for $i (0 .. $#@AoA) {
  if (grep(/$variable/, @{$AoA[$i]})) {
    print "List " . $i+1 . "contains $variable.\n";
  }
}
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Thank you. It took me a while to get it going and not all of your suggestions worked but this is how the relevant part of my code looks like now.

@tect1=(1,5,6,8,16,20);
@tect2=(1,7,10,12,13,14,15,18,19,22,23,24,46);
@tect3=(1,2,3,9,10,11,17,21,24,39,46);
@tectlist=(\@tect1, \@tect2, \@tect3);
$variable=19; #as an example

for $i (0..$#tectlist) {
 if (grep (/$variable/, @{$tectlist[$i]})){
  print" List";
  $listnumber=$i+1;
  print" $listnumber";
  print " contains $variable.\n";
  }
 }
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A few comments. One thing is any time you see a few variables whose names end in numbers, especially small sequential numbers (@tect1, @tect2, @tect3) you're usually better off seeing if you can't make them into an array. Nine times out of ten, you end up wanting to treat them that way anyway. So in this case you could make an array of arrays in the first place.

The other problem I see is your grep. You're using the number you're looking for as a regexp. That works sometimes, but if you look for, say /1/ the list (7,10,12) it'll be found (because the string "10" contains the string "1"). So here's how I would have written this part.

@tectlist = ( [1,5,6,8,16,20],
              [1,7,10,12,13,14,15,18,19,22,23,24,46],
              [1,2,3,9,10,11,17,21,24,39,46],
            );
$variable=19;

for my $i (0..$#tectlist) {
    if (grep {$_ == $variable} @{$tectlist[$i]}){
      my $listnumber = $i+1;
      print "List $listnumber contains $variable.\n";
    }
}
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# 13 is in list 1
# 23 is in list 5 and 6
# 42 is in list 1,3 and 5

my %lists;
@lists{13,23,42}=([1],[5,6],[1,3,4]);

# Find which lists contain the values
for my $i (13,23,42) {
  print "Value $i found in list $_\n" foreach (@{$lists{$i}})
}
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If you've already got the lists as arrays (or an array of arrays) this is probably not worth doing unless you need to find multiple values.

Perhaps more importantly the solution should make sense in the context of your code (which is hard to tell from your description), otherwise my solution makes the code harder to read/maintain and a different solution would be preferable, albeit slightly slower (since you need to search through all the lists).

Thank you for your suggestion. You were right that I was not after a solution like that but I will keep it in mind.

Smells like homework.

require 'pp'

class Array
  def shuffle!( )
    each_index {|i| j = rand(i+1); self[i], self[j] = self[j], self[i]
+}
  end
  def shuffle( ) self.dup.shuffle! end
end

lists = (1..6).inject( [] ) { |m,o| m << [] }
( 1..50 ).to_a.shuffle.each { |x| lists[ rand(6) ] << x }

target = Integer( rand( 50 ) + 1 )
pp lists
list_no = nil
lists.each_index { |i| list_no = i if lists[i].any? { |x| x == target 
+} }

puts "#{target} is in list #{list_no}"
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Sorry, I am more of a 'baby perl' person. Your code looks a little like Egyptian hierroglyphs to me. Maybe one day I will be able to decipher. Thanks for your response. It's good to know that there is still heaps to learn! 8-)

A book about Ruby may help you decipher... :-)

@list1 = qw(1 3 44 5 50 6 34 23);
@list2 = qw(11 35 4 50 9 6 34 23);
@list3 = qw(23 1 23 4 50 6  34 23);
@list4 = qw(43 1 33 34 50 9 6 34 23);
@list5 = qw(3 1 45 3 4 50 6  34 23);
@list6 = qw(14 54 3 4 50  6 34 23);

$total = [\@list1, \@list2, \@list3, \@list4, \@list5, \@list6];
$search = '9';

map{$tmp++ , map{ print "found in list $tmp \n"  if $_ eq $search  } @
+$_ }@$total
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