Create a variable name with "paste" in R?

See below:

paste("perf.a", "1", sep="")
# [1] "perf.a1"

What if I want to assign a value to perf.a1?

I tried as.name, as.symbol, etc., with no avail:

as.name(paste("perf.a", "1", sep="")) = 5
# Error in as.name(paste("perf.a", "1", sep = "")) = 5 : 
#   target of assignment expands to non-language object
as.symbol(paste("perf.a", "1", sep="")) = 5
# Error in as.symbol(paste("perf.a", "1", sep = "")) = 5 : 
#   target of assignment expands to non-language object
noquote(paste("perf.a", "1", sep="")) = 5
# Error in noquote(paste("perf.a", "1", sep = "")) = 5 : 
#   target of assignment expands to non-language object