http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=1047399


in reply to repeated characters in regular expressions

$ perl -le' my $n = 4; my $m = 1; $_ = "p8888er9999l"; print; s/((.)\2*)/ $n == length $1 ? $2 x $m : $1 /eg; print; ' p8888er9999l p8er9l $ perl -le' my $n = 1; my $m = 3; $_ = "monks"; print; s/((.)\2*)/ $n == length $1 ? $2 x $m : $1 /eg; print; ' monks mmmooonnnkkksss