Compared Against Imperative and Procedural Programming
The notion of state is not exclusive property of automata-based programming. Generally speaking, state (or program state) appears during execution of any computer program, as a combination of all information that can change during the execution. For instance, a state of a traditional imperative program consists of
- values of all variables and the information stored within dynamic memory
- values stored in registers
- stack contents (including local variables' values and return addresses)
- current value of the instruction pointer
These can be divided to the explicit part (such as values stored in variables) and the implicit part (return addresses and the instruction pointer).
Having said this, an automata-based program can be considered as a special case of an imperative program, in which implicit part of the state is minimized. The state of the whole program taken at the two distinct moments of entering the step code section can differ in the automaton state only. This simplifies the analysis of the program.
Read more about this topic: Automata-based Programming
Famous quotes containing the words compared, imperative and/or programming:
“Michelangelo said to Pope Julius II, “Self negation is noble, self-culture is beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the truly great and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared to self-abuse.” Mr. Brown, here, in one of his latest and most graceful poems refers to it in an eloquent line which is destined to live to the end of time—”None know it but to love it, None name it but to praise.””
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“To me Americanism means ... an imperative duty to be nobler than the rest of the world.”
—Meyer London (1871–1926)
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)