You are *so* close on this one - I think the following is what you are after ...

$data = do { local $/ = undef; <$file> };

[download]

What this line of code does is clear the input record separator, $/, which is a newline character by default and delimits Perl's concept of what a "line" is. By undefining this variable, the first read of this file handle, <$file>, slurps the entire file into the variable. This behaviour is documented in perlvar.

 

Update

See particle's post in this thread here for an alternate method which also harnesses the magic of @ARGV allowing for the slurping of entire files into either an array or scalar using only a single line of code - For example: [@data|$data] = do { local( $/ ) = wantarray ? $/ : undef; local( @ARGV ) = @_; <> };

 

perl -le 'print+unpack("N",pack("B32","00000000000000000000000111110111"))'

In reply to Re: slurping into scalars by rob_au
in thread slurping into scalars by Anonymous Monk

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