my $linesToSkip = 2;
while ( <FILE> )
{
    next if 0 < $linesToSkip --;
    # Do something here with the lines of interest.
    ...
}
[download]

I'd rather segregate the discarding of header lines (or whatever) from the processing of lines I'm interested in.

my $linesToSkip = 2;
my $discard = <FILE> for 1 .. $linesToSkip;
while ( <FILE> )
{
    # Do something here with the lines of interest.
    ...
}
[download]

I hope this is of interest.

Cheers,

JohnGG

Update: Fixed typo.