my %possibleArgs = ( 1 => 'NEW', 4 => 'PND', 9 => 'CLS', ); my @args; for ('col1', 'col2', 'col3') { if (exists($possibleArgs{$_})) { push @args, $possibleArgs{$_}; } } $extraqueryarg = "and table.column in (" . join(',', @args) . ")";