Compress::BraceExpansion 0.1.3

Compress::BraceExpansion is a Perl module to create a human-readable compressed string suitable for shell brace expansion.

SYNOPSIS

use Compress::BraceExpansion;

# output: ab{c,d}
print Compress::BraceExpansion->new( qw( abc abd ) )->shrink();

# output: aabb{cc,dd}
print Compress::BraceExpansion->new( qw( aabbcc aabbdd ) )->shrink();

# output: aa{bb{cc,dd},eeff}
print Compress::BraceExpansion->new( qw( aabbcc aabbdd aaeeff ) )->shrink();

Shells such as bash and zsh have a feature call brace expansion. These allow users to specify an expression to generate a series of strings that contain similar patterns. For example:

$ echo a{b,c}
ab ac

$ echo aa{bb,xx}cc
aabbcc aaxxcc

$ echo a{b,x}c{d,y}e
abcde abcye axcde axcye

$ echo a{b,x{y,z}}c
abc axyc axzc

This module was designed to take a list of strings with similar patterns (e.g. the output of a shell expansion) and generate the un-expanded expression. Given a reasonably sized array of similar strings, this module will generate a single compressed string that can be comfortably parsed by a human.
The current algorithm is most efficient if groups of the input strings start with or end with similar characters. See BUGS AND LIMITATIONS section for more details.