You say you want to pass a number of items to a script. There are several ways, depending on your point of origin. I get the sense that you want fluidity in your script with changing parameters. IMO, a file would be more cumbersome, where using the standard conventions of an HTTP post and CGI would offer greater ease and flexibility.

Some options, in no order:

1. If you are posting from an HTML form, this is already done for you in the guise of name=value pairs. You just have to use CGI to parse the string.
2. You can provide the name=value pairs yourself (you started to show this). E.g., upload.cgi?name1=value1&name2=value2&name3=value3... There's no limit to the number of pairs.
3. If you are supplying the name=value pairs via file, where does the file come from? Is it uploaded from your local computer via a form or FTP, or created on the server through an editor, e.g., Vim, or some admin HTML form
4. Or could you use a configuration file and tap it with something like Config::Simple?
5. Is it a text file or can the name=values be stored in a database?

If you are calling the script from an HTML link or another Perl script, option #2 above would be the easiest. Messing with uploading and maintaining files seems kludgy.