http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=795721

fiddler42 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Kind Folk,

I have a list of c. 5,000 files that I need to collapse into the smallest possible list of files with wildcards. For example, say I have some files named:-

abcpwbln08
abcpwbln07
abcpwbnn10
abcpwbnn06
adesicln09
adesicln08
adesicln01
adesicnn05

[download]
...and I need to reduce them to:-

abcpwbln0*
abcpwbnn*
adesicln0*
adesicnn05

[download]
Any suggestions on how to do this as efficiently as possible in perl? The routine will start off by just reading in the contents of a user-specified unix directory. The names will be very similar to what's referenced above.

Thanks,

-fiddler42

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