We thank Debby Russell and Todd Mezzulo of O’Reilly & Associates for believing in and supporting this book. We also thank Barry Trute, Michael Yau, Weiran Zhang, Keni Matsuda, Ken Jacobs, and the others at Oracle Corporation who spent valuable time reviewing this manuscript to ensure its accuracy.

Peter would like to acknowledge Weiran Zhang for his finesse and intellect as codeveloper of Oracle’s regular expression features. Peter would also like to thank Ritsu for being an ever-supportive and encouraging wife.

Jonathan would like to thank Dale Bowen for providing the Spanish sentence used for the collation example; Andrew Sears for spending so much time with Jeff; Jeff for dragging his dad on so many bike rides to the Falling Rock Cafe for ice cream and coffee; and the Falling Rock Cafe for, well, just for being there.