I've tried using open and read but I cannot reference this in my script due to the encoded data (which includes " and ` characters)

what does that mean?

Any help would be appreciated.

question sounds too generic for an answer to be possible, but I'll try

Does this help?

use Path::Tiny qw/ path /;
my $rawfile = path( $file )->slurp_raw
open my($filehandle), '<:raw', \$rawfile; ## in memory
...
close $filehandle;
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