while (my ($key,$value) = each(%o)) { my $i; my $j; my $x = (length($value)-(length($search)-1));# x = the length of value + minus (the length of search minus 1) AKA how many times to iterate.. +. for (i=0; $x; $i++) { $l_seq = substr($value, $i, length($search)) for (j=0; j<(length($search)); $j++) { $match += substr($l_seq, $j, 1) eq substr($search,$j,1) } $mis_match (??)