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What kind of programming problems are state machines most suited for?
I have read about parsers being implemented using state machines, but would like to find out about problems that scream out to be implemented as a state machine.
The easiest answer is probably that they are suited for practically any problem. Don’t forget that a computer itself is also a state machine.
Regardless of that, state machines are typically used for problems where there is some stream of input and the activity that needs to be done at a given moment depends the last elements seen in that stream at that point.
Examples of this stream of input: some text file in the case of parsing, a string for regular expressions, events such as
player entered roomfor game AI, etc.Examples of activities: be ready to read a number (after another number followed by a
+have appear in the input in a parser for a calculator), turn around (after player approached and then sneezed), perform jumping kick (after player pressed left, left, right, up, up).