Cheers
Chris
PS: pls use code tags < code > < / code > (only without the spaces)

I have done the following steps. Number 2 is where I need my help. I want to change it from

($_ =~ /Perl/ )
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to use a list of names in a .txt or .dat file. as the search string. Is this possible? say filename is names.txt

Bob
John
Jenna
Whoever
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Yes, very possible. Say that you have your names, one per line, in names.txt. You can read them into an array then use join to join the array members into a string separated by the pipe symbol ('|') which is the alternation metacharacter in a regex. Thus your pattern reads match Fred or Joe or ... or Pete. Like this.

use strict;
use warnings;

my $namesFile = q{names.txt};
open my $namesFH, q{<}, $namesFile
   or die qq{open: $namesFile: $!\n};
my @names = <$namesFH>;
close $namesFH
   or die qq{close: $namesFile: $!\n};

chomp @names;  # Remove line terminators

my $namesPatt = join q{|}, @names;

my $dataFile = q{data.txt};
open my $dataFH, q{<}, $dataFile
   or die qq{open: $dataFile: $!\n};

while ( <$dataFH> )
{
    print qq{Found name $1\n} if /($namesPatt)/;
}

close $dataFH
   or die qq{close: $dataFile: $!\n};
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Note that I use parentheses in the regex to capture the name matched for later use in $1. I hope this is helpful.

Cheers,

JohnGG

Update: Corrected poor punctuation/grammar.

If i understand you right than maybe this:

my @search_list = qw( Perl PHP Ruby );
my $search_str = join( "|", @search_list );

if ( m/$search_str/ ) {

    $check = $_;
}
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Note: that there is no need to write

$_ =~ m/sometext/;
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$_ is used by default.

my %hash; @hash[qw(word1 word2)] = (1);

if (exists($hash{$_})){ }
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