$ perl -e 'print "with_ending\nno_ending"' > a.txt $ perl -MData::Dumper open(FH, "<", "a.txt") or die $!; my $line1 = ; my $line2 = ; my $line3 = ; close FH; $Data::Dumper::Useqq = 1; print Dumper [$line1, $line2, $line3]; __END__ $VAR1 = [ "with_ending\n", "no_end", undef ];