Task — Goal parser

You are given a string, $str. Write a script to interpret the given string using Goal Parser. The Goal Parser interprets “G” as the string “G”, “()” as the string “o”, and “(al)” as the string “al”. The interpreted strings are then concatenated in the original order.

Examples

Example 1
Input: $str = "G()(al)"
Output: "Goal"
G    -> "G"
()   -> "o"
(al) -> "al"

Example 2
Input: $str = "G()()()()(al)"
Output: "Gooooal"
G       -> "G"
four () -> "oooo"
(al)    -> "al"

Example 3
Input: $str = "(al)G(al)()()"
Output: "alGaloo"
(al) -> "al"
G    -> "G"
(al) -> "al"
()   -> "o"
()   -> "o"

Example 4
Input: $str = "()G()G"
Output: "oGoG"
() -> "o"
G  -> "G"
() -> "o"
G  -> "G"

Example 5
Input: $str = "(al)(al)G()()"
Output: "alalGoo"
(al) -> "al"
(al) -> "al"
G    -> "G"
()   -> "o"
()   -> "o"

Analysis

This is even simpler than task 1 in that no executed s||| is required.

I'm struggling to think of a use case for this!

Try it 

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Blog: http://ccgi.campbellsmiths.force9.co.uk/challenge

use v5.26;    # The Weekly Challenge - 2026-03-09
use utf8;     # Week 364 - task 2 - Goal parser
use warnings; # Peter Campbell Smith
binmode STDOUT, ':utf8';
use Encode;

goal_parser('G()(al)');
goal_parser('G()()()()(al)');
goal_parser('(al)G(al)()()');
goal_parser('()G()G');
goal_parser('al)(al)G()()');

sub goal_parser {
    
    my ($string, $base);
    
    # initialise
    $string = $_[0];
    say qq[\nInput:  '$string'];
    $base = ord('a') - 1;
    
    # apply rules
    $string =~ s|\(\)|o|g;
    $string =~ s|[\(\)]||g;
    
    say qq[Output: '$string'];
}

last updated 2026-03-09 — 8 lines of code

Output

Input:  'G()(al)'
Output: 'Goal'

Input:  'G()()()()(al)'
Output: 'Gooooal'

Input:  '(al)G(al)()()'
Output: 'alGaloo'

Input:  '()G()G'
Output: 'oGoG'

Input:  'al)(al)G()()'
Output: 'alalGoo'