My question to you perl experts is this: would it be possible to assign a particular result if it doesnt find a match? Would it be better to use something else besides the matching operator? Is there an operator to state if nothing matches? I have a list of users stored in an array called @names(20 names) in this format "MANDERSON/Anderson MikeD|MikeD.Anderson\\". @cdwv_list has a list of 10 names stored with this format "MANDERSON". Here is an example of the code: 
for ($j = 0; $j < @cdwv_list; $j++) {    
    $user_id = $cdwv_list[$j];
    foreach $names(@names) {     
         if ($names =~ $user_id) {
                         #if match I want it to grab name
             $names =~ /\/([\w\s]+)\|/;
             $name = $1; 
          }
                 #So what do I put here or somewhere else if
                 #the 1st $name doesnt match any of the 10
                 #users from @cdwv_list? I tried:
                 else {
                          #But it only prints this 10 times
                          #even thought only 1 name doesnt
                          #match between the two list
                          print "Name does not exist\n";
                 }
    }
}

[download]
Thanks in advance.... Thomas

In reply to To Pattern Match or not to Pattern Match by Anonymous Monk

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