cat a file, removing leading and trailing space, removing empty lines, and ensuring every line is followed by a newline.

cat-clean.pl

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

# cat a file, removing leading and trailing space, removing
# empty lines, and ensuring every line is followed by a newline.

use strict;
use warnings;

my $line;
while (defined($line=<>)) {
	$line =~ s/[\n\r\f]+$//g;
	$line =~ s/^\s+//;
	$line =~ s/\s+$//;
  next if ($line =~ /^\s*(\#.*)?$/); # skip comments & blank lines
  print "$line\n";
}