Can you please confirm based on your comments I made the following changes 
sub rewrite
{
    my ($string)       = @_;
    my ($left, $right) = split /\s+/, $string, 2;

    if (my @m = $right =~ /^\d{2}(\d{2})(.*)/)
    {
        $right = $m[0] . ($m[1] =~ /^-/ ? '' : '-') . $m[1];
        // here are the new additions
        $right =~ s/\s+//g; 
        $right =~ s/-$//;

    }
    else
    {
        $right = '-' . $right unless $right =~ /^-/;
    }

    return $left . $right;
}

Please confirm that this is what you meant.
Thanks

[download]

In reply to Re^7: reg expression question by healingtao
in thread reg expression question by healingtao

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.