Matheus Tavares Bernardino [off-list ref] writes:
Makes sense, thanks. However, using Peff's suggestion[1] for the
character iteration already eliminates the need for extra processes.
Even without an extra process, having to strip "-", assign an empty
string to $extra, and then strip that empty string from the tail to
come up with a single letter in $this, all are consuming cycles.
Even though these wasted cycles are now much smaller, having an arm
that specifically catches unbundled case and avoid doing anything
extra makes the codeflow clear, I would think.