Try m{^/(?:data|tmp)\w+$}i. It's arguably easier to read and requires that you only look at a single regular expression. And let's face it, the fewer expressions we have to revisit and edit, the happier we are.

I suspect that this won't quite be your final solution either, though. My hunch is that you are looking at filepaths, and I know that the \w+ requirement is going to fail as soon as a directory separator is found. But I could easily be wrong about what you are looking for.

Update: And if you are concerned about efficiency, then compile your regex:

my $pattern = qr{^/(?:data|tmp)\w+$}i;
# ...

elsif ( $fs =~ $pattern ) {
    print "YIKES, my mother-in-law is here\n";
}
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