My intent was to quickly show how to get the passed parameter easily using perl's CGI.pm module (since you indicated your experience was with ASP). Wasn't attempting to address what would be done with the data.

Seems that your 2.pl could use LWP to call the above file, storing the results in a variable/array.

or you could execute 1.pl from the command line using CGI.pm

perl 1.pl file=filename.txt > outfile
[download]

which could also be done via a 2.pl program, shell script or .bat file.

Hope these bits and pieces are helpful