Easiest way to open a text file and read it into an array with Perl

Question

Adding a standard Perl file open function to each script I have is a bit annoying:

sub openfile{
    (my $filename) = @_;
    open FILE,\"$filename\" or die          


        

Answer 1

For quick and dirty, I rather like the simplicity of mucking with @ARGV.

# Ysth is right, it doesn't automatically die; I need another line.
use 5.010;
use strict;
my @rows = do { 
    use warnings FATAL => 'inplace'; # oddly enough, this is the one. ??
    @ARGV='/a/file/somewhere';
    <>;
};
say q(Not gettin' here.);

If perl* cannot open the file, it automatically dies.

---

* - the executable, so please don't capitalize.

Answer 2

You might also want to consider using Tie::File, particularly if you are reading larger files and don't want to read the entire file into memory. It's a core module. Also, please refer to perlfaq5.