On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 7:42 PM, Petite Abeille <petite.abeille@gmail.com> wrote: > print( ( 'aaaa aaa aa a aaaaa' ):gsub( '([aeiou]?)([aeiou]?)', '%1' )) I'd have thought that you could at least simplify to the following: print( ( 'aaaa aaa aa a aaaaa' ):gsub( '([aeiou])[aeiou]', '%1' ))