[Tutor] what's a state machine?

[John Miller]

Sean 'Shaleh' Perry <shalehperry@comcast.net> wrote:

> look at htmlparser's code.  What you need is a state machine ......

"Rodrigues" <op73418@mail.telepac.pt> wrote:

> Re's can't, I repeat, can't parse text with structure, you need a full
> parser (state machine) for it. They can be used however to tokenize
> the text, e.g. recognize the tags

I wonder if someone could explain what is meant by a "state machine", 
(and why regular expressions are insufficient for the kind of parsing 
Kirk needs for his wiki...)? Thanks.

John Miller