File Slurping

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $holdTerminator = $/;
undef $/;
my $buf = <STDIN>;
$/ = $holdTerminator;
my @lines = split /$holdTerminator/, $buf;
$buf = "init";
$buf = join $holdTerminator, @lines;
print $buf;
print "\n";

The preceding code works like this:

• First we store the terminator character, which by default on Linux systems is linefeed -- "\n".
• Now we undef the line terminator character
• Now we slurp the entirety of STDIN
• Now we restore the line terminator character
• Now we split the string we read using the termator as a border
• Now we join the array back into a string
• We print the string
• Last but not least, we print an extra newline to fix a picket fence condition