How do I read the contents of a small text file into a scalar in Perl?

Question

I have a small text file that I\'d like to read into a scalar variable exactly as it is in the file (preserving line separators and other whitespace).

The equivalent

Answer 1

If I don't have Slurp or Perl6::Slurp near by then I normally go with....

open my $fh, '<', 'file.txt' or die $!;

my $whole_file = do { local $/; <$fh> };