Hi BrowserUk, You code has worked perfectly for my problem!!! I agree that my problem was one that needed more than just regular expression. However I was struggling to get an elegant solution in perl. Could I please ask you to explain me these two lines: 
my $matched = ( $q ^ substr( $t, 0, length( $q ) ) ) =~ tr[\0]
+[\0];
        if(  $matched >= ( length( $q ) -1 ) )

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In reply to Re^2: string match using with an N in any position by biobee07
in thread string match using with an N in any position by biobee07

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