A packet processing technique can include selecting a protocol field from the packet, and performing a comparison of the selected protocol field with comparison data in a compare logic array to output a protocol index. The protocol index can be used as an address to read parsing commands from a parse control table, and a parse result can be generated based on executing the parsing commands on the packet. The parse results are used to derive a parse result vector, which can be used by a forwarding engine to forward the packet.