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COMP3310 Assignment 2: An annoying web-proxy
Preamble
Finite Automata are one of the simplest useful models of computation. Although they are limited in power, many of the simpler tasks that we automate with computers can be thought of as the action of a finite automaton (or more strictly a finite state transducer, as we normally expect output beyond “accept” or “reject”). Event driven systems of all kinds (for example the event loop of a GUI application) are typically expressible as finite automata, and often explicitly are. Many of the sub-components of digital electronics can also be thought of as hardware implementations of finite automata. Even a cursory web search turns up applications in all sorts of interesting places.
Of particular interest for this assignment, the task of lexical analysis (whether it be in the traditional compiler design setting, or for data processing, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, &c.) is typically expressed via a finite automaton/finite state transducer.
To help introduce you to a basic model of computation, its applications and how we might go about translation theory into practice, this assignment focuses on implementing a simple lexical analyser for a basic calculator using a finite automaton based approach.
Your Task
This assignment consists in two components, a program and a report.
The Program (Weighting: 70%)
You will implement a [deterministic] finite automaton/transducer that takes in a string representing an arithmetic statement, and produces an output sequence of tokens that represent the numbers and operators. Your program should work like a finite automaton, with an explicit representation of state, and reading one character at a time. You will have to decide when to emit tokens (i.e. add them to the output list). The one specific exception I will allow to the model is the keeping of some sort of buffer to collect the digits of the numbers in (as the task is effectively impossibly otherwise ���).
Your program should also handle two types of errors — incorrect representation of a number, and incorrect representation of an expression.
Numbers will be in the following format:
The following expressions are valid:
In all cases, the skeleton code has a analyse method which takes a string (of the appropriate type for each language) and returns (or should return) a list of Tokens (again, typed appropriately for each language). The Token type is also given as part of the skeleton, along with suitable error types (as classes in Java and Python, and types in Haskell).
The program will be implemented in Java, Python, Ruby or Haskell, unless specifically negotiated otherwise with a good reason (the subject coordinator reserves final judgement on what constitutes a good reason).
Marking
The Program
The marking for the program will be based on automated unit tests, examples of which will be provided. Tests will use JUnit/PyUnit and can be run by clicking the “Mark” button (this also registers a submission). The marks for the program have one significant caveat: if the program does not use an automata based approach (excluding the aforementioned number buffer), it will be deemed to have failed to fulfill the specification, regardless of functionality, and you will receive 0 for the program.