use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my $fname = shift or die "usage: $0 fname\n";
open(my $fh, '<', $fname) or die "error: open '$fname': $!";

# Slurp file contents into string $contents
my $contents = do { local $/; <$fh> };
close $fh;

# Extract what you want, for example
my @words = $contents =~ /\w+/g;

# ... or split on what you don't want, for example
# my @words = split /\s+/, $contents;

# In both approaches above you can tweak the regex to suit

# Print out the extracted word list to verify
for my $word (@words) {
   print "word='$word'\n";
}

# ... or use Data::Dumper
print Dumper( \@words );

# ... or write an automated test with specified input and expected output