Leftmost longest match with DFA search

Can someone point me to articles that discuss various ways to get the
leftmost longest match when implementing regexp search using a DFA?

The "obvious" solution of turning the problem "search for RE" into the
problem "match .*RE" (where I use "match" here to mean "anchored
search") only gives you the leftmost shortest match.

I've already seen http://compilers.iecc.com/comparch/article/07-10-026
where Tcl's approach to the problem is described, which is sadly O(N^2).

I'm also interested in similar approaches using non-backtracking NFAs
(I'm familiar for example with the algorithm used in Plan9's regexp
library).

        Stefan