you want to find out if one of a list of names is the current string named $request depending on the length of the list of names, you *might* try building a regex out of the list of names, and testing against that.

my @vnames = qw(bob carol ted alice);
my $names_string = join "|", @vnames;
# $names now => "bob|carol|ted|alice"

# stuff

if ($request =~ /$names/i) {
    # do stuff
}
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That may not be very efficient if you have a long list of names, though.

Philosophy can be made out of anything. Or less -- Jerry A. Fodor