Possible? Yes. Advisable? No. Perl has arrays which would be ideal for this instead. eg.

my $ecounter = 0;
my @e = ();
my @file_line_contents = split (/\|/,$_);
while ($ecounter < 45) { # Note brackets, not quotation marks!
    $e[$ecounter] = length($file_line_contents[$ecounter]);
    $ecounter++;
}
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But there are probably more perlish ways to achieve the same result and which would be more fault-tolerant into the bargain.