Help with coroutine-based state machines?

[Yair Chuchem]

How about this implemetation of your state-machine, without the cluttering
of the while loops, and as a side effect, without use of generators too:


### Code snippet start

class FSM:

    def __init__(self, startnum, incrnum, stopnum):
        self.startnum = startnum
        self.incrnum = incrnum
        self.stopnum = stopnum
        self.counter = 0
        self.exit = 'exitsentinel'

    def idle(self):
        #    We could wait for some condition here.
        print "Idle state: %d" % self.counter
        return self.start

    def start(self):
        self.counter = self.startnum
        print "Start state: %d" % self.counter
        return self.increment

    def increment(self):
        self.counter = self.counter + self.incrnum
        print "Increment state: %d" % self.counter
        return self.checkfinished

    def checkfinished(self):
        if self.counter >= self.stopnum:
            return self.finished
        else:
            return self.increment

    def finished(self):
        print "Finished state: %d" % self.counter
        return self.exit

    def dispatch(self, startstate):
        newstate = startstate
        while newstate<>self.exit:
            newstate = newstate()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    m = FSM(1,5,50)
    m.dispatch(m.idle)
    m.dispatch(m.idle)

### Code snippet end


Is there something I'm missing?

        Yair