Don't see how this works. This must just be a fragment. Seems like you need at least this much:

my $file = 'sample.txt';
my $buf;
{
  local *FH;
  open FH, "$file" or die $!;
  -f FH and sysread FH, $buf, -s FH;
}
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results are in $buf after the read...

Unless you meant to write to sample.txt in the first place, and FH was just presumed open to some readable file...

thanks,
-Cadphile...