I'm with you, in that case just set a flag if the element is found, then break out of the loop at once (no point in continuing to search):

my $found = 0;

foreach (@commands_run){
    if($_ =~ m/clock/)
    {
        $found = 1;
        last;
    }
}

if ($found) {
    print "\n Test -- found pattern  -- \n"
}
else {
    print "\n Test -- did not find pattern -- \n"
}
[download]