Compare two strings by ignoring certain characters

Question

I wonder if there is an easy way to check if two strings match by excluding certain characters in the strings. See example below.

I can easily write such a method by

Answer 1

You can of course test the regex w/out substitution:

[a-zA-z]{3}.[a-zA-z]{3}

Seems like a common use for regex, so why the avoidance?