OPTIMIZING SEARCH TREES BY INCREASING FAILURE SIZE PARAMETER

A search tree embodying a plurality of signatures to be compared with an input string of characters and including a number of branches of sequential states originating at a root node, wherein each state comprises a state entry including a failure transition and one or more success transitions, is optimized by selecting a failure size parameter indicating a minimum number of characters to be traversed on the failure transitions and selectively modifying the search tree to create a modified search tree for which all failure transitions to non-root states are characterized by the selected failure size parameter.