I'm working with the assumption that your <br> tags are NOT in the actual code, but artifacts of a posting error.

If that is the case, then you can do something like this:

my ($var1,$var2) = ('',''); # scope vars to work with strict
open(FILE,"$filename") or die "$!";
read FILE, $code, -s $filename;
close(FILE);
eval($code);
[download]

Update: Per comments that follow, I can see why doing an eval on a file can open up security issues. That wasn't the OP's question. I assume the OP can handle their own security concerns. My answer addressed simply how to do what the OP asked, nothing more and nothing less.