Thank you. to start, i didn't see the faq. That helps. Also, the question was one of efficency, not of just simply doing it, since the arrays i'm dealing with have a tendency to become quite large. I originally had something crude like

$i=0;
foreach(@a) {
  if ($a[$i]!=$b[$i]) { return 0;}
  $i++; }
return 1;
[download]

So its more than just RTFMing. Althought i can't complain...having more FMs never hurts ^_^