Does Perl 5.8.8 allow you to explicitly assign values to numbered variables such as $1? Because with Perl 5.14.2, with this snippet:

perl -E '$1 = 100; say $1;'
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I get this message:

Modification of a read-only value attempted at...
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Perl imposes no artificial limits on how many elements a string may be split into with the split function, nor does Perl care how many variables you assign to. So I think for us to determine what is going wrong you would need to show us a small snippet of the actual code that is failing.

Though Perl imposes no limits on how many variables you can assign to, common sense and good style may dictate that assigning to thirty six variables that are numbered might be a construct better handled with an array.

Kind of hard to help you with the code provided.

split returns an array so I would do something like

my @values = split ';', "123;abc;456;def;123;;123";
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Then loop the array and print each element to the file

print FILE "$_,\n" foreach @values;
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As for a limit I would assume that the limit would be the system memory

while (<$fh_in>)
{
   chomp;  #deletes the trailing "new line" line ending
           #this works for files from any OS
   my @array = split(';',$_);
}
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while (<$fh_in>)
{
   print;   #prints $_ (the line from $fh_in)
   my ($first_thing) = split(';',$_);
   print "$first_thing\n";
}
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There is no "hard limit" on the length of the expression that split can handle nor is there a limit on the size of the resulting array. ...well ok.. there is a limit somewhere, but this limit is certainly not 36 ... it is in the range of many thousands or even more... In a practical sense: NO. There is no limit, meaning that the limit is so huge that you won't encounter it in normal programming.

Thanks. Here is my code

sub split_the_element{
my ($local_fh) = @_;
while (readline $local_fh) {
  #my @records = split(/;/);
  my ($var1, $var2, $var3, $var4, $var5, $var6, $var7, $var8, $var9, $
+var10, $var11, $var12,
      $var13, $var14, $var15, $var16, $var17, $var18, $var19, $var20, 
+$var21, $var22, $var23, $var24,
      $var25, $var26, $var27, $var28, $var29, $var30, $var31, $var32, 
+$var33, $var34, $var35, $var36) =split(/;/);
  print "1 element $var1\n";
  print "2 element $var2\n";
  print "3 element $var3\n";
  print "4 element $var4\n";
  print "5 element $var5\n";
  print "6 element $var6\n";
  print "7 element $var7\n";
  print "8 element $var8\n";
  print "9 element $var9\n";
  print "10 element $var10\n";
  print "11 element $var11\n";
  print "12 element $var12\n";
  print "13 element $var13\n";
  print "14 element $var14\n";
  print "15 element $var15\n";
  print "16 element $var16\n";
  print "17 element $var17\n";
  #my $i=0;
  #foreach($i=1; $i<=36; $++) {
  # print "$i element $var$i\n"
  #}
 }
}
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Here is my data file 1;2;3;4;5;6;7;8;9;10;11;12;13;14;15;16;17;18;19;20;21;22;23;24;25;26;27;28;29;30;31;32;33;34;35;36

And the output:

1 element 1

2 element 2

3 element 3

4 element 4

5 element 5

6 element 6

7 element 7

8 element 8

9 element 9

10 element 10

11 element 11

12 element 12

13 element 13

14 element 14

15 element 15

16 element 16

17 element 17

1 element 21

2 element 22

3 element 23

4 element 24

5 element 25

6 element 26

7 element 27

8 element 28

9 element 29

10 element 30

11 element 31

12 element 32

13 element 33

14 element 34

15 element 35

16 element 36

It seems that data file can split up to 17th elements and then the rest will start to split on the next line.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $data ='1;2;3;4;5;6;7;8;9;10;11;12;13;14;15;16;17;18;19;20;21;22;23
+;24;25;26;27;28;29;30;31;32;33;34;35;36';

my @elements = split (';',$data);

my $number =1;
foreach my $element (@elements)
# or could be:
# foreach my $element (split (';',$data))
{
  print "number=$number\t element=$element\n";
  $number++;
}
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The above works.

I think that there is a "new line" in your data file file.

sub split_the_element
{
   my ($fh_in) = @_; #or: my $fh_in = shift;
   my @result;
   while (<$fh_in>) 
   {
      chomp;
      foreach my $element (split ';', $_)
      {
          push (@result, $element); 
      }
   }
   return @result;
}
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It seems that data file can split up to 17th elements and then the rest will start to split on the next line.

Um, no, that would be jumping to conclusions.

my @junk = split /;/, join ';', 'a'..'z', 'A'..'J';
print int(@junk),"\n";
print "@junk\n";
print "$_=$junk[$_]  " for 0,1,10,20,33,34,-1;
__END__
36
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z A B C D E F G H I 
+J
0=a  1=b  10=k  20=u  33=H  34=I  -1=J
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The reason your foreach loop doesn't work is explained in this FAQ, read all 3 parts

1. Why it's stupid to `use a variable as a variable name'
2. A More Direct Explanation of the Problem
3. What if I'm Really Careful?

Read this if you want to cut your development time in half!

Read perlintro and the array /loop chapters of http://learn.perl.org/books/beginning-perl/

It seems that data file can split up to 17th elements and then the rest will start to split on the next line.

I don't see from your output that split would behave in this way, but you can easily verify this, by doing a

print "LINE JUST READ IS: [$_]\n";
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just before the split.
-- 
Ronald Fischer <ynnor@mm.st>

$ perl -le " my($1,$2) ; "
Can't use global $1 in "my" at -e line 1, near "($1"
Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors.
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$1,$2... are reserved for match operator (regex)

Post real code, that compiles under strict/warnings