yes, the regex could be better. When dealing with user input, you should allow whitespace before and after the input. Some common idioms:

s/^\s+//;  #remove leading whitespace
s/\s+$//;  #remove trailing whitespace
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Now that whitespace is not a factor, for the match then anchor the search term to front and rear. /^dog$/; matches dog but not doggie let me know how you get along with those hints.