Provided that all you're going to have is scalars, you could use something like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

@array = ('var1=x','var2=y','var3=z');

foreach ( @array ) {
    s/^([^=]+?)=(.+?)$/\$$1 = "$2"/;
    eval;
    print "$_\n";
}

print "$var1 $var2 $var3\n";
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Or did I miss something?