Method and data structure for performing regular expression searches in a fixed length word language

Given a language with all words in a fixed length, and a set of regular expressions composed only from characters in the alphabet of the language or the "?" sign (any single character), the method of the invention defines a data structure that is used to efficiently find the set of matching regular expressions for a given query word. The method may be adjusted by appropriate selection of a control variable to vary the storage space required and the search time necessary to complete the query. Specifically, the method of the present invention provides a space versus time trade-off between the storage space required for the data structures of the present invention and the amount of time to search those data structures to determine the matching set of regular expressions.