update: psini has already suggested this.

If you want to allow command words to be abbreviated to uniqueness, something like the following might appeal:

use strict;
use warnings;

my $word = shift;
my @words = qw(lock tubes on raider dispersion offset fire all torpedo
+es);
my $pat = quotemeta($word);
my @matches = grep (/^$pat/, @words);

if(@matches == 0) {
    print "Unknown command \"$word\"\n";
} elsif(@matches == 1) {
    print "Recognized \"$word\" as command $matches[0]\n";
} else {
    print "Ambiguous command \"$word\" could be any of: @matches\n";
}

[download]

In reply to Re: Regex - Matching prefixes of a word by ig
in thread Regex - Matching prefixes of a word by SuicideJunkie

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.