Here's an approach I like because it tends to encourage clear definition and easy maintenance of regexes. It can be quite a bit more verbose than a 'one-liner' approach, but can pay dividends when it's 3AM and you're trying to figure out what went wrong.

The code assumes the following 'requirements' as they have emerged (by inference, implication or suggestion) in discussion:

• 'Any number of...' means 'one or more' (hence the  + quantifier);
• An 'alphanumeric character' is an upper case alpha or a digit;
• The regex is to be used for entry validation, not for sub-string extraction;
• Any amount of whitespace may precede or follow the entry.

>perl -wMstrict -le
"my $body  = qr{ [[:upper:]\d]+      }xms;
 my $cdc   = qr{ CDC (?: _ $body){2} }xms;
 my $smr   = qr{ DDCSMR    $body     }xms;
 my $rmr   = qr{ DDCRMR    $body     }xms;
 my $valid = qr{ \A \s* (?: $cdc | $smr | $rmr) \s* \z }xms;
 while (<>) {
   chomp;
   last unless $_;
   printf qq{'$_' %svalid \n}, m{$valid} ? '' : 'IN';
   }
"
  CDC_
'  CDC_    ' INvalid
   CDC_1_ANSND
'   CDC_1_ANSND' valid
   CDC_ASD_ERTY
'   CDC_ASD_ERTY   ' valid
XYZZY
'XYZZY' INvalid
  DDCRMRA
'  DDCRMRA   ' valid
DDCSMR
'DDCSMR' INvalid
[download]

Note that the two regexes
    my $smr = qr{ DDCSMR $body }xms;
    my $rmr = qr{ DDCRMR $body }xms;
could be combined to a single regex, e.g. (untested)
    my $ddc = qr{ DDC [SR] MR $body }xms;
and the validation regex would simplify somewhat to
    my $valid = qr{ \A \s* (?: $cdc | $ddc) \s* \z }xms;

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