Re^2: Supress similar chars in the string

And if the OP ever had the need to scale it up to more than 3 characters:

use strict;
use warnings;

my $n = 3; # number of adjacent characters
$n--;

$_ = 'testing 1234567 ........ aaaaaaaasssssss __________ ++++++++++ -
+-------- testing testing ';

s/((.)\2{$n})\2*/$1/g;
print;
[download]

Comment on Re^2: Supress similar chars in the string Download Code

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Re^3: Supress similar chars in the string by Jim (Curate) on Jan 18, 2011 at 18:50 UTC
Is this a case where adding the `/o` modifier to the `s///` operator might be helpful? It's an efficiency measure intended to ensure (or help ensure, I think) the regex is only compiled once. `s/((.)\2{$n})\2*/$1/go;` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^4: Supress similar chars in the string by Anonymous Monk on Jan 24, 2011 at 02:38 UTC
Is this a case where adding the /o modifier to the s/// operator might be helpful? No, /o is mostly misused and obsolete , see //o of any help?	[reply]
Re^3: Supress similar chars in the string by AnomalousMonk (Archbishop) on Jan 18, 2011 at 22:26 UTC
`s/((.)\2{$n})\2/$1/g;` [download] Shouldn't the `\2` (zero or more of...) term in the regex above be `\2+` (one or more of...) instead? I.e.: `s/((.)\2{$n})\2+/$1/g;` Won't the `\2` version lead to useless replacement of sub-strings of n identical characters with the same n-character sub-string (Update:* where n is the maximum number of contiguous identical characters originally defined)? Update: This really should have been posted as a reply to Re: Supress similar chars in the string.	[reply] [d/l] [select]