[Tutor] what's a state machine?

[Seabrook, Richard]

-----Original Message-----
From:	Kirk Bailey [mailto:idiot1@netzero.net]
Sent:	Tue 8/5/2003 8:30 PM
To:	tutor@python.org
Cc:=09
Subject:	Re: [Tutor] what's a state machine?
oy vey...

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D

Don't go off the deep end...  I think the point
of Sr. Rodrigues' remark about needing a state machine
was this:

The thing you're trying to match in a wiki is probably
more extensive than just a pattern of adjacent characters,
which is what regular expressions do best.  In fact, the
topics you want to retrieve will probably be represented
by ambiguous terms rather far apart in the context, relying
on the matching agent to remember what it has seen in=20
previous lines, sentences, paragraphs maybe, in order to=20
determine the meaning of terms presently being scanned.
That means you need a process that has a memory, a program
in high-level language, for which the Turing machine is the
bare-bones minimum archetype.
While regular expressions may come in handy for matching
specific words occasionally, your retrievals will probably
have to deal with multiple-word phrases and a good bit
of ambiguity.
Dick S.