c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dump -le "my @WORDS = qw(trying helping doing do xdo help hel xhelp); my $s = 'help'; ;; my @hits = grep m{ \A \Q$s\E }xms, @WORDS; dd \@hits; ;; $s = 'do'; @hits = grep index($_, $s) == 0, @WORDS; dd \@hits; ;; dd \@WORDS; " ["helping", "help"] ["doing", "do"] ["trying", "helping", "doing", "do", "xdo", "help", "hel", "xhelp"]