Another potential solution (if I understand the problem) is to use the any function from List::MoreUtils. You should benchmark it against other solutions for your actual data to determine which is most optimal.

use strict;
use warnings;
use List::MoreUtils qw(any);

my @commands = (
    'chicks with bricks come',
    'chicks with blocks come',
    'chicks with bricks and blocks and clocks come'
);

if (any { /clock/ } @commands) {
    print "Found pattern\n";
}
else {
    print "Did not find pattern\n";
}

__END__
Found pattern
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