FYI - this is built-in to perl6.

You could do:

if( grep{ $_ == 1 } $var1, $var2, $var3, $var4 ) {
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But that won't short-circuit -- ie. It will test all 4 variables every time -- and is really only beneficial if the vars are an array.

You might consider List::MoreUtils::any() which will short-circuit.

Personally, if there are only four variables and using an array doesn't work for you; I'd stick with your original statement.

What i'm after is a shorter way to test whether any of those variables == 1.

If by shorter you mean "golfed down", i.e. achieving the same with less characters typed - it is up to you to be smart, go ahead, be clever.. but if by shorter you mean less convoluted, I'd propose to wrap the test into a loop which aliases each var, more so if there's a variable amount of many variables to test, and it is possible to wrap them into an array (which should be possible but in very weird cases):

$test_succeeded = 0;
for(@vars_to_test) {
    1 == $_ and ++$test_succeeded and last;
}
if ($test_succeeded) {
    ...
}
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Or even:

c:\@Work\Perl>perl -wMstrict -le
"my @ra = (0, 0, 0, 1, 0);
 ;;
 my $test_succeeded;
 $test_succeeded = 1 == $_ and last for @ra;
 ;;
 print 'succeeded!' if $test_succeeded;
"
succeeded!
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---

Give a man a fish:  <%-{-{-{-<

Hi Anonymous,

You could have a look at the modules Quantum::Superpositions (I love the name ;-)) or Perl6::Junction:

use Quantum::Superpositions 'any';
# - or -
#use Perl6::Junction 'any';

my ($var1,$var2,$var3,$var4) = (0,0,0,0);

if ( any($var1,$var2,$var3,$var4) == 1 ) {
    print "Bingo!\n";
}
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Of course, if you have variables named $var1,$var2,...,$varN, you really should be using arrays...

my @ary = (0,0,0,0);

if ( any(@ary) == 1 ) {
    print "Bingo2!\n";
}
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Hope this helps,
-- Hauke D

There was a thorough discussion of this only last week. See Check multiple array elements for a single condition. Don't forget to search!