If i'm not wrong you can do that with smart matching:

if ( $var ~~ @whatever ) {
    #do something
}
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Update: However, when you do a string check comparison then I don't think smart matching would work. For example:

#!/usr/bin/python

some_var = 'sa'
words = 'same'

if some_var in words:
    print "yes"
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In python you can even step through a string like a list and index it. That would not be possible in Perl.