perl -le 'my @array = qq[Anthony Mark Alex A]; print for @array' #### # Program : 2 #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; my $match = 'A'; my @array = qq[Anthony Mark Alex A]; if ( my @list = grep( /$match$/,@array ) ) { print "Matched: ".join(', ', map {"'$_'"} @list)."\n"; } __END__ Matched: 'Anthony Mark Alex A'