I am just curious which methods people use for this very common problem and which is the most popular

Generally I'll just use a grep and double negation e.g

my @array = qw/ a list of words /;
print "yep, it's there"
  if !!grep { $_ eq "of" } @array;

__output__

yep, it's there
[download]

Nice and efficient in newer versions of perl (5.6.1+ ?) as it won't build a list IRC. Even quicker would be a simple regex

my @array = qw/ a list of words /;
print "yep, it's there"
  if "of" =~ /\b (?: ${\join('|', @array) }) \b/x;

__output__

yep, it's there
[download]

It's not quicker on it's own (list size etc will effect performance) but if you prebuild the word list it should be quicker than grepping every time.
HTH

_________
broquaint