foreach (@array) {
  if ($text ne $_) {
    print "doesn't exist!";
  }
}
[download]

thanks for your help!

Ok. Here's one way that stores the found status of the search and terminates the foreach loop early if/when it does find one.

#! /usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;


# What we're trying to find
my $target = shift;

# Flag to hold found status
my $found;

# List to search through
my @words = qw/bcd efg hij klm/;

# Look through the list
foreach (@words) {
    # This will be true if they match
    $found = $target eq $_;

    # We found one, get out of this loop early
    last if $found;
}

# Print if nothing was found
print "$target not found$/" unless $found;
[download]

But you just can't beat eieio's use of grep() below. Fantastic, ++