A method for generating look-up tables for a high speed multi-bit Real-time Deterministic Finite state Automaton (hereinafter RDFA). The method begins with a DFA generated in accordance with the prior art. For each state in the DFA, and for each of the bytes recognized in parallel the following occurs. First an n-closure list is generated. An n-closure list is a list of states reachable in n-transitions from the current state. Next an alphabet transition list is generated for each state. An "alphabet transition list" is a list of the transitions out of a particular state for each of the characters in an alphabet. Finally, the transitions are grouped into classes. That is, the transitions that go to the same state are grouped into the same class. Each class is used to identify the next state. The result is a state machine that has less states than the original DFA.