Question : I need help with text parsing / regular expressions

I am trying to match up instances of a string, for example... given the string 'te..' I want my script to return all 4 letter words that begin with "te".

So far my script works in the sense that it only finds 4 letter words... but it will return words like ITEM and STEM in addition to words TEAM, TEAR, TEAS, etc.,

My code is below. Any help would be appreciated.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $test = 'te..'; #test string - pattern to search for
my $size = length($test);
my $found = 1; #true if "$test" is appropriate syntax (letters or .'s only)
my @words; #list of words that match "$test" pattern

if (($size == 1) || ($size > 22 && $size < 28)) {
      print "We're sorry. There are no words $size characters long. \n";
      $found = 0; #words can be between 2-22 characters long or 28 characters long
}

if ($test =~ /[^A-Za-z\.]/) {
      print "Please only enter letters or periods in your search pattern \n";
      $found = 0;
}

if ($found) {
      print "Thank you for entering in a valid search pattern! \n";
      @words = gatherWords( $size, $test );
      printWords(@words);
}

sub gatherWords
{
      my $word_file = "w$_[0]"; # 3 letter words are in file called w3, etc.
      my @sorted_words;

      open(FILE, $word_file) || die("Cannot open file!");
      my @temp = ;
      close(FILE);

      foreach my $good_data (@temp)
      {
            chomp($good_data);
            if ($good_data =~ /$_[1]/ {
                  push( @sorted_words, $good_data);
            }
      }
      
      return @sorted_words;
}

sub printWords
{
      my @word_array = @_;
      if (scalar(@word_array) == 0) {
            print "No words match your search criteria :-( \n";
      }
      else {
            foreach my $word (@word_array)
            {
                  print "$word \n";
            }
      }
}

Answer : I need help with text parsing / regular expressions

if ($good_data =~ /\b$test\b/ {