if you
undef $/; then you can say
my @array = split /\n+/, <DATA>; and this will ignore all the empty lines.
Update
Sorry about the minimalist post - didn't have any time earlier. The reason this works is that $/ (newline by default) is used as the end-of-line character when reading from a filehandle. If you undefine it then no end of line is seen and the whole file is "slurped" in, in one go. "split"ting this on one (or more) newlines does the "chomp"ing for you while also returning a list. hope this makes it a bit clearer.
"Argument is futile - you will be ignorralated!"
