my @masters = qw/ John Paul George Ringo /;

##</code><code>##

use strict;
my @masters = qw/ John Paul George Ringo /;

sub is_master
{
    my $who = shift;
    return scalar grep /^$who$/, @masters;
}

for (qw/ John George James /) {
    if (is_master($_)) {
        print "$_ is master\n"
    } else {
        print "$_ is not master\n"
    }
}

##</code><code>##

John is master
George is master
James is not master