@a = ('hello(\w+)', ...); and I have a scalar value that I want to compare against all the regexps to see if it matches one of them: $a = "Hello(world)"; $b = shift(@a); if ($a =~ /$b/o) { print "Matched!\n"; }

"helloworld" =~ /hello(\w+)/ is a match, with world in $1.
"hello(world)" =~ /hello(\w+)/ doesn't match, because the opening paren is not \w.

"Hello" =~ /hello/ doesn't match, because H and h are different. Use the /i modifier.

To overcome the first problem, you must escape the parens, so they will match literal parens, and no longer have a special meaning:

my @foo = ('hello\(\w+\)', ' ... ');
my $foo = "Hello(world)";

for my $bar (@foo) {
    print "Matched ($foo, $bar)\n" if $foo =~ /$bar/i;
}
[download]

A better approach would be using qr/hello\(\w\)/ in the list assignment and $foo =~ $_ as the match, but that requires a recent version of perl.

44696420796F7520732F2F2F65206F
7220756E7061636B3F202F6D736720
6D6521203A29202D2D204A75657264