This seems to work...

use Test::More tests => 3;

my $x = "AB:APPLE:BOY:ZOO:ZOOM";

ok  isSubset('APPLE:ZOO' => $x);
ok !isSubset('BOY:GIRL' => $x);
ok  isSubset('AB:BOY:ZOOM' => $x);

sub isSubset
{
    my ($small, $big) = @_;
    $small =~ s{:}{:(?:[^:]+:)*}xg;
    
    return($big =~ /^(?:[^:]+:)*$small(?::[^:]+)*/);
}

[download]

... but I'd generally go with an array/hash solution.

perl -E'sub Monkey::do{say$_,for@_,do{($monkey=[caller(0)]->[3])=~s{::}{ }and$monkey}}"Monkey say"->Monkey::do'

In reply to Re: Computing Subsets by tobyink
in thread Computing Subsets by grandpascorpion

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