"slurping" in a whole file into a scalar variable sounds like a good idea in this case. $text = <IN>; looks fine to me. There is no need for @text = <IN>.

I would suggest the use of the Perl function index() rather than regex in this situation.

index requires an exact match and so you should case search term and search text to be the same. But this "casing" operation is very fast. The index function will quit on the first match which is an advantage over regex this situation.

As always, your mileage may vary! Short "how to" is shown below.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my @listOfWords = qw (january
                      february
                      egypt
                      moon
                      saturday
                      zoos
                      zoo
                      thingies
                      thing
                     );
                     
my $text = "moon. I love full moons but
this it has been a long thing since yesterday on the
beach.  And a whole buch of BLAH.\nYet another february line.\n
More jan stuff goes here. What a zoo this text 
searching thing can be!";

print"\n\nUsing ListOfWord Tokens\n";
foreach my $word (@listOfWords)
{
   if ( index($text,"$word")>= 0)
   {
      print "word: $word\t found\n";
   }
   else
   {
      print "word: $word\t NOT found\n";   
   }
}

__END__
Using ListOfWord Tokens
word: january     NOT found
word: february     found
word: egypt     NOT found
word: moon     found
word: saturday     NOT found
word: zoos     NOT found
word: zoo     found
word: thingies     NOT found
word: thing     found
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