You sound as if you think that 
    /a*b*c*...y*z*/

[download]
isn't an acceptable solution. I think that once you have placed anchors, it's a very fine solution. The regex might be long, it's simple. There are no alternatives. There's no backreferencing. There are no delayed regexes. There will be no backtracking for matching strings, and only minimal backtracking in case of failures. Remember that the less alternatives you give the regexp engine, the faster it (usually) be.

Abigail

In reply to Re: Regexp for alphabetical order match within the string by Abigail-II
in thread Regexp for alphabetical order match within the string by prostoalex

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