It looks like you want to establish word similarity without regard to order or case. Try a hash (it will give you the flexibility to modify the rules of the game later).

my $word = 'bantha fodder';

my @letters = split//, lc($word);

my %counts;

for(@letters){
    $counts{$_}++;
}

for(sort {$counts{$b} <=> $counts{$a}} keys %counts){
    my $t = $_ =~ /[a-z]/ ? 'letter' : 
            $_ =~ /[0-9]/ ? 'number' : 'character';
    my $s = $counts{$_} > 1 ? 's' : '';
    printf " the  %-10s: %-3s ocurred %-3s time%s\n",
           $t,$_,$counts{$_},$s
}
[download]

which prints

 the  letter    : 'a' ocurred 2   times
 the  letter    : 'd' ocurred 2   times
 the  letter    : 'e' ocurred 1   time
 the  letter    : 'n' ocurred 1   time
 the  letter    : 'r' ocurred 1   time
 the  character : ' ' ocurred 1   time
 the  letter    : 'h' ocurred 1   time
 the  letter    : 'b' ocurred 1   time
 the  letter    : 'f' ocurred 1   time
 the  letter    : 't' ocurred 1   time
 the  letter    : 'o' ocurred 1   time
[download]

Now wrap that in a subroutine and use some loop control:

sub letter_counts {
    my @letters = split//, lc(shift);
    my %counts;
    for(@letters){
        $counts{$_}++;
    }
    return %counts
}

my $word1 = 'bantha fodder';
my $word2 = 'banana slug';

my %counts1 = letter_counts($word1);
my %counts2 = letter_counts($word2);

my $result = 'are equivalent';

test_loop:
for(keys %counts1, keys %counts2){
    if(!defined $counts2{$_} || !defined $counts1{$_}){
        $result = 'are not equivalent';
        last test_loop
    }
}

print "'$word1' and '$word2' $result\n";
[download]

Now you can modify the loop / conditional as you see fit.

For order dependent similarity, try Algorithm::Diff

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