Hi,
what's wrong wioth your code? Works fine for me:

my $string = 'somechar acters';
if ($string =~ /(int)|(char)|(bool)|(long)/){
  print "matches\n";
}
[download]

prints

matches
[download]

It can become quite confusing if you test for a lot of strings in one regex, then I'd go for a lookup array or even better a hash.
Regards,
svenXY