You can create a file with one term, phrase of RE per line then just read it into an array and chomp it. You generate a precompiled RE as shown. Then just iterate over the infile lines*. Then just print the modified data out to STDOUT or a file.

* I say lines but you may note the $/ = "\n\n". The $/ is the input record separator (normally \n). By setting it to two newlines we read in whole paragraphs at a time and thus can make matches across line breaks.

The RE needs \b boundary conditions to make it match full words. If you want extra chars I suggest \w* for extra word chars and \W+ to represent punctuation or whitespace between words whan looking for phrases. 

my @highlights = (
    'foo',
    'bar',
    'baz',
    '\w*a\W+my\w*',   # the ...a my... phrase example
);
my $re = join '|', @highlights;
$re = qr/\b($re)\b/i;

local $/ = "\n\n";   # read in a para at a time
while(<DATA>){
    s/$re/uc $1/ge;
    print;
}

__DATA__
Hello Foo,

This is your friend Baz wondering
if you would like to go to the bar
to talk server foo. Barclays is a 
foobar bank BTW.

So a Perlmonk and a Panda walk into a bar.
Know I know you think this is going
to be a joke but I saw the panda 
myself!

[download]

cheers

tachyon

In reply to Re: Text markup confusion by tachyon
in thread Text markup confusion by paurus

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.