yes, there is, you can do

${'STR1'} = 'STR2';
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to assign string STR2 to $STR1, however, you are absolutely right that a hash can accomplish what you want, and is in fact a much better way to do it than assigning random variables, especially since it prevents you from overwriting your own program variables :)
The way I would do it is this...

my %info;
for(@file) {
  next if /^#/; skip line if it starts with a hash
  chomp; # remove \n Update ACK! forgot this! Doh!
  my($name,$val) = split '=', $_, 2; #split line into two
     # values, on an = sign
  next unless $val; # make sure you got something
  $info{$name} = $val;
}
print "$info{OFFICE} - $info{NAME}\n";
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very simple. you can also check for values by doing something like

if(exists $info{OFFICE}) {
  print "Ofiice: $info{OFFICE}\n";
}
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and you can get a list of all your info variables by doing

@keys = keys %info;
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try it, and use this to see the results...

for(sort keys %info) {
  print "$_: $info{$_}\n";
}
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That will print a sorted list of all your keys with their values Update forgot to chomp... fixed it... oops
                - Ant