Short example of regular expression converted to a state machine?

Question

In the Stack Overflow podcast #36 (http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/01/podcast-36/), this opinion was expressed: Once you understand how easy it is to set up a state machi

Answer 1

Make your own on the fly!

http://osteele.com/tools/reanimator/???

This is a really nicely put together tool which visualises regular expressions as FSMs. It doesn't have support for some of the syntax you'll find in real-world regular expression engines, but certainly enough to understand exactly what's going on.