I have something like the following in one of my own modules ...

print
  match_one( "string" , [ qw/character word paragraph string/ ] )
  ? "matched"
  : "no match" ;

sub match_one
{ my ($string , $list) = @_;
  foreach ( @{$list} ) { return 1 if $string =~ m/$_/; }
  return;
}
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