Your first idea might be improved by using Regexp::Optimizer to combine all the patterns into one: 
use strict;
use Regexp::Optimizer;
 
my $string = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxy";
my @letters = split(//, $string);
my $i = 0;
my @regexes;
for (my $j = 0; $j < scalar(@letters); $j++) {
      for (my $i = 0; $i < scalar(@letters); $i++) {
          if ($i != $j) {
               $regexes[$i] .= $letters[$j];
               }
          else {
               $regexes[$i] .= '.';
               }
          }
      }
 
my $rl  = Regexp::Optimizer->new;
my $re = $rl->list2re(@regexes);
print "re: $re\n";
my $r = qr/$re/;
 
my $tomatch = "wwwabcdefghjjklmnopqrstuvwxyqq";
if ($tomatch =~ $r) {
  print "it matched\n";
}

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In reply to Re: Fuzzy Searching: Optimizing Algorithm Selection by tall_man
in thread Fuzzy Searching: Optimizing Algorithm Selection by Itatsumaki

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