I have a Perl array that I've filled with interesting things I want to look for within a file. I can't figure out how to perform this search more elegantly than with a loop that looks for each item in turn with brute force:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my @names = ("john", "paul", "george", "ringo");

while(<STDIN>) {
  chomp;

  my $hit = 0;
  foreach my $name (@names) {
    if (m/^static\s+\w+\s+(${name})\W.*/) {
      $hit = $1;
      last;
    }
  }
  if ($hit) {
    print "Beatle method \"$hit\" found on this line: $_\n";
  } else {
    print "No Beatle method found on this line: $_\n";
  }
}
[download]

while(<STDIN>) {
  chomp;

  if (m/^static\s+\w+\s+($names[0]|$names[1]|$names[2])\W.*/) {
    print "Beatle method \"$1\" found on this line: $_\n";
  } else {
    print "No Beatle method found on this line: $_\n";
  }
}
[download]

# Note that this line isn't supposed to compile...
if (m/^static\s+\w+\s+(???@names???)\W.*/) {
[download]

static int lars(...);
static bool george(...);
static int thom(...);
[download]

No Beatle method found on this line: static int lars(...);
Beatle method "george" found on this line: static bool george(...);
No Beatle method found on this line: static int thom(...);
[download]