grab pattern from start and end block -- input record separator

usage of local $/   or  $INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR 

INPUT script 

start

name:agnello

dob:2 april

address:123 street

end

start 

name:babit

dob:13 april

address:3 street

end

start 

name:ganesh

dob:1 april

address:23 street

end

i need to get the OUTPUT data in the following format 

name:agnello, dob:23 april ,address:123 street

name:babit,dob:13 april,address:3 street

name:ganesh,dob:1 april,address:23 street

i came up with this , is there a better way to do this : 

===============================

#!/usr/bin/perl 

use strict;

use warnings;

open my $FH , 'data.txt' or die "cannot open file $!";

read $FH, my $string, -s $FH;

close($FH);

my @string = split ( /start/ , $string ) ;

my %data;

foreach  ( @string ) {

chomp;

next if /^$/ ;

s/^ $//g;

s/end//;

my @data = split(/\n/, "$_");

  foreach my $i (@data) {

   print "$i,";

     }

print "\n";

}

alternate script is : 

========================

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;

use warnings;

# --------------------------------------

use charnames qw( :full :short   );

use English   qw( -no_match_vars );  # Avoids regex performance penalty

# --------------------------------------

sub read_record {

  my $record_fh = shift @_;

# all records are from "start\n" to "end\n"

  local $INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR = "end\n";

  my $record = <$record_fh>;

# $record undef at end of file

  if( defined $record ){

# removes "end\n"

    chomp $record;

print "$record";

exit ;

# removes "start\n"

    $record =~ s{ \A start \s* }{}msx;

  }

  return $record;

}

# --------------------------------------

while( my $record = read_record( *DATA )){

# remove trailing "\n"

  chomp $record;

# replace field separators with commas

  $record =~ s{ \n+ }{,}gmsx;

# display the record

  print "$record\n";

}

__DATA__

start

name:agnello

dob:2 april

address:123 street

end

start

name:babit

dob:13 april

address:3 street

end

start

name:ganesh

dob:1 april

address:23 street

end