Mastering Regular Expressions (2nd Edition) [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Colophon

Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback
from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive
approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry
subjects.

The animals on the cover of Mastering Regular Expressions, Second Edition, are
owls. There are two families and approximately 180 species of these birds of prey
distributed throughout the world, with the exception of Antarctica. Most species of
owls are nocturnal hunters, feeding entirely on live animals, ranging in size from
insects to hares.

Because they have little ability to move their large, forward-facing eyes, owls must
move their entire heads in order to look around. They can rotate their heads up to
270 degrees, and some can turn their heads completely upside down. Among the
physical adaptations that enhance owls' effectiveness as hunters is their extreme
sensitivity to the frequency and direction of sounds. Many species of owl have
asymmetrical ear placement, which enables them to more easily locate their prey
in dim or dark light. Once they've pinpointed the location, the owl's soft feathers
allow them to fly noiselessly and thus to surprise their prey.

While people have traditionally anthropomorphized birds of prey as evil and coldblooded
creatures, owls are viewed differently in human mythology. Perhaps because their large eyes give them the appearance of intellectual depth, owls have
been portrayed in folklore through the ages as wise creatures.

Jeffrey E. F. Friedl was the production editor for Mastering Regular Expressions,
Second Edition. Sarah Jane Shangraw was the proofreader. Jane Ellin provided
quality control.

Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book. The cover image is a 19th-century
engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. Emma Colby produced the cover
layout with QuarkXPress 4.1 using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.

The text was prepared by Jeffrey Friedl in a hybrid markup of his own design,
mixing SGML, raw troff, raw PostScript, and his own markup. A home-grown filter
translated the latter to the other, lower-level markups, the result of which was
processed by a locally-modified version of O'Reilly's SGML tools. That result was
then processed by a locally-modified version of James Clark's gtroff, producing
camera-ready PostScript for O'Reilly.

Ken Lunde of Adobe Systems provided special font and typesetting help, including
custom-designed characters and Japanese characters from Adobe Systems's Heisei
Mincho W3 typeface.

The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book; the
code font is Constant Willison. The illustrations that appear in the book were
produced by Chris Reilly, Robert Romano, and Jessamyn Read using Macromedia
FreeHand 9 and Adobe Photoshop 6.