next unless - doesnt work?

sweepy838 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

So i have:

next unless ( grep( /$name/, @names ));
print "$name isnt in the array so continue";
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it prints nothing, even though the name is there. however, this works:

if ( grep( /$name/, @names )) {
   print "name is in the array";
}
#but this doesnt suit my needs.
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thx for help :)