.80/s         --       -35%       -37%       -38%       -43%
while_list 7.40/s        54%         --        -2%        -5%       -13%
whyfor     7.57/s        58%         2%         --        -2%       -11%
while      7.75/s        62%         5%         2%         --        -9%
for_list   8.48/s        77%        15%        12%         9%         --

/etc/passwd
              Rate        for     whyfor      while while_list   for_list
for        14440/s         --       -13%       -16%       -24%       -49%
whyfor     16599/s        15%         --        -4%       -12%       -42%
while      17224/s        19%         4%         --        -9%       -39%
while_list 18915/s        31%        14%        10%         --       -33%
for_list   28442/s        97%        71%        65%        50%         --

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use Benchmark qw( cmpthese );

foreach my $file qw ( /dev/null /usr/share/dict/words /etc/passwd ) {
    open my $IN1, '<', $file or die "could not open $file";
    my @list = <$IN1>;
    seek( $IN1, 0, 0 );
    print "$file\n";
    cmpthese(
        -5,
        {
            for_list => sub {
                my %counts = ();
                ++$counts{$_} for @list;
                die unless keys %counts == @list;
            },
            while_list => sub {
                my $x      = 0;
                my %counts = ();
                ++$counts{$_} while defined( $_ = $list[ $x++ ] );
                die unless keys %counts == @list;
            },
            for => sub {
                seek( $IN1, 0, 0 );
                my %counts = ();
                ++$counts{$_} for <$IN1>;
                die unless keys %counts == @list;
            },
            while => sub {
                seek( $IN1, 0, 0 );
                my %counts = ();
                ++$counts{$_} while <$IN1>;
                die unless keys %counts == @list;
            },
            whyfor => sub {
                seek( $IN1, 0, 0 );
                my %counts = ();
                for ( ; defined( $_ = <$IN1> ) ; ) { ++$counts{$_}; }
                die unless keys %counts == @list;
            },
        }
    );
}
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