I'd never choose the second method. With the first, it's immediately clear what it does. With the second, it isn't. And somehow I doubt it's faster - it certainly doesn't look like it, as you first make a list of all the lines, then join them together, meaning you get more than double the memory usage. I'd rather do

    my $text = do {local (@ARGV, $/) = $file; <>};
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"Still do it in Perl" isn't a goal, IMO.

Abigail