I don't because there's still an end of line marker. You could check for that explicitly:

while(<DATA>){
    next if $_ eq $/;
    push @data, $_;
}

# shorter:

$_ ne $/ and push @data, $_ while <DATA>;
[download]

See perldoc perlvar about $/. Or you could remove the linebreaks:

while(<DATA>){
    chomp;
    next if $_ eq '';
    push @data, $_;
}
[download]

See perldoc -f chomp.

Makeshifts last the longest.