<pimp>
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You may want to check out my index and rindex for arrays. They save a constant factor over grep, considering that they don't bother to iterate over the rest of the array once a match is found; however, they may be slower due to the implementation of iteration in Perl rather than as a built-in... (maybe I'll update with a few benchmarks.) </pimp> However, if the arrays are sorted, as you've said, then I would do a fast binary search which will find your element in O(log n) time, rather than O(n).

   MeowChow                                   
               s aamecha.s a..a\u$&owag.print