Your first suggestion would seem to double the input record separator. Did you test it? Do you somehow have autochomp enabled?

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $line = join $/, <DATA>;

print "<<$line>>\n";

__DATA__
one
two
tie my
shoe

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In reply to Re: Re: Re: Perl Idioms Explained - my $string = do { local $/; <FILEHANDLE> }; by chromatic
in thread Perl Idioms Explained - my $string = do { local $/; <FILEHANDLE> }; by jeffa

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