It really depends. Suppose you're looking for 'a b' as a value within the array. You would get a false positive if you use this method. To correct it, I guess you can do something along these lines:

my @array = qw( a b c d x );
my $sought = 'a';
$" = '|-nothing we expect-|';
print "Found!" if index($" . "@array" . $", $" . $sought . $") > -1;

[download]

Look at that disgusting code... Please note that the preferred way to do this is grep in a scalar context:

my @array = qw( a b c d x );
my $sought = 'a';
print "Found!" if grep $_ eq $sought, @array;

[download]

With this method, you only iterate over the array instead of all the characters within the array plus $". Since grep is used in a scalar context, it returns the number of matches within the array.

Update: Ah geez.. walk away to grab a drink, come back to finish your answer and two people have posted. You guys are quick :P

antirice    
The first rule of Perl club is - use Perl
The ith rule of Perl club is - follow rule i - 1 for i > 1

In reply to Re: Is X in my array? by antirice
in thread Is X in my array? by Not_a_Number

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