1. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon, the instructions comprising: instructions for searching a content addressable memory based on a comparand, wherein the comparand is stored on a comparand data register, and wherein the comparand comprises a collection of bits; instructions for receiving a comparand overlay pointer; instructions for generating a modified comparand by modifying the comparand, wherein the modified comparand is based at least in part on a comparand overlay data value and the comparand overlay pointer; and instructions for searching the content addressable memory with the modified comparand.