also took shape in the 1960s. By the end of the decade, automata theory came to be seen as "the pure mathematics of computer science".

Automata

What follows is a general definition of an automaton, which restricts a broader definition of a system to one viewed as acting in discrete time-steps, with its state behavior and outputs defined at each step by unchanging functions of only its state and input.

Informal description

An automaton runs when it is given some sequence of inputs

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