state
<storage, architecture, jargon, theory> How something is; its
configuration, attributes, condition, or information content. The state of a
system is usually temporary (i.e. it changes with time) and volatile (i.e. it
will be lost or reset to some initial state if the system is switched off).
A state may be considered to be a point in some space of all possible states. A
simple example is a light, which is either on or off. A complex example is the
electrical activation in a human brain while solving a problem.
In computing and related fields, states, as in the light example, are often
modelled as being discrete (rather than continuous) and the transition from one
state to another is considered to be instantaneous. Another (related) property
of a system is the number of possible states it may exhibit. This may be finite
or infinite. A common model for a system with a finite number of discrete state
is a finite state machine.
[Jargon File]
(1996-10-13)
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