safeMax = Character.MIN_VALUE;
      safeMin = Character.MAX_VALUE;
    }
    this.safeMin = safeMin;
    this.safeMax = safeMax;
  }

  /*
   * This is overridden to improve performance. Rough benchmarking shows that this almost doubles
   * the speed when processing strings that do not require any escaping.
   */
  @Override
  public final String escape(String s) {