Book excerpt: The research and development of pattern recognition have proven to be of importance in science, technology, and human activity. Many useful concepts and tools from different disciplines have been employed in pattern recognition. Among them is string matching, which receives much theoretical and practical attention. String matching is also an important topic in combinatorial optimization. This book is devoted to recent advances in pattern recognition and string matching. It consists of twenty eight chapters written by different authors, addressing a broad range of topics such as those from classifica tion, matching, mining, feature selection, and applications. Each chapter is self-contained, and presents either novel methodological approaches or applications of existing theories and techniques. The aim, intent, and motivation for publishing this book is to pro vide a reference tool for the increasing number of readers who depend upon pattern recognition or string matching in some way. This includes students and professionals in computer science, mathematics, statistics, and electrical engineering. We wish to thank all the authors for their valuable efforts, which made this book a reality. Thanks also go to all reviewers who gave generously of their time and expertise.