If you go the hash way, there is another, shorter way of initializing the array using a hash slice:

@myhash{@myarray}=(1) x scalar(@myarray);
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--ZZamboni

# assume your array is still in myarray; set up a hash
foreach (@myarray) {
    $myhash{$_} = 1;
}

# now, test for the existence of 'blah'

if ($myhash{'blah'}) {
  do_something();
}
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Alan

A more succinct (but semantically equivalent) version of:

foreach (@myarray) {
      $myhash{$_} = 1;
}
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is

$myhash{$_}++ for @myarray;
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I once heard (somewhere) that doing

if ($myhash{'blah'}) {
    do_something();
}
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(i.e. refering to a key in a hash) causes that key to come into existence, so the above expression may always evaluate as true. I haven't been able to prove this, but I think what you want is the exists function:

if (exists($myhash{'blah'})) { 
  # Do something here
}
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I quite like using 'exists', it makes code far more readable.

@matching = grep { TEST $_ } @array;
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if(grep {$_ eq 'blah'} @myarray) {
    # stuff
}
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