#!/usr/bin/perl sub indexArray { $i = -1; undef %h; map {$h{$_} = $i++} @_; $h{$_[0]} } my @array=('john','paul','ringo','george'); print indexArray('john', @array) ."\n"; # Returns 0 print indexArray('ringo',@array) ."\n"; # Returns 2 print indexArray('mick', @array) ."\n"; # Returns -1