6. The method of claim 5 further comprising determining at least one of the following: a start offset of the possible matching back-reference, end offset of the possible matching back-reference, and length of the possible matching back-reference.
7. The method of claim 6 further comprising matching the possible matching back-reference with an associated capture group of the at least one given regular expression pattern, the associated capture group being determined by the input of the sequence of characters.