Yes, very possible. Say that you have your names, one per line, in names.txt. You can read them into an array then use join to join the array members into a string separated by the pipe symbol ('|') which is the alternation metacharacter in a regex. Thus your pattern reads match Fred or Joe or ... or Pete. Like this.

use strict;
use warnings;

my $namesFile = q{names.txt};
open my $namesFH, q{<}, $namesFile
   or die qq{open: $namesFile: $!\n};
my @names = <$namesFH>;
close $namesFH
   or die qq{close: $namesFile: $!\n};

chomp @names;  # Remove line terminators

my $namesPatt = join q{|}, @names;

my $dataFile = q{data.txt};
open my $dataFH, q{<}, $dataFile
   or die qq{open: $dataFile: $!\n};

while ( <$dataFH> )
{
    print qq{Found name $1\n} if /($namesPatt)/;
}

close $dataFH
   or die qq{close: $dataFile: $!\n};

[download]

Note that I use parentheses in the regex to capture the name matched for later use in $1. I hope this is helpful.

Cheers,

JohnGG

Update: Corrected poor punctuation/grammar.

In reply to Re^3: Help with Search String by johngg
in thread Help with Search String by btobin0

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