This topic is pretty well worked out, but want to add my 2bits: I like the list of lists of this solution over the hash method. The reason being that the list retains the sequence of records. I prefer a regular expression over a split in this type of format.. reason: there may be other tabs on the line. Since thare are no spaces in the filenames (in your example), I would use this 
($filename,$description) = ($line =~ m/(^\S+)\s+(.*)/);

[download]
or as given in the referenced comment: 
if($line =~ m/(^\S+)\s+(.*)/) { push @documents, [$1,$2]; }

[download]

Kinda of a "me too" comment; I know.

In reply to Re^2: searching a file, results into an array by perlcapt
in thread searching a file, results into an array by Anonymous Monk

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