Ok, my problem is quite simple, but it is frustrating since I am a beginner and cannot get my REGEX to match like it is supposed to. I am trying to get it to match:

"sort by (CPU|USER|PID|MEM|COMMAND)" so it should match sort by followed by one of the choices of command and allow for spaces before, between and after each word entered. It works, but it will only match the last 4, but will not match the first option "CPU". I switched words around and put MEM first, then it stopped matching MEM and then matched CPU fine. Oh, and I made it case insensitive also, basically it all works perfect except the first option never matches. Any help would be greatly appreciated. This is my REGEX:

$command =~m/\s*"sort"\s+"by"\s+(CPU|USER|PID|MEM|COMMAND)/i

In reply to regex issue by perlNewby

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