Yeah, a lookup hash with least-common-denominator bad words might work ok. By "LCD" I mean your hash would only contain "ass" but not "asshole" or "dumbass" or whatever. That way you can do something like:

sub i_am_bad {
  my $name = shift;
  my %bad_words = ( .. ); # Some long list.
  foreach my $bad_word(keys %bad_words) {
     return "Bad!" if $name =~ m/$bad_word/i;
  }
  return undef;
}

# Later...
print "Bad username!" if i_am_bad($name);
[download]

This has the advantage of getting multiple permutations of different curse words, but keep in mind it'll also disallow innocent words, too. For example, there's probably no permutation of "fuck" that would be ok, but "ass" will disallow "passover" and "class" and "sassy". That might be a small price to pay, though, if you're running, say, a church website. :-)

Alternatively you could just write down every possible variation of every curse word you could imagine and just do a eq instead of a m// but unless your imagination is very good, or you've spent a goodly period of time in some military service, you're not likely to cover all the objectionable possibilities. ;-)

Gary Blackburn
Trained Killer

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