What's a reasonable way to read an entire text file as a single string?

Question

I am sure this is an easy one; I just couldn\'t find the answer immediately from Google.

I know I could do this (right?):

text = \"\"
File.open(         


        

Answer 1

IO.read() is what you're looking for.
File is a subclass of IO, so you may as well just use:

text = File.read(path)

Can't get more intuitive than that.

Answer 2

What about IO.read()?

Edit: IO.read(), as an added bonus, closes the file for you.