use strict; my $seq1 = 'aabcdefg'; my $seq2 = 'aabcdefgabcde'; sub in_sequence { my $str = shift; # fetch the string value my $ok = 1; # set private variable $ok = 1 $str =~ m/(.)(.)(??{ $ok = 0 if $2 lt $1; 0 })/; return $ok; } print "Sequence is ", in_sequence($seq1)?"good":"bad", "\n"; print "Sequence is ", in_sequence($seq2)?"good":"bad", "\n";