[glangdale]

pattern is, btw: (teakettle\w|abcd)

Either pattern in alternation works fine, but even a simple alternation of the two goes back to the behavior that you might expect to get from awful patterns like \d..\d..\w...\s...\d (i.e. reporting only a partial set of matches).

[michaelmior]

Did you mean either patter in "isolation"?

[glangdale]

Yup, you're right - I wound up saying the opposite of what I meant!