Coding a simple state machine in python

[Peter Otten]

William Ray Wing wrote:

> 
> On Feb 24, 2014, at 8:30 PM, Ronaldo <abhishek1899 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> How do I write a state machine in python? I have identified the states
>> and the conditions. Is it possible to do simple a if-then-else sort of an
>> algorithm? Below is some pseudo code:
>> 
>> if state == "ABC":
>>   do_something()
>>   change state to DEF
>> 
>> if state == "DEF"
>>   perform_the_next_function()
>> ...
>> 
>> I have a class to which certain values are passed from a GUI and the
>> functions above have to make use of those variables. How do I go about
>> doing this? I have the following algorithm:
>> 
>> class TestClass():
>>    def __init__(self, var1, var2): #var1 and var2 are received from a GUI
>>       self.var1 = var1
>> ...
>>    if state == "ABC"
>>       doSomething(var1, var2)
>> ..
>> 
>> Could someone point me in the right direction? Thank you!
>> 
>> --
>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 
> And, to extend Tim's suggestion of a dictionary just a bit, note that
> since Python functions are happy to pass function names as arguments, you
> can use a dictionary to make a really nice compact dispatch table.  That
> is, function A does its thing, gets to a new state, and returns as one of
> its return arguments the key into the dictionary that points to the next
> function_name to be called based on that new state.
> 
> Stackoverflow has a couple of compact examples here:
> 
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/715457/how-do-you-implement-a-dispatch-
table-in-your-language-of-choice

Why have the function return a name? Why not just another function?