Perl skips the first line to read the file implementation code

#!/usr/bin/perl
open( READ, "<$file" );
readline READ; # skip the first line
while (<READ>) {
my ( $id, $axis1, $axis2, $axis3, $value ) = split / /;
$line = sprintf ( "%d %d %d %d %d %d",
$id, $axis1, $axis2, $axis3, $value, $axis1 + $axis2 );
print WRITE $line;
}
close READ;