my @values = qw( bcd efg hij klm );
print "not found" unless grep { 'abc' eq $_ } @values;
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Also remember that grep will read the entire array into memory.....

Frequently creates problem when you Tie::File a large file to an array, Tie::File won't read it, but grep(if present) will....

Manav

thanks, thats great! :)

#!perl -slw
my @values = qw( bcd efg hij klm );
my @values2 = qw ( abc bcd );
my %to_search;
@to_search{@values} = ();
my @found = grep { exists $to_search{$_} } @values2;
print @found;
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er its just a message, like "does not exist in this array". My code pretty much consists of:

foreach (@array) {
  if ($text ne $_) {
    print "doesn't exist!";
  }
}
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But this doesn't work as it prints the message out several times. I just want it to print the message once if the text i enter doesn't match any of the array elements.

thanks for your help!

Ok. Here's one way that stores the found status of the search and terminates the foreach loop early if/when it does find one.

#! /usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;


# What we're trying to find
my $target = shift;

# Flag to hold found status
my $found;

# List to search through
my @words = qw/bcd efg hij klm/;

# Look through the list
foreach (@words) {
    # This will be true if they match
    $found = $target eq $_;

    # We found one, get out of this loop early
    last if $found;
}

# Print if nothing was found
print "$target not found$/" unless $found;
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But you just can't beat eieio's use of grep() below. Fantastic, ++

my @array = qw/ bcd efg hij klm /;
my %hash = map { $_, 1 } @array;
my $query = 'abc';

if (exists $hash{ $query }) {
    print "'$query' is in the hash...\n";
}
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