dynamic strings

[DJsAC]

Is it possible to use php to create a string from a name in a file?

For example.
In a .txt file are the words: "fish" "cat" and "dog" (and a lot more which are unknown to me)
I then want to load a page which takes those words and translates them into strings, and then assign values to the new strings.

So for example "fish" becomes "$fish" and has a value of "55"

Is this possible? And what would the code be?
I've tried to make a string using something like the following, but that didn't work.

<?
$name="wow";
$begin="$";
$newvariable=($begin+$name);
$stringvalue="55";
$newvariable=$newvariable."=".$stringvalue;
// gives $newvariable = "$wow=55"
echo ??????;
?>

How do I turn the contents of $newvariable into the string $wow ?
Thnx

[crh3675]

$name="wow";
$value=55;

$evalstring="$".$name."=".$value.";";

eval($evalstring);

print $wow;

[DJsAC]

/me feels stupid.
Why didn't I think of eval()
Thank you