[Icfp04-discuss] no good clue

[Olaf Doschke]

Hi all,

my impression of the task is, that a program 
generating an ant state machine is harder to 
write than writing that state machine itself...

some disadvantages:
state numbers can change when inserting new 
states, although you always can append new 
states, as the order of states has nothing to
do with order of execution. BUT: The first
state is always state 0!

So I decided to use Symbols for states and 
Integers (esp. markers), which I will replace 
by their line number when "compiling"...

just a hint...

Or does anybody now some (visual) tool for
generating a state machine?

I must admit, I don't have a good clue about
an intelligent solution, I'd rather put more
effort in a simulator. I think of writing one
in Visual FoxPro, for which a brand new beta 
of version 9 was released today (or yesterday,
depending on your timezone): 

http://msdn.com/vfoxpro (yep, it's M$. But the
beta is free and expires on April 1st 2005.

Bye and good luck to all, 
Olaf Doschke (Germany, Hamburg).