Question

open( my $handle, '<', 'file.dat' ) or die $!;
my @data = map { do_things($_) } <$handle>;
close $handle;

This imperative open and close above stand out like an eyesore in otherwise nice code. Is there a way to write this in a cleaner way? I could write my own read_file subroutine, but there should be something like this already.

sub read_file {
    open( my $handle, '<', $_[0] ) or croak $!;
    return <$handle>;
}
my @data = map { do_things($_) } read_file('file.dat');

Efficiency is not important, but the solution should be cross-platform.

Answer 1

Process free, use File::Slurp:

use File::Slurp;
my @data = map {...} read_file($filename);