G'day Polyglot,

I see you already have a number of solutions. Here's another with no complex regexes nor any CPAN requirements.

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $data = '43:1:1; 43:1:2; 43:1:3; 43:1:4; 43:1:5; 43:1:6; 27:3:7; 27
+:3:8; 27:3:9; 65:1:4; 65:1:18';
$data .= '; 43:1:8; 65:1:9; 65:1:3; 1:1:2; 1:1:1';
my %seqs_for;
my @key_order;

for (split /; /, $data) {
    my ($key, $seq) = /^(\d+:\d+):(\d+)$/;
    push @key_order, $key unless exists $seqs_for{$key};
    push @{$seqs_for{$key}}, $seq;
}

my @output;

for my $key (@key_order) {
    my ($out, $last_seq, $end_range) = ('', -2, '');
    my @sorted_seqs = sort { $a <=> $b } @{$seqs_for{$key}};

    for my $i (0 .. $#sorted_seqs) {
        my $seq = $sorted_seqs[$i];

        if (length $out) {
            if ($seq == $last_seq + 1) {
                $end_range = $seq;
            }
            else {
                $out .= "-$end_range" if $end_range;
                push @output, $out;
                $out = "$key:$seq";
                $end_range = '';
            }
        }
        else {
            $out = "$key:$seq";
        }

        $last_seq = $seq;

        if ($i == $#sorted_seqs) {
            $out .= "-$end_range" if $end_range;
            push @output, $out;
        }
    }
}

print join('; ', @output), "\n";
[download]

Note that I added a few more data elements mainly for testing purposes:

$data .= '; 43:1:8; 65:1:9; 65:1:3; 1:1:2; 1:1:1';
[download]

Output:

43:1:1-6; 43:1:8; 27:3:7-9; 65:1:3-4; 65:1:9; 65:1:18; 1:1:1-2
[download]

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