Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

List::Util

A collection of list-related subroutines. As of Perl 5.8, List::Util is included with the Perl source kit.

You can get the first item of a list (that matches the condition in BLOCK) like so:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use List::Util qw(first);

my @ll = qw(one two three);

my $fir = first { defined($_) } @ll;
print "$fir\n"; # Prints 'one'

List::Util implements (but does not export) the following methods.