I'm not sure I understand your question completely. If you want to print your 'found / not found' once, i.e. whether the pattern is present or absent in the array you could either join the array into a string an match the string (just make sure you don't create a match by joining the elements of the array) or have a flag that indicates a match and print your message after looping over your array. 
use strict;
use warnings;

my @commands_run = qw(first second clock fourth);


#join all elements of the array

my $all_commands = join '#', @commands_run;

if ($all_commands =~m/clock/) {
    print "\n Test -- found pattern  -- \n";
} else {
    print "\n Test -- did not find pattern -- \n";
}


#use a flag to indicate a match

my $found = 0;

foreach (@commands_run) {
    if($_ =~m/clock/) {
        $found++;
    }
}

$found ? print "\n Test -- found pattern  -- \n" 
       : print "\n Test -- did not find pattern -- \n";

[download]
cheers

si_lence

In reply to Re: searching through array for multiple patterns by si_lence
in thread searching through array for multiple patterns by sqspat

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