Ah, but you dont *need* to sort by length... the regex is anchored at the end, so the pattern that matches first from left to right will *already be* the longest match. For instance, look at the following code:

#!/usr/bin/perl -wT
use strict;

my $text = 'fedcba';
$text =~ (/(a|ba|cba|dcba)$/);

print "Match: $1\n";

=OUTPUT
Match: dcba
[download]

It matches on the longest one, even though its at the end of the alternation.... thats because the regex engine works from left to right, and the first one that matches wins. That was the whole point of my post, sorry I wasn't more explicit.

-Blake