If i understood your question correctly this should work for you. This can be done still efficiently.

open (GEN, "<general.txt") || die ("cannot open general.txt");
open (SEA, "<search.txt") || die ("cannot open search.txt");

undef $/;

$gen = <GEN>;
$sea = <SEA>;
@gen = split /\n/, $gen;
@sea = split /\n/, $sea;

for $a (@gen)
{
    @result = grep/^\Q$a\E$/, @sea;
    push (@final , @result);
}

print "Search string that matches against general data:\t@final";
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