What you want to do is match on a word rather than any part of a word. So mark word boundaries in your match. Your old code here: 
                if($action eq '!='){
                    $match{$a} = 0 if $line[$position]=~m/\Q$key/i;
                }
                else{$match{$a} = 1 if $line[$position]=~m/\Q$key/i;}

[download]
Can be rewritten like so: 
    $match{$a} = ($line[$position] =~ m/\b\Q$key\E\b/i) ? 1 : 0;
    $match{$a} = !$match{$a} if $action eq '!=';

[download]
Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.

In reply to Re: search for exact word only by Roy Johnson
in thread search for exact word only by Anonymous Monk

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