PHP has a handy function named file() that will read the contents of a file into a variable. I wrote a quick Perl version of the same function.

sub pfile {
    my $target = shift();
    my $is_fh  = defined(fileno($target));
    my $ret;

    # If we passed in a FH read everything from that
    if ($is_fh) {
        while (readline($target)) { $ret .= $_; }
    # Else it's a file to be opened 
    } else {
        open (my $fh, "<", $target) or return undef;

        while (<$fh>) { $ret .= $_; }
    }

    if (wantarray) {
        return split('\n',$ret);
    }

    return $ret;
}