I have faced similar problems before.

I take the key not as cherry but as

cherry+ and cherry-

simple example

my %strands;

# you could do this to the strand line
$key = 'cherry    +';
$key =~ s/ //g; # to remove spaces

$strands{'cherry+'} = 1;
$strands{'cherry-'};

then when you read cherry in, and you want cherry+

if (exists $strands{'cherry+'})
{
    do_something ();
}