in reply to regex to return matched value from array

use List::Util qw[ first ];
my @terms = ( 'foo bar', 'blah' );
my $term = 'foo';
my $match = first{ /\Q$term/ } @terms;
print $match;

foo bar

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Examine what is said, not who speaks.
"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"Think for yourself!" - Abigail
"Memory, processor, disk in that order on the hardware side. Algorithm, algorithm, algorithm on the code side." - tachyon

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom