You can use grouping with the or operator within the regex, combined with word boundaries:

use warnings;
use strict;
use feature 'say';

my @strings = (
    "Bob said hello\n",
    "Alice doesn't like Chris\n",
    "This line won't match\n"
);

for (@strings){
    say "yay!" if /(?:\bAlice\b|\bBob\b|\bChris\b)/;
}

[download]

That says:

/
  (?:         # group, but don't capture
    \bAlice\b # capture Alice, if it is standalone
    |         # or
    \bBob\b   # same as Alice above
    |         # or
    \bChris\b # same as Alice and Bob
  )           # end grouping
/

[download]

In reply to Re: File::Find find several strings in one directory by stevieb
in thread File::Find find several strings in one directory by Staralfur

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