Abstract: Efficiencies in searching and matching information in a computer system are achieved using embodiments of the invention. The invention can be used, for example, to build and utilize a dictionary of data for string replication compression. The data matching mechanism can also be applied to other situations where it is necessary to find a sequence of data in a data buffer (e.g. looking for a particular series of words, letters, or numbers in an online document). As a result of processing a current string using the data dictionary, it is possible to find a previously-processed dictionary string that has the greatest number of initial characters in common with the current string, and a location at which the current string can be inserted into the dictionary tree. A count field is used to improve the speed of searching for matched strings.