This can be done with symbolic references. Be careful as symbolic references can be dangerous. This code will not run with "use strict".

@vars =("num", "alpha" );
$num=1; 
$alpha="a";

foreach(@vars){
  @$_=$$_;
}
[download]

Now that I've shown you how... don't ever use symbolic references. As merlyn pointed out above, there are better ways to have a functionally equivalent end result that aren't nearly as nasty or error-prone.

my %vars=(num => 1, alpha => 'a');

my %h;
foreach(keys %vars){
  $h{$_}=[$vars{$_}];
}
[download]

The syntax for accessing the arays is slightly different (because of the extra level of indirection in there), but this is a much cleaner and less error-prone approach.