What is the Pythonic way to implement a simple FSM?
- by Vicky
Yesterday I had to parse a very simple binary data file - the rule is, look for two bytes in a row that are both 0xAA, then the next byte will be a length byte, then skip 9 bytes and output the given amount of data from there. Repeat to the end of the file.
My solution did work, and was very quick to put together (even though I am a C programmer at heart, I still think it was quicker for me to write this in Python than it would have been in C) - BUT, it is clearly not at all Pythonic and it reads like a C program (and not a very good one at that!)
What would be a better / more Pythonic approach to this? Is a simple FSM like this even still the right choice in Python?
My solution:
#! /usr/bin/python
import sys
f = open(sys.argv[1], "rb")
state = 0
if f:
for byte in f.read():
a = ord(byte)
if state == 0:
if a == 0xAA:
state = 1
elif state == 1:
if a == 0xAA:
state = 2
else:
state = 0
elif state == 2:
count = a;
skip = 9
state = 3
elif state == 3:
skip = skip -1
if skip == 0:
state = 4
elif state == 4:
print "%02x" %a
count = count -1
if count == 0:
state = 0
print "\r\n"
