Doesn't seem pretty, but you don't have to deal with closing or colliding with the filehandle...

my @contents = do { open(my $fh, "/my/text/file") or die; <$fh> };
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tye recommended something like this, some time ago.

my @contents = do { local *ARGV; @ARGV=('/my/text/file'); <> };
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His also supports concatenation of multiple files, just add them in the parentheses.