Rather than getting bogged down with alternating between the start and end strings and then doing a repeat substitution, just capture the middle bit and tag a '?' on either end. This works with the sample string you provided:
$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -E '
my $string = "---------xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx------yyyyyyyyyyyyyy--------
+";
$string =~ s/^-*(.*?)-*$/?$1?/;
say $string;
'
?xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx------yyyyyyyyyyyyyy?
Update:
Actually, that may not be what you want at all!
I read:
-
"replace all characters ..." [plural] "... with another character" [singular]
-
"The output is: ?xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx------yyyyyyyyyyyyyy?" [wanted output]
-
"replace ever - ..." [plural] "... with an ?" [singular]
So, assuming I've completely misinterpreted your question, I'd recommend ++rjt's solution.
However, if you still wanted something without alternations or repeating, you could use this:
$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -E '
my $string = "---------xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx------yyyyyyyyyyyyyy--------
+";
$string =~ s/^(-*)(.*?)(-*)$/"?" x length($1) . $2 . "?" x length(
+$3)/e;
say $string;
'
?????????xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx------yyyyyyyyyyyyyy????????
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