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

[rag84dec]

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

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= datata1 ---something like this...delimited by a delimiter...

can anyone help me??