You may be interested in List::Util::first: 

use List::Util qw( first );
my $pro = first { $user[0] eq $_ } @protected;
do_stuff_with( $pro ) if defined $pro;

[download]

Considering the rest of your code, however, you might want to look into a hash for storing your protected users persistently rather than reading a file every time someone joins. See perldata for info on hashes.

In reply to Re: reiterateing over array by kyle
in thread reiterateing over array by k0rn

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