I usually use this Perl Golf-ish subroutine that doesn't require a filehandle:

$contents=slurp('foobar');
sub slurp {local$/=<>if local@ARGV=@_}
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or use an in-line block:

 
{local$/;$contents=<>if local@ARGV='foobar'};
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or, if you could afford a filehandle and wasted CPU time:

 
$contents=join'',<_>if open _,'foobar';
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Of course, if this is really a Perl Golf contest entry, I'll probably write:

$contents=`cat foobar`
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But it's platform dependent and cheating, so don't do that. :-p

/Autrijus/