$binary is not a file handle. It's a normal scalar variable that you've stuffed the entire contents of the file into.

Side note... you're best to use the three argument form of open(), and use a lexical file handle as opposed to a bareword global one:

open my $fh, '<', 'file.ext' or die "Can't open file: $!";

while (<$fh>) {
    ...
}
[download]