in reply to String matching idea

My idea: xor the strings, find the position of the first non-null character in the result.

Update: no code was requested, so using the spoiler tag:

<Reveal this spoiler or all spoilers in this node or all in this thread>

If your strings only contain "a" and "b", you can use 

index $s1 ^ $s2, "\03"

[download]

directly, because "\03" eq ('a' ^ 'b').

لսႽ† ᥲᥒ⚪⟊Ⴙᘓᖇ Ꮅᘓᖇ⎱ Ⴙᥲ𝇋ƙᘓᖇ

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom