1. A system for determining the start of one or more patterns of characters in an input character string, the patterns being defined by at least one character of the input character string, the input character string being provided to the system, the system operating in a series of states, the series of states including at least one start state and at least one terminal state, the system comprising: finite state automaton, the finite state automaton being responsive to each character of the input character string and selectively transitioning to a next state in response to each character; an automaton memory having stored therein a state transition table and a special state table; the special state table including special state information; the special state information including start state entries and terminal state entries, the special state information having at least a first code to indicate whether the special state information is a start state entry or a terminal state entry, each start state entry including a start state register select code, each terminal state entry including a second code identifying the one or more particular patterns, and a start state register number code; and a plurality of start state registers, each register of the plurality of start state registers being identifiable by the start state register number code and having stored therein information relating to the location in the input character string of the start of a particular pattern of the one or more patterns; the state transition table including current state information corresponding to the current state of the finite state automaton, character information corresponding to the characters in the input character string, next state information relating to the next state to which the finite state automaton will transition in response to the current state information and the character information, and special state table information corresponding to the next state information and indicating whether the system should perform a lookup in the special state table.