A method for reducing the size of a DFA associated with a regular expression separates the functions of locating subexpressions within the DFA and determining if the located subexpressions satisfy a regular expression. For example, the functions of (1) locating subexpressions in a range asserting expression and, (2) determining whether the subexpressions satisfy the range of the range asserting expression are partitioned. In one embodiment, a first component may locate the subexpressions in a data stream using one or more DFAs, while a second component determines if the located subexpressions satisfy the range. In this embodiment, because the DFAs are not configured to determine a relationship between subexpressions, such as a range between subexpressions, the size of the resultant DFA may be significantly reduced.