#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; my @blacklist = qw ( server1 server2 server3 server5 ); my %blacklisted = map { $_ => 1 } @blacklist; my @candidate = ; chomp @candidate; my @servers = grep { not $blacklisted{$_} } @candidate; print "@servers"; __DATA__ server2 server5 server7 server8