No.
1) You wouldn't want to chain so many calls to index (its like writing $array[0]=3; $array[1]=4; $array[1]=5;)

2) Notice the use of capturing parenthises? It means that kiat wants to know what word he matched. To do that with index gets ugly real fast, for example 

my @words = qw[ new old number start simple cross heavy die exit ];
my $string = q~whatever the NEw old you're trying to match~;
my $lcstring = lc $string;
my $ret = 0;
if( do {
        for my $val( @words ){
            my $r = index $lcstring, $val;
            if( $r > -1 ){
                $ret = substr $string, $r, length $val;
                last;
            }
        }
        $ret;
    } ){
    warn "the \$1 (aka ret) is => $ret\n\n";
}
__END__
the $1 (aka ret) is => NEw

[download]
Granted you could turn that do{} into a function, but I don't think its worth the effort (even if there may be a slight speed boost).

MJD says "you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!"
I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6.x and 5.8.x -- I take requests (README).
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In reply to Re^2: Alternative matches by PodMaster
in thread Alternative matches by kiat

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