>perl -wMstrict -le "my @numbers = ( '123-456-789', '123.456.789', '123 456 789', '123456789', '999-999.999', '999 999-999', '999.999 999', '9999-999-9999', '99-999-99', '0123456789', '999999-999', '999.999999', ); ;; my $diff = qr{ [-. ] }xms; for my $n (@numbers) { my $match = $n =~ m{ (?