Of course, this is the same as saying:

my $string;
{
    local $/ = undef;
    $string = <FILE>;
}
my @stuff = split '%', $string;
[download]

Now, a few things to note:

1. Newlines will be preserved within the string. This may not be what you want.
2. This will create null-strings wherever you have more than one '%' next to each other. This also may not be what you want.

Assuming you don't want those two situations, I'd do something like:

my $string;
{
    local $/ = undef;
    $string = <FILE>;
}

$string =~ s/$///g;
my @stuff = split /%+/, $string;
[download]

Update: Changed $/=''; to $/ = undef;. The first is "paragraph mode". The second is "slurp mode". Thanx to tye who pointed that out! :-)

------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.