perl script to read from a file and put in a scalar variable

Hi,
I need to read the content of a file data.txt

Code:

---

dat
data1

---

into a variable...@temp.
I am getting both the values in $temp[0]...

can anyone help me??..

else i want it in a scalar variable like
$temp1= dat:data1 ---something like this...delimited by a delimiter...

can anyone help me??

You could easily have searched the Google or any other engine for this topic.

http://www.perlfect.com/articles/perlfile.shtml