This is skipping lines which only have a new line char at the start. m/^\s*$/ is a better way of saying a line with only white space characters because it allows any number of non-printing whitespace characters on the line. Whitespace is \n\f\s\f\r Update: oof..goof should be \n\f\s\t\r order doesn't matter, but there are 5 of these white space critters and I goofed! Ooops!

m/^\n/ and next; ... }
This is sort of a "cheater" way to execute the "next" if the match is true. Sometimes this is a good idea, sometimes not. I would probably code it like this:

next if m/^\s*$/;     #skip/re-prompt for blank lines
#or
if (m/^\s*$/)  #very unlikely that I would write this
{              #but, it means the same as above
   next;
}
I would not write the below. This is obfuscated bad code.
Because it obscures the "if" nature of the statement.
m/^\s*$/ and next;
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