For an example of a runtime state machine, you may want to take a look at Russ Cox's implementation of NFA simulation for regexp in go [1]. The concepts may be

For an example of a runtime state machine, you may want to take a look at Russ Cox's implementation of NFA simulation for regexp in go [1]. The concepts may be a little impenetrable for a Sunday, but there are some interesting references in the source. [1] http://golang.org/src/pkg/regexp/exec.go http://golang.org/src/pkg/regexp/exec.go