Three Ways of Viewing a Finite State Machine

 This machine accepts strings which begin with n a's and then continue with m b's where n is greater than or equal to 0 and m is greater than 0. Thus, the input vocabulary or set, Sigma, is {a,b}, the state set or Q is {q0,q1,qhalt}, the start state is q0, and the set of final states is {qhalt}. The Markov Diagram and the State Table Representation both make explicit the mapping from Q x Sigma to Q.

The language accepted by this machine is: {b, ab, aab, abb, bbbb, aaaab, etc.}.

Below are links to animations of this machine. Animation begins as the page is opened.

 
 An animation of the Markov Representation of the FSM accepting the string abb#.
 An animation of the Quadruple or Rule Representation of the FSM accepting the string abb#.

Machines

Computational Approach

© Charles F. Schmidt