Depending on the tests you might not need an array in lieu of alternation. And thus I present two other ways of solving your example:

1. 

use strict;
use warnings;

while ( <DATA> ) {
   if ( /(^foo.*bar$)|(^foo)|(bar$)/ ){ 
     print $1 ? "BOTH FOO AND BAR: $_" : 
           $2 ? "ONLY FOO: $_" : "ONLY BAR: $_";
   }
   else { print "NOT EITHER: $_" }
}
__DATA__
foo baz
foo bar
bar
fu bar
fuz
foo on you bar

[download]
2. 
use strict;
use warnings;

while ( <DATA> ) {
  /(^foo.*bar$)(?{print "BOTH FOUND: $_"}) |
   (^foo)      (?{print "FOO FOUND: $_"})  |
   (bar$)      (?{print "BAR FOUND: $_"})/x
}

__DATA__
foo baz
foo bar
bar
fu bar
fuz
foo on you bar

[download]

-enlil

In reply to Re: Regular expressions and Arrays by Enlil
in thread Regular expressions and Arrays by wilbur

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