use strict; use warnings; use List::Util qw/first/; use Text::Balanced qw/extract_multiple extract_bracketed/; my $text = "1*(2+3)*(3+4)+5*(6+7)+42"; my @results = extract_multiple( $text, [ { Bracketed => sub { extract_bracketed( $_[0], '()' ) } }, { PlusOperator => qr{[+]} }, { MultiplyOperator => qr{[*]} }, { Number => qr{\d+(?:\.\d+)?} }, ] ); my $operator = first { ref($_) eq 'PlusOperator' } @results; # $operator holds '+' my $plus; my $new_string = join( '', map { if ( !$plus && ref $_ eq 'PlusOperator' ) { $plus = 1; '-' } else { $$_ } } @results ); print "$new_string\n";