Dear Monks
I want to find the largest block of similar items in the input. The code I have written is here. 
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my $string = 'abbbcddddfegrgrgddeeeeedd';
my @chars = split //,$string;
my $hold = '';
my $currentSequence = '';
my $longestSeq = '';
my $currentPosition = 0;
my $longestSequenceStartPosition;
foreach (@chars){
    my $currentCharacter = $_;
    $currentPosition += 1;
    if($hold eq $currentCharacter){
    $currentSequence .= $currentCharacter;
    }
    else{
    if(length($longestSeq) < length($currentSequence)){
        $longestSeq = $currentSequence;
        $longestSequenceStartPosition = ($currentPosition -1) - length
+($longestSeq);
    }
    $currentSequence = $currentCharacter;
    
   }
    $hold = $currentCharacter;
    
}
print "$string\n";
print "$longestSeq\n";
my $answer = '-' x length($string);
substr($answer,$longestSequenceStartPosition,length($longestSeq)) = $l
+ongestSeq;
print "$answer\n";

[download]
This works well if may not be efficient. It finds the first entry of largest block. 
$string = 'abbbcddddfegrgrgddeeeeedd';
$answer = '------------------eeeee--'
I want to do it in a better way, find all the blocks, starting from largest to smallest and want to extend to 2-D and 3-D and may be higher dimensions. This is not from a programming contest or a homework
Thanks,
Looking for visual solution
Artist

Edit kudra, 2002-10-04 Removed unclosed pre tag

In reply to Block Search by artist

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