in reply to How to format such a string?

$ perl -le' my $string = "iiMMMMMMMMMMoooooooooooooooooooooooMMMMMMMMMMiiiiiiiiiii +iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiMMMMMMMMMMMMMooooooooooooooooooooo"; my $code; $code .= $1 eq "M" ? $-[0] + 1 . "-$+[0]" : $1 while $string =~ /(.)\1 +*/g; print $code; ' i3-12o36-45i76-88o