Your readItem() subroutine suggests the need for access to values without much typing. If you also desire to assign new values, why not use an alias? Like so:

*label= \$project{$activeProject}
                 {components}
                 {Software}
                 {subComponents}
                 {Database}
                 {label} ;
[download]

You read the value using print $lable;, and assign a new value using '$label='Test-2'; .

This is a lot shorter than the OP which exhibited the full train of variables, and was coded like this:

$project{$activeProject}
        {components}
        {Software}
        {subComponents}
        {Database}
        {label}
        = 'Test-2';
[download]