The code below works fine, but I'm not thrilled about the loop. The task is to take two intergers and elide them so that any redundant information in the higher number is dropped. So 123,134 becomes 113-34, and 123,123 becomes 123 and 34,123 becomes 34-123. Like a book index. Whats the slick way to do this? 
#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

sub elide {
  my ($start,$end) = @_;

  my $len = length( $end );
  for ( reverse 0..$len ) {
    my $start_start = substr( $start, 0, $_ );
    last if $end =~ s/^$start_start//;
  }

  return ( $end ) ? $start . '-' . $end : $start;
}

while ( <DATA> ) {
  print elide( split ' ', $_ ), "\n";
}

__DATA__
1   32
4   19
28  39
34  123
321 321
324 329
325 349
340 509

[download]

Which gives: 

1-32
4-19
28-39
34-123
321
324-9
325-49
340-509

[download]

In reply to eliding number ranges by qq

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