How do I find the "real path"? This is on a paid service's webserver (i.e., commercial hosting site).

Some ways:

• use Cwd; to get the current directory. Hopefully, that is the path the script is in — usually that is the case. Other people have showed you here how to use it.
• Same effect, somewhat simpler: use File::Spec::Functions 'rel2abs'; which can be used to convert a file path to an absolute path:

  use File::SPec::Functions 'rel2abs';
  my $abspath = rel2abs("produce_items.txt");
  [download]

But, to be honest, I don't expect these to work, because if opening a relative path doesn't work because the file doesn't exist, using an absolute path for the same location will most likely have the very same effect.

So, you're better off hardcoding the absolute path to your data file.

If that isn't a most favourable option, you can still try to find the position of the script using FindBin, and locate the data file from there:

use FindBin;
my $abspath = "$FindBin::Bin/produce_items.txt";
[download]

Still, I believe you're best off moving your data out of your web space, to an absolute location, with a prereably a simple path, and hardcode it into your script.