>There's no other function to search for a value in an array, you're probably going to have to order the array and then compare all the values one by one.
>
>Either ASORT() or adding ORDER BY to your select would give you an ordered array that you can work with for this.

If you "compare all the values one by one," there is no benefit from ordering the array. If you do a binary search of the array, the ordering is required and the search will be extremely efficient and will outperform an ascan() after arrays reach about 3000 rows.