It's embarrasing asking what seems like an elementary question, but I've looked around and didn't see anything.

Frequently I need to check if a value matches any number of values. A common solution, cited in the camel book is to use a regex, seperating the search strings with a vertical bar: 

    if ($foo=~/$bar|$baz|$boo/){
        print "yep!\n";
    }

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While that's very easy, it's not as fast as using a comparison operator such as 'eq' or '=='. However using these often leads to redundant and cumbersome looking code: 
    if (($foo eq $bar) || ($foo eq $baz) || ($foo eq $boo)){
        print "yep!\n";
    }

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or the much malined: 
    if ($foo eq $bar){
        print "yep!\n";
    }
    elsif ($foo eq $baz){
        print "yep!\n";
    }
    elsif ($foo eq $boo){
        print "yep!\n";
    }

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Is there way of using a single comparison operation against several values, grouping them together much as you can do with a single regex statement, without the overhead of the regex?

In reply to Comparing against multiple values by doran

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