State space search is a process used in the field of computer science, including artificial intelligence (AI), in which successive configurations or states of an instance are considered, with the goal of finding a goal state with a desired property.
Problems are often modelled as a state space, a set of states that a problem can be in. The set of states forms a graph where two states are connected if there is an operation that can be performed to transform the first state into the second.
State space search often differs from traditional computer science search methods because the state space is implicit: the typical state space graph is much too large to generate and store in memory. Instead, nodes are generated as they are explored, and typically discarded thereafter. A solution to a combinatorial search instance may consist of the goal state itself, or of a path from some initial state to the goal state.
Famous quotes containing the words state, space and/or search:
“The state has no religion for the simple reason that it has each and everyone.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“For tribal man space was the uncontrollable mystery. For technological man it is time that occupies the same role.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“We spent them not in toys, in lusts, or wine,
But search of deep Philosophy,
Wit, Eloquence, and Poetry,
Arts which I loved, for they, my Friend, were thine.”
—Abraham Cowley (1618–1667)