http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=258712

antirice has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Ok, I don't want to beat a dead horse but I've been wondering about this for quite some time now. Suppose you want to see whether or not 'c' is in (a .. z). Of course, I want general case (where the array may contain words instead of letters). What method would you employ to have the program say, "yes, c is a letter that would exist within that array you just created there." Some of the methods I have seen are included in the readmore.

Create a hash and just check for existence (I usually use this):
my @array_I_just_created_here = (a .. z); my @hash_I_just_created_here{@array_I_just_created_here} = (); print "yes, c is a letter that would exist within that array you just +created there.$/" if exists $hash_I_just_created_here{"c"};

Linear search:
my $found = 0; my @array_I_just_created_here = (a .. z); $found |= ("c" eq $array_I_just_created_here[$_]) foreach (0..$#array_ +I_just_created_here); print "yes, c is a letter that would exist within that array you just +created there.$/" if $found;

Binary search (not complex enough to justify requiring Search::Binary but very similar parameters passed, just in case):
my $find_item = "c"; my @array_I_just_created_here = (a .. z); my $pos = bin_search(\@array_I_just_created_here, $find_item, 0, $#arr +ay_I_just_created_here); print "yes, c is a letter that would exist within that array you just +created there.$/" if ($a[$pos] eq $find_item); sub bin_search { my ($array, $val, $min, $max) = @_; my $pos = int($min + $max / 2); my $check = $val cmp $array->[$pos]; if ($check == -1) { $pos--; return $pos if ($pos <= $min); return bin_search($array, $val, $min, $pos); } elsif ($check == 0) { return $pos; } else { $pos++; return $pos if ($pos >= $max); return bin_search($array, $val, $pos, $max); } }

Regex hard-coded (seen this used extensively twice before):
print "yes, c is a letter that would exist within that array you hadn' +t created there.$/" if "c" =~ m/^(?:a|b|c|d|e|f|g|h|i|j|k|l|m|n|o|p|q +|r|s|t|u|v|w|x|y|z)$/;

Introduce quantum theory?
use Quantum::Superpositions; my @array_I_just_created_here = (a .. z); print "yes, c is a letter that would exist within that array you just +created there.$/" if ("c" eq any(@array_I_just_created_here);
I am just curious which methods people use for this very common problem and which is the most popular. If there are particular cases where you use one method over another, please cite them and explain why...if you don't mind of course :-)

antirice    
The first rule of Perl club is - use Perl
The
ith rule of Perl club is - follow rule i - 1 for i > 1