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For the example that I've (which you mentioned that it could be elem 2,3 or,4), is there a pattern on which elem it will pick?
No, there's no way to tell which elem it'll pick. However, you can easily read the previous and next elements to determine where you are once it has picked one.
If this array is a physical file and I did a setll and then readp, I would expect it to always pick elem 4.
What you've forgotten is that you've built an index over a key in your physical file. You haven't done that in the case of the array.
You could build an index over your array (using the User Index APIs) and use that to look up elements in the array in pretty much the same fashion as you would a physical file.
However, if you don't build an index over the array, it works like an unkeyed physical file (except, it's faster). You can look stuff up using a binary search algorithm (even if you have to write it yourself) and in many/most cases it'll actually be faster than a PF lookup, even though the PF lookup has an index built over it.
Arrays are marvelous things -- but they're not physical files.
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