You could answer the problem by using grep or the way you specified in your question, but if you are considering using it in the same manner that it works in SQL you need a hash for performance reasons: 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Benchmark qw(:all);

my @choices = qw|a b c|;

my %choices = map{$_=>1}@choices;

my @cData = <DATA>;

timethese(100000,{'Damn Slow'=>\&parseData1,
                'Much Better'=>\&parseData2});

sub parseData1 {
foreach (@cData){
chomp;
my @items = split/,/,$_;
#slow way, 
foreach my $item (@items){
if(grep {$item eq $_} @choices){
   #print qq|FOUND $item|;
 } 
}

}
}

sub parseData2 {
 foreach(@cData){
 chomp;
 foreach my $item (split/,/,$_){
    if ($choices{$item}){
       #print qq|FOUND $item\n|;
     }
   }
  }

}

__DATA__
z,t,m,u,a,b,c
s,t,l,m,z,a,s
c,b,a,m,u,t,n
k,l,t,s,z,r,t

[download]

Produces: 

Benchmark: timing 100000 iterations of Damn Slow, Much Better...
 Damn Slow:  9 wallclock secs ( 8.81 usr +  0.00 sys =  8.81 CPU) @ 11
+348.16/s
n=100000)
Much Better:  4 wallclock secs ( 3.88 usr +  0.00 sys =  3.88 CPU) @ 2
+5806.45/s
(n=100000)

[download]

Celebrate Intellectual Diversity

In reply to Re: Too much SQL not enough perl by InfiniteSilence
in thread Too much SQL not enough perl by jcpunk

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