pattern matching question

[troglodyte111]

I am trying to create a command to override anything done to a special object "frob". The command pattern is #text# frob. It now turns out that this matches "take frob", and "x frob" but not "examine frob" which reverts to the standard examine command. Some more experiments leads me to assume that an existing command with strictly more letters than the text "frob" does not trigger this pattern. Similarly if I vary "frob": whenever the command has more letter than the rest of the text there is no match. For example #text# fro will match "x fro" but not "take fro". It will always match non-commands regardless of length though, for example "qwerty fro".

I am curios: Is there an explanation for this - and any way to get around it?