I'd just use grep. For a simple example, this runs: </bf>

my @phrases = qw{ one two three } ;
my $in = 'three' ;

if ( grep ( /$in/, @phrases ) ){ ... }
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Using grep, you can store to a list with qw and match to it. This eliminates the need for the messy | and other such delimiters. If I find myself using delimiters, I like to use non-keyboard delimeters ( chr(1); #for example ).
Have fun.