Elaine Ashton and Jarkko Hietaniemi provided many valuable comments and help that I was happy to incorporate. Thanks also to Allen Wyke, Dan Livingston, and Adam Turoff for thoughtful and comprehensive reviewing. I am extremely grateful to Uri Guttman for the most detailed feedback I have ever seen, and to Uri and his wife Linda for some fun diversions at Perl conferences. Any remaining errors are in no way attributable to any of these reviewers. Ed Wright wrote the FrameMaker styles for typesetting and Carl Miyatake provided a Japanese translation. Ann Palmer did the cover illustration and interior artwork.

I would like to thank Karen McLean at Prentice Hall for her saintly patience, and Mike Henderson at Addison-Wesley for taking on this project in the first place. Anne Garcia, and Heather Mullane performed critical production duties; Vanessa Moore spent ages ensuring the excellence of the finished product. I also thank my many students for the valuable lessons they have provided me. Kudos also to my friends at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who regularly accomplish the spectacular against overwhelming odds. The model question in Chapter 12 appears by permission of its author, Mary Byrne.

Lastly, I would like to thank my wife Grace, for her support, love, and constant help throughout a period much longer than either of us anticipated. Most spouses would have stopped there, but she also toiled tirelessly on the index, proofreading, and copy editing. Greater support an author could not expect.