A method and apparatus for finding a reference pattern (RP) with K elements imbedded in an input pattern IP with repeating substrings uses dual pointers to point to elements in the RP to compare with input elements sequentially clocked from the IP. The dual pointers are loaded with a pointer address corresponding to the first reference element in the RP and the pointer addresses are either incremented to the next position or are reset back to the address of the first reference element in response to results of comparing the reference element they access to the presently clocked input element and results of comparing their respective pointer addresses.