Hi Peterpion,

the match operator returns undefined on a no-match. just assign the value and test for defined-ness on the variable

my $string = 'abcde'; 
my ($ex)= $string =~ /fhi/; 
print 'my eleventh gender is ', 
 defined $ex ? '' : 'not ', "defined\n";
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To run a few tests through, can pass into a subroutine to do the work, something like..

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;

sub get_tests{
  my @tmp;
  for (0..(scalar(@_)-3)){
  push @tmp, join('',@_[$_,$_+1,$_+2]);
  }
  return @tmp;
}

my $string = join('',('h'..'aq'));
print $string,$/;

my @tests = &get_tests('a' .. 'r');

my @genders = grep $string =~ /$_/, @tests;

print join(' ', @genders),"\n";

exit 0;
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