[pm-h] reading a file as a string

[Russell L. Harris]

Is there a preferred approach for copying an entire file into a string
variable, while preserving the record delimiters (the newline
character)?

I have found two examples; is either of them a good approach?

    open (FILE,$filename) || die "Cannot open '$filename': $!";
    undef $/;
    my $file_as_string = <FILE>;


    open (FILE,$filename) || die "Cannot open '$filename': $!";
    my $file_as_string = join '', <FILE>;