(Off topic, but just in case others are interested :-).
You should probably take a look at some computer science college level
theory books. Look for "Automata Theory", "Turing
machines",
"deterministic finite automation", and "non-deterministic finite
automation". The turning machine is the classic example.
I have 2 classic texts on my shelf with good coverage - "Introduction
to Automata Theory, Languages and Computation" and "The design and
Analysis of Computer Algorithms" (Aho, Hopcroft, and Ullman authors).
Note that any text used for a comp sci theory course should have
coverage of this stuff (I am guessing that the 2 I mentioned are out
of print since it has been a zillion years since I got my comp sci
degree :-). Putting "Hopcroft" in the search pane at Amazon brings up
a number of texts.
In college we had an implementation of a Turing machine using macros
in vi. It was a classic.
I would guess that there are other implementations of Turing machines
out there.
- Jim
----- Original Message -----
From: <cremes.devlist at mac.com>
To: <mongrel-users at rubyforge.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2007 8:30 AM
Subject: [Mongrel] [OT] Ragel and FSM tutorials
> This is off-topic.
>
> I''m hoping someone on this list can point me towards more general
> information on finite state machines, their definition, how to build
> them, determining when to apply them, etc. I read Zed''s blog entry
> from way back when covering Ragel [1] but he hasn''t followed it up
> and there aren''t many pointers to external information.
>
> I''ve googled around and found a reasonable amount of information
on
> Ragel, but I''m not so interested in knowing how to use that
> particular tool as I am in learning about finite state machines *in
> general*.
>
> Thanks to anyone who has good pointers on docs, tutorials or good
> source code examples (any language). I''d also appreciate any
> suggestions on books (college texts or whatever) that cover this
> subject.
>
> cr
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