Methods and apparatus are disclosed for use with an associative memory, such as for, but not limited to implementing access control list and quality of service features in a communications or computing device. Multiple lists, such as access control lists, may be manipulated to typically produce a single list of entries with continuation indications, or the lists might be provided from another source. An associative memory is programmed with entries with each entry typically including a corresponding continuation level indication or flag. One or more lookup words are then generated and provided to the associative memory for a particular packet (or other entity) corresponding to the different continuation levels. In one implementation, a modified version of the Order Dependent Merge technique is used to generate the list of entries and to identify the corresponding continuation level or other continuation indication and the corresponding action to be performed for each entry.