This might be even faster, depending on what's in @array...
Regex::Presuf works wonders, and /o usually helps too.

use strict;
use Regex::PreSuf;

my @array = qw( foo bar baz );
my $re = presuf(@array);
my $bigstring = 'whatever';

if ($bigstring =~ /$re/o) {
  print "it matched";
}
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