A problem with List::Util::first() as used in the example above is that it actually returns the first element from the list that satisfies the condition. If this value happens to be false, the if-statement modifier will not satisfied, and the dependent statement will not be executed. Neither any nor grep nor a hash lookup have this problem.

c:\@Work\Perl>perl -wMstrict -le
"use List::Util qw(first);
 ;;
 for my $n (0 .. 267) {
   printf qq{$n  } if first {$n == $_} 40, 0, 47, 76;
   }
 print qq{\n----------};
 ;;
 ;;
 for my $n (0 .. 267) {
   printf qq{$n  } if grep { $n == $_ } 40, 0, 47, 76;
   }
"
40  47  76
----------
0  40  47  76
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