Question

while being stuck in some c**p SM code I ended up wondering is there a name for state machine that does actions that cause further inputs?
For example action on transition Start--(PowerOn)-->Initialized
might cause Play to be generated and than state machine will get Play as input and do the transition Initialized--(Play) -->Playing.
So Im kind of a need for name of this kind of machine so I could turn it more into what I consider a normal SM(aka SM that does transitions depending on input, ofc actions on transitions are also OK as long as they dont end up affecting the input).

It this is too abstract : I have a “SM” that sends and receives msgs, problem is that sending part causes replies that are than processed as input. That makes it hard to reason about behavior of the machine, which in turn makes modification of the code hard.

Answer 1

They are named:

Recursive state machines (RSMs).

Further Info see http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/pg/public_psfiles/toplas2005.pdf