You can build your regex on the fly: 
my @bad = qw(fork smurf);
my $regex = join('|', @bad);
$regex = qr/$regex/;

foreach (<FH>){
    if(/^[0000-9999](.+)/){
        next if /$regex/;
        push( @witty_quotes,  substr( $_, 5) );
    } else { next };
}

[download]
Some other notes: <list>
  • Your quote is already stored in $1 after the first pattern match, so you don't need the substr().
  • The else { next }; after the if() is redundant.
  • /^[0000-9999](.+)/ doesn't do what you think it does. :) [0000-9999] is the same as [0-9].
    • </list> You can rewrite your code like so: 
    use strict;

my @witty_quotes;
my @bad = qw(fork smurf);
my $regex = join('|', @bad);
$regex = qr/$regex/;

# open() FH somewhere

foreach (<FH>){
    # Note: it's important to put this regex test
    # outside of the if() block to ensure that $1
    # below comes from the correct pattern match
    next if /$regex/;

    if(/^\d{4}(.+)/){ 
        push( @witty_quotes,  $1);
    }
}

    [download]

    -Matt

    In reply to Re: test if a string contains a list member by DrManhattan
    in thread test if a string contains a list member by mull

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