Hi all, I'm not much of a programmer really, my question is very simple I hope it doesn't irritate you too much. I've got to write a bunch of statements with copious 'or' alternatives which is going to look like this: 
if ($a == 'ABA' || $a == 'SCO' || $a == 'ACC'|| $a == 'PHC'|| $a == 'G
+HF')
{something}

[download]
How do I spare those endless repetitions of $a == 'something' || $a == 'some other thing'? In Oracle SQL for example you could write 
where a = in (ABA, SCO, ACC, PHC, GHF)

[download]
(SQL as a benchmark is lame, I know) Is there anything like this in Perl?.. I probably could use arrays but I'm not sure

In reply to Sparing multiple 'or's by Denis

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.