From what I understand of your intentions, you want to:

1. Pad a number (with zeroes) out to a given number of digits (printf and its sister sprintf are useful for this)
2. Break the padded number up into sections (substr is made for slicing up strings)
3. Reformat these sections according to your "template" (printf calls it a "format")

Here's one way to do it, step-by-step

#!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;


my $num = 34; #example number
my $padded_num = sprintf("%015d",$num); #Step 1: Pad the number
my $first  = substr($padded_num, 0, 3); #Step 2: Break the padded numb
+er up
my $second = substr($padded_num, 3, 5);
my $third  = substr($padded_num, 8, 7);
my $string = sprintf("NO-%s-%s-%s", $first, $second, $third); #Step 3:
+ Reformat the sections
print $string . "\n";
[download]

davis
Is this going out live?
No, Homer, very few cartoons are broadcast live - it's a terrible strain on the animator's wrist