There are a bunch of things there that can be improved to make your life easier. The first thing is that the "text database" you are using is a CSV file and they are very common so of course there is pre-written code just waiting to make life easier for you. So let's see how that looks:

use strict;
use warnings;
use Text::CSV;

my $fileStr = <<FILE;
Line,Name,Colour,Comment
1,Fred,Blue,"Comment with a comma, and stuff."
2,Joe,Green,No comma so no need for quotes
3,Bob,Red,"""A comma, and quotes"""
4,Sam,Yellow,"Penultimate line, but
split across two input lines"
5,Bill,Violet,And an ordinary line to finish
FILE

my $csv = Text::CSV->new({binary => 1, eol => $/});

open my $io, "<", \$fileStr;
my @headers = @{$csv->getline($io)};

while (my $row = $csv->getline($io)) {
    print "File line $.\n";
    print "  $headers[$_]: '$row->[$_]'\n" for reverse 0 .. $#$row;
}
[download]

Prints:

File line 2
  Comment: 'Comment with a comma, and stuff.'
  Colour: 'Blue'
  Name: 'Fred'
  Line: '1'
File line 3
  Comment: 'No comma so no need for quotes'
  Colour: 'Green'
  Name: 'Joe'
  Line: '2'
File line 4
  Comment: '"A comma, and quotes"'
  Colour: 'Red'
  Name: 'Bob'
  Line: '3'
File line 6
  Comment: 'Penultimate line, but
split across two input lines'
  Colour: 'Yellow'
  Name: 'Sam'
  Line: '4'
File line 7
  Comment: 'And an ordinary line to finish'
  Colour: 'Violet'
  Name: 'Bill'
  Line: '5'
[download]

I used commas instead of tabs so that it's easier to see the separator characters. Note though that I included some fairly nasty stuff in the comment data: commas, quotes and even a line break. Text::CSV just gobbled the whole lot up and asked for more. How would your split have handled that data?

To make this a stand alone sample I used a string as a file.

Note the for reverse 0 .. $#$row loop across the @row and @header arrays. Much clearer and easier to get correct than a C style array. Oh, and for used after the print statement like that it's a "statement modifier" - a neat trick for one line loops over short statements. You can use while and if in similar fashion.