if i have the following: 
while (blah) {
  ## do something

  %person = ('fname => $fname, 'lname' => $lname);
  push @PEOPLE, \%person;
}

[download]
is there an easy way to tell if @PEOPLE contains a person named "John" w/o looping over the array and extracting each hash then comparing. The following works, but seems long-winded to me: 
foreach my $ppl (@PEOPLE) {
   my $fname = $ppl->{'fname'};
   ....
}

[download]
easier way?

In reply to easy way to extract a hash from an array? by rmexico

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