Beefy Boxes and Bandwidth Generously Provided by pair Networks
Problems? Is your data what you think it is?
 
PerlMonks  

Re: finite automata

by VSarkiss (Monsignor)
on Oct 05, 2001 at 00:42 UTC ( [id://116825]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to finite automata

I have a guess about this. Nobody in the CB seemed to bite, so I'll repeat it here. ;-)

The setting
A computer science class going over FSA's.
Could either be theory (Computability, Theory of Computation) or, more likely, Compilers.

Professor: Finite state machines have many practical uses. One of them is for lexical analysis of a regular language. As a matter of fact, regular expressions are usually implemented as FSMs.
Student: Excuse me, are regular expressions used anywhere for real?
Professor: Absolutely. There are Unix programs that use them for searching files. Those of you who know Perl know that they are built-in; they're first-order objects in the programming language. That makes it very easy to write tiny lexers quickly. There's the bell. Here is your homework, due in a week.

Later

Student: "Design a finite-state machine for a language that ..." ACK! I can't handle this. What did he say about Perl? Let's see....
... www.google.com, "finite automata questions perl" (Try it!)
... Hmm... Wha? Jackpot!
... Lessee, where's that stupid question? I bet I get an answer in no time...

And the rest you already know.

Log In?
Username:
Password:

What's my password?
Create A New User
Domain Nodelet?
Node Status?
node history
Node Type: note [id://116825]
help
Chatterbox?
and the web crawler heard nothing...

How do I use this?Last hourOther CB clients
Other Users?
Others studying the Monastery: (6)
As of 2024-03-28 09:00 GMT
Sections?
Information?
Find Nodes?
Leftovers?
    Voting Booth?

    No recent polls found