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 in Python would be something like

buffer = ''  try:     file = open('fileName', 'rU')     try:         buffer += file.read()     finally:         file.close() except IOError:     buffer += 'The file could not be opened.' 

This is for simply redisplaying the contents of the file on a web page, which is why my error message is going into my file buffer.

Answer 1

From the Perl Cookbook:

my $filename = 'file.txt'; open( FILE, '<', $filename ) or die 'Could not open file:  ' . $!;  undef $/; my $whole_file = <FILE>; 

I would localize the changes though:

my $whole_file = ''; {     local $/;     $whole_file = <FILE>; }