Computers as Components, 2nd Edition

212 CHAPTER 5 Program Design and Analysis

This code takes advantage of the fact that the state will remain the same unless explicitly

changed; this makes self-loops back to the same state easy to implement. This state machine

may be executed forever in a while (TRUE) loop or periodically called by some other code. In

either case, the code must be executed regularly so that it can check on the current value of

the inputs and, if necessary, go into a new state.

5.1.2 Stream-Oriented Programming and Circular Buffers

The data stream style makes sense for data that comes in regularly and must be

processed on the fly. The FIR filter of Example 2.5 is a classic ...