1. A computer-implemented method for determining whether an input string matches at least one regular expression, the computer implemented method comprising: a) accepting the input string; and b) for each of the at least one regular expression, checking for a match between the input string accepted and the given regular expression using configured nodes of a state machine corresponding to the given regular expression by using the configured nodes of the state machine to (1) check detection events from a simple string detector, (2) submit queries to identified modules of a variable string detector, and (3) receive detection events from the identified modules of the variable string detector.