Check if a Bash array contains a value

Question

In Bash, what is the simplest way to test if an array contains a certain value?

Answer 1

given :

array=("something to search for" "a string" "test2000")
elem="a string"

then a simple check of :

if c=$'\x1E' && p="${c}${elem} ${c}" && [[ ! "${array[@]/#/${c}} ${c}" =~ $p ]]; then
  echo "$elem exists in array"
fi

where

c is element separator
p is regex pattern

(The reason for assigning p separately, rather than using the expression directly inside [[ ]] is to maintain compatibility for bash 4)