Introduction to Automata Theory, Formal Languages and Computation

3

Finite Automata

Introduction

The term ‘automata’ has some typical pronounceable symmetry with the term ‘automatic’. In a computer, all processes appear to be done automatically. A given input is processed in the CPU, and an output is generated. We are not concerned about the internal operation in the CPU, but only about the given input and the received output. However, in reality, the input is converted to ‘0’ and ‘1’ and assigned to the process for which the input was given. It then performs some internal operation in its electronic circuit and generates the output in ‘0’ and ‘1’ format. The output generated in the ‘0’ and ‘1’ format is converted to a user-understandable format and we get the output. From the discussion, it is clear that the ...