I have a list of strings:

@s = ('abc', 'dog', 'cat', 'rabbit', 'attic');

and I want to determine if one of the elements of the list is the word 'at'.

'at' is not in the list, although 'cat' and 'attic' are.

In order to search the list, do I have to loop through every element in the list (using the foreach function) until I find a match?

Or, is there a more efficient way of searching a list?

Clearly in my list above, it isn't a hassle to loop through 5 elements in a list. But I'd like to know if there is a more efficient way of searching a list, especially if the list contains hundreds of elements.

Thank you so much!

In reply to searching a list by keiusui

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.