May 2003
Intermediate to advanced
240 pages
4h 27m
English
Alan Turing first proposed the state machine in 1936. He envisaged a box with a paper tape input (input alphabet), a set of states (and start states), and a mechanism for mapping the input to the next state.
Definition—. A state machine is a conceptual machine with a given number of states; it will only be in one of the states at any given time. State transitions are changes in state caused by input events. In response to an input event the system may transition to the same or a different state, while an output event may be optionally generated.
For our purposes Enumerated Types and other assorted inputs replace the paper tape input. The mechanism for setting the start states is an initialization ...
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