Are you trying to do something like this?

#!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;

my $variable = "foo";
my @array=<DATA>;
for (@array) {
    print if ( /$variable/ );
}

__DATA__
able
baker
cad
dexter
edwin
foo
george
harry 
irvin
jake
[download]

The output is:

C:\>perl check_in_array.pl
foo
[download]