I see. That makes sense since the machine that spits the results makes about 4% errors reading the first few letters just by manually inspecting my files, so sometimes TTGT might come out as TGGT or GGTT might come out as GGTA which are neither of the three barcodes I am after. I guess with the new script you posted I need to specify 'other' with all possible combination of the four letters that might be in my fastq to make sure that the script doesn't stall. Thank you again browseruk.