Passing multidimensional arrays and associative arrays to plugin shortcodes

I want to pass complex structured data to a plugin I am creating. I have been using text strings in shortcodes with delimiters that are exploded into arrays by the plugin but things get increasingly more complex with multidimentional arrays and nested associative arrays. Here is an example of a shortcode:

    [shortcode columns="Column Name 1: string:domain, Column Name 2: number: data" rows="r1c1: 12, r2c1: 22" options="option1: suboption1; value1 | value2, option2: suboption1; value1| value2]

Is there a better way to do this?