Did you try the code you suggested above? For output I get:

2
3
4
5
20
23
34
[download]

It incorrectly matches on 2,3 and 4. Now if you had modified your regex to be:

$okvalues =~ m/\b$i\b/
[download]

You wouldn't have that problem, because the \b assertion is only true between a word char and a non wordchar. This stops '3' from matching on '34'. Though, its still not a good idea to do it this way.

-Blake