Yes, but for good reasons "symbolic references" are deactivated under strict!

Better use hashes:

my %line;
for my $alpha ( "a" .. "b" ) { 
  $line{$alpha} = "somenum"; 
}
[download]

If you still insist to use it, search for "variables as variable names perl".

EDIT: second google hit Why it's stupid to `use a variable as a variable name' from 1998!!! =)