Slightly more idiomatic would be with a useful die (and a semicolon terminating the first line): open(my $fh, "<", "file.txt") or die "Error reading file: $!

Slightly more idiomatic would be with a useful die (and a semicolon terminating the first line): open(my $fh, "<", "file.txt") or die "Error reading file: $!"; my @lines = <$fh>; To slurp into a string rather than an array of lines: open(my $fh, "<", "file.txt") or die "Error reading file: $!"; my $s = join('',<$fh>);