You're nearly there, but should specify the file-handle as a 'bareword', like FILE instead of $FILE.

This will do the trick: 

my $contents;
{
  local $/;
  open (FILE, $txt_file) || die "Cannot open $txt_file:$!";
  $contents = <FILE>
}

[download]
Update: You would likely have been warned if you used strict (because $FILE was uninitialised).
As a sidenote: there is a nice idiom to slurp in a file in thread Cheap idioms.

--
Cheers, Joe

In reply to Re: Putting file contents into a scalar by joe++
in thread Putting file contents into a scalar by ByteOrNybble

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