you (probably) might want to use some idomatic perl, its called 'slurp mode'. It means being able to take in (slurp) the whole file in one go, this is possible by temporarily 'undef'ining the File Seperator $\. 
open(FILE1, $ARGV[0]) || die "Error: $!\n";
{
  local $/;          #value is restored at end this block
  undef $/;          #'slurp mode'
  @lines = <FILE1>;  #slurp all lines
}
#$/ is as back 'to normal', so nothing unexpected happens later

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local is 'sometimes' the 'right' way.

In reply to RE: RE: Parsing a file one line at a time by Anonymous Monk
in thread Parsing a file one line at a time by cburns

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