This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed revised post-workshop proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Implementing Automata, WIA'97, held in London, Ontario, Canada, in September 1997.The book presents 21 revised full papers carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book; also included is an introductory overview. The papers discuss issues involved in the implementation of automata of all types also covering aspects from areas such as natural language processing, pattern matching, speaker recognition, VLSI testing, etc. This book reflects the state-of-the-art in this emerging area of interdisciplinary research.