You can pre-compile a regular expression using the qr// quote-like operator:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my @array = map { qr{$_} } ('^abcd', 'cd[ef]g', 'cat$');
while (<>)
{
 chomp;
 foreach my $re (@array)
 {
  print "Matched $re\n" if m{$re};
 }
}
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