If all you want to do is check if the name is in the list then a hash is the way to go. But, to search an AoA, you could use grep: 
my @names = (
    [ qw/Jim     12/ ],
    [ qw/John    15/ ],
    [ qw/Peter   08/ ],
    [ qw/Andrew  34/ ],
    [ qw/Jim     57/ ],
    [ qw/Andreas 27/ ],
);

my $name = 'Jim';

#simple searching
if ( grep { $_->[0] eq $name } @names ) {
    print "$name\'s in the list\n";
}

# or to get all of $name's entries
for ( grep { $_->[0] eq $name } @names ) {
    print "@$_\n";
}

[download]

Output: 

Jim's in the list
Jim 12
Jim 57

[download]

Unless I state otherwise, my code all runs with strict and warnings

In reply to Re: check if an element exists in array by FunkyMonk
in thread check if an element exists in array by Anonymous Monk

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