Of all ways to put a file's lines in an array, I'm afraid that is one of the most inefficient. Moving data from INSIDE a do { } block to OUTSIDE a do { } block requires copying it, so you're making a list and checking it twice, so to speak.

If I REALLY needed to put a file into an array (why, I do not know), using the above trick, I'd do:

my @lines;
{ local @ARGV = $file; @lines = <> }
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But why should the file be in an array? Ick.

japhy -- Perl and Regex Hacker