State machines are used to order and select matching operations for determining whether an input string matches any of at least one regular expression by (1) accepting the set of regular expression(s), and (2) for each of the regular expression(s) of the set accepted, (A) identifying any look-ahead type strings within the given regular expression, (B) identifying any sequential type strings within the given regular expression, (C) partitioning the regular expression based on any identified simple strings, any identified look-ahead type variable strings, and any sequential type variable strings to generate partitioned parts, (D) reordering the partitioned parts of the regular expression using optimization policies to generate reordered partitioned parts, and (E) configuring nodes of a state machine corresponding to the given regular expression. Once configured, the state machines check for a match between the input string accepted and the regular expression using the configured nodes of the state machine.