Yes, grep() is a bad idea here. And your regex, sadly, is an even poorer one. The FAQ warns you about this, believe it or not, in the same answer about how to determine if a list contains an element.

I believe the List::Utils module offers a function called first() which looks like this: 
sub first (&@) {
  my $cref = shift;
  $cref->($_) and return $_ for @_;
}

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So that it returns the first value in a list for which a chunk of code returns true: 
# get the first number found over 1000
$first_match = first { $_ > 1000 } @numbers;

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But if you do this a lot of times, you're kissing inefficiency on its ratty lips. Use a hash: 
my %seen;
@seen{@array} = ();

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Now you can use the exists() test: 
if (exists $seen{blah}) { ... }

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Again, read the FAQ. Look for the keyword "contains".

japhy -- Perl and Regex Hacker

In reply to Re: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder by japhy
in thread Beauty is in the eye of the beholder by ChOas

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