>perl -wMstrict -le "print get_IATA('bar'); ;; sub get_IATA { my ($airline) = @_; ;; my @data = qw(fee fie foe foo barbell boff); ;; for my $i (1 .. $#data) { return $data[$i - 1] if $data[$i] =~ m{ \A \Q$airline\E }xms; } return ''; } " foo #### >perl -wMstrict -le "printf qq{'$_' } for get_IATA('bar'); ;; sub get_IATA { my ($airline) = @_; ;; my @data = qw(fee fie yyy barfly foe fum zzz barbell foo); ;; return map { $data[$_] =~ m{ \A \Q$airline\E }xms ? $data[$_ - 1] : () } 1 .. $#data ; } " 'yyy' 'zzz'