Thanks Arturo for the tip! Why did I not think about it, I have no idea...

In any case, I finally made it work. Most of the times, the problem stairs right at you but you simply don't see it.

So, what I did whas this:

my @patterns = qw(-[45j][15j] [1-3][a46]u 41u 57h 7[9l]b 8[046]u 9[ab]
+t [1l][0b][uv] no [ou][j249][cdeg]);
my $pattern = join "|", @patterns; # Arturo's suggestion

my ($count) = 0;
    my $rm = 0;
            
    while (($CompName, $Department, $LogonDate, $NodeTel, $Model, $MTy
+pe, $SinNum, $Room, $Name, $Division, $freespace, $userID) = $sth->fe
+tchrow_array ()){
        my $newpattern = $MType;
        
        $mySkip = $count % 2;
        $count = $count + 1;
        
        print "<tr";
        
        if ($newpattern =~ /^${pattern}$/oi) {
            $rm++;
            
            print " bgcolor=\"red\"";
            $newpattern = shift;
            
        } elsif ($mySkip eq 0) {
            print " bgcolor=\"#CCFFCC\"";                            
        } else { 
            print " bgcolor=\"white\"";
        } 
        
        print ">\n";
}
[download]

The problem I had was two-fold (or maybe even not. I think I was eluded by another bug I discovered in the process).

• The 'if' pattern matching had an incorrect conditional. Instead of:

  if ($mypattern =~ /$pattern/ig) {
      ...
  } elsif ($count eq 0) {
      ...
  } else {
      ...
  }
  [download]

  I had it in the wrong order (lookup my first post).
• Modifying my pattern match also helped.

In essence, everything is working now the way it's supposed to.

Thanks monks!