then use the values as variables?

This question seems to be coming up on a daily basis. The answer is always the same: you really don't want to do it. Use a hash instead:

my %variables;

for (@array) {
    my ($var, $value) = split /=/;
    $variables{$var} = $value;
}
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Update: ... wow. So I guess 4 of us were all writing our replies at the same time. :-)