Question

I want to do something like this

$string ='4791';
$string =~ tr/4791/(ma)(laya)(lam)(_baasha)/;

should give me

$string='malayalam_baasha';

i.e replace each character with n other characters. n may be different for each character.

Is there a one line solution for this translation ?

Answer 1

Assuming you always want to replace a single character with a specific string…

my %Replacement = (
    '0' => 'abc',
    '1' => 'def',
    '2' => 'ghi',
    '3' => 'jkl',
    # ... whatever others you like ...
);

my $String = '0123';
print "$String\n"; # Prints "0123"
$String =~ s{(.)}
            {exists($Replacement{$1}) ? $Replacement{$1} : $1}egx;
print "$String\n"; # Prints "abcdefghijkl"

Just make an entry in %Replacement for each character you want to swap out.

Re-reading your question, no, this isn’t on one line, though it can be written as such (though messily) if you like. Constraining it to a single line will really kind of depend on how many different exchanges you want to have, though. After a certain point, it’s going to get ugly.