#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; { my @classes = ( ['[a-zA-Z]' => '\w'], ['[0-9]' => '\d'], ['\w' => '_'], #that's why order matters ['.' => '.'], ); sub make_regex { local $_ = @_ ? shift : $_; my $result = ''; my $i = -1; while( ++$i < @classes ){ my $p = pos($_) || 0; my ($re,$su) = @{ $classes[$i] }; if( /\G($re+)/g ){ $result .= $su . '{' . length($1) . '}'; $i = -1; } else { pos($_) = $p; } } $result } } printf "%s => %s\n",$_,make_regex for ( 'abc12','123','#+#+#', )