my @a = ('a'..'j');
my @b = ('j'..'z');
my $a = 0;

if (ss_grep('b', \@a) and ss_grep('k', \@b)) {
  print "Found b and k\n";
}
print "$a iterations\n";

sub ss_grep {
  my ($test, $aref) = @_;
  for (@$aref) {
    ++$a;
    return 1 if $_ eq $test;
  }
  0;
}