Ken Foskey schreef: > Mathew Snyder: >> Is there an easy way to determine if an item is in an array without >> iterating through the array and comparing each element to the item >> in question? > > Look up grep.
That still involves iterating and comparing each element, but now done (faster) by grep. If the array is already sorted, a binary search would be the way to go. Otherwise you can use a loop that short-circuits by using "last" if the item is found. With smallish arrays, you can even use index(), after stringizing it: $string = join $;, ('', @array, ''); index($string, "$;$item$;") >= 0 and print "found\n"; or use a regular expression: $string = join "\n", @array; /^$item$/m and print "found\n"; > You might be wanting a hash table not an array. Yes, that is the best answer. Especially if multiple items need to be tested. -- Affijn, Ruud "Gewoon is een tijger." -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://learn.perl.org/