use strict;
use warnings;

my @largeArray = (
     "this is a test",
     "this is another test",
     "that is another test",
     "test this is another",
    );

my @searchCriteria = ("another", "test");

my @newArray = @largeArray;

foreach my $criteria (@searchCriteria) {
  @newArray = grep { /$criteria/ } @newArray;
  die "Nothing Found\n" unless @newArray;
}

print join "\n",@newArray;
[download]

update: Since $criteria can be many different things including chars that might need to be escaped you might want to change /$criteria/ to /\Q$criteria\E/

update2: changed the ugly: last unless @newArray or die "Nothing Found\n"; to something nicer to look at. (die "Nothing Found\n" unless @newArray; )

-enlil

my $test = construct_regex (@searcharray);

my @results = grep { /$test/ } @longarray;

sub construct_regex {
    my $regex = "^";
    foreach my $subregex (@_){
        $regex .= "(?=.*" . $subregex . ")";
    }
    qr/$regex/;
}
[download]

Updated Oops! I mistook any() for all(). Fixed thusly

This is easy - your grep condition should return true if all of the search strings are found within the string being tested. In this case I created a function which tests a string against a criteria list and returns false if any don't match. Then I modified your grep so that it tests each element against all the criteria.

sub indexall { -1 == index $_, $_[0] and return 0 for @_[1 .. $#_]; re
+turn 1 }

if (@newArray = grep indexall($_, @searchCriteria), @largeArray) {
    print @newArray;
}
[download]

I think he wants not 'any' but 'each'.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my @largeArray;
$largeArray[0] = "this is a test";
$largeArray[1] = "this is another test";
$largeArray[2] = "that is another test";
$largeArray[3] = "test this is another";

my @searchCriteria;
$searchCriteria[0] = "another";
$searchCriteria[1] = "test";

my $match_code = join(' and ', map "\$_[0] =~ /\Q$_\E/", @searchCriter
+ia );
my $matcher = eval "sub { $match_code }; ";
my @newArray = grep $matcher->($_), @largeArray;

print "$_\n" foreach(@newArray);
[download]

Let me explain my code as it may not appear to be self-explanatory:

Fixed the regex

Some cosmetic changes that make the code easier to work with.

my $match_code = join(' and ', map "\$_[0] =~ /\Q$_\E/", @searchCriter
+ia );
my $matcher = eval "sub { $match_code }; ";

my @newArray = grep $matcher->($_), @largeArray;
[download]

That'll match "this is a test". It needs to also contain 'another'. It's an AND boolean, not an OR boolean search...

-nuffin
zz zZ Z Z #!perl

Oh.. if you want an AND, perhaps the look-ahead operator is what you want? I think it shouldn't be too hard to programmatically construct a regex with that style either..

And here is some code for it: my $criteria = join "|", @searchCriteria; and then use it in the regex like that: /$criteria/

Update: I realized that the 'and' case is much more difficult that the 'or' case that I presented. I would use eval for it:  my $criteria = join "/ and /", @searchCriteria; $criteria = "/$criteria/"; and then use it like this grep {eval $criteria}. Which is just your second code dynamically generated.