perlquestion rickoy I have a string: 2 0 1 2 - 7 - 2 7 9 : 3 7 : 3 1 As you can see, each character in the string are separated by 1 space and the date and time are separated by 2 spaces. I would wish to reduce the spaces so that if there are 2 spaces in between characters, it will become 1 space and if there is 1 space in between characters, then it will be gone.