Donald E. Knuth in Python, cont'd

[mwilson at the-wire.com]

Antti J Ylikoski wrote:

> 
> I wrote about a straightforward way to program D. E. Knuth in Python,
> and received an excellent communcation about programming Deterministic
> Finite Automata (Finite State Machines) in Python.
[ ... ]
> #You can adjust that for your needs.  Sometimes I have the states return
> #a (next_state, output) tuple.  You could use a distinguished done()
> #state, or just use None for that.  I wrote the example above as global
> #functions, but more commonly these would be methods of some StateMachine
> #class.
> #
> # ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> #
> # The program calculates correctly after D. E. Knuth but it has the
> # actual
> # yearly calendar Easter dates wrong.  See Knuth's text.
> #
[ ... ]
> def Easter(Year):
>      global G, Y, C, X, Z, D, N, E
>      Y = Year
>      nextState = E1
>      continueLoop = 1
>      while continueLoop:
>          nextState = nextState()
>          if nextState is None:
>              break

def Easter (year):
    global Y
    Y = year
    nextState = E1
    while nextState is not None:
        nextState = nextState()


would be a little cleaner.  As you say, to be really clean, make a class.

	Mel.