I think you want the qr{} operator. See perldoc perlop.

use warnings;
use strict;

my $hand = 'defgh';
my @tests = ( qr/abcde/,
              qr/bcdef/,
              qr/cdefg/,
              qr/defgh/,
            );
for my $test (@tests) {
    if ($hand =~ /$test/) {
        # do stuff
        # print "Got a straight\n";
    }
}
[download]

Update: As others have suggested in the full thread there are more elegant ways to do this.

--
May the Source be with you.

You said you wanted to be around when I made a mistake; well, this could be it, sweetheart.