Hi, I am searching for indexes of substrings in larger strings. However some of my substrings contain one character insertions/deletions/substitutions. Here is some sample data: 
#substring(s) to search for:
$substr = "AATGCTCCCCAATGAGGCA";
$substr2 = "TT##CACAAGGAACTTTTTT"; 


#Search for it in this string: 

$str = "CTTGAGTTATTAGCTGTTTGCCCCTGGGCAAGTTGTCTCACCTCTCCGTGTTTGTTTCCTCA
+CCTATTGGACCAGGCCTATGGTTTTCAAACTGTGTTCCCTGGTGCTCTGAGACTTAGGGAAGGGGAACG
+CCCACACTGGCAAGGCTAACACAAGCCGCCATATACCCACCCCACTTCACCCACAGCACCCCCCTTTCT
+GTGTCTCATATACTGCGGGCCTATGCGA";

# the second substring  is straightforward
$pos =  index( $string, $substr);

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I would like the 2nd substr to match as well, despit having the # insertions.

Perl Cookbook recipe 6.13 discusses this, and suggests using the String:Approx module. However this module returns a list of matches and in scalar context returns the number of sucessful matches.

In my case I need approximate index matching. So the index function will return an answer despite finding an approximate match. Is there such a thing? Or are there other solutions that I am overlooking? Thank you for your help.

In reply to Approximate index by indapa

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