Re^2: searching for a string w/ a * in any single position?

[ikegami]

I think the following will do the trick:

my @chars = map quotemeta,
            split //,
            $word;

my $re = join '|',
         map { local @_ = @chars;
               $_[$_] = '.';
               join '', @_
             }
         0..$#chars;

Using Regexp::Assemble should be faster:

use Regexp::Assemble qw( );

my @chars = map quotemeta,
            split //,
            $word;

my $ra = Regexp::Assemble->new();

for (0..$#chars) {
   local @_ = @chars;
   $_[$_] = '.';
   $ra->add(join '', @_)
}

my $re = $ra->re();