Design Pattern problem involving N states and transitions between them

Question

I have a problem at hand and I am not getting which design pattern to use. The problem goes as such:

I have to build a system which has \'N\' states and my system ha

Answer 1

This sounds like the typical use for a finite state machine

in short, the state machine describes the various states in which your system can be, and under which conditions it can go from state to state. A state machine is described exactly as your English description. And it can be formally described using state diagrams

in code you could make a state machine like this:

 enum State { Init, ShowMenu, ShowMsg, DisplayVideo, Exit };
 State state = State.Init;

 while (state != State.Exit)
 {
      switch(state)
      {
           case State.Init:
                init();
                state = State.ShowMenu;
                break;
           case State.ShowMenu:
                if(lastMenuItemSelected==1) state = State.ShowMsg;
                if(lastMenuItemSelected==2) state = State.DisplayVideo;
                break;
           case State.ShowMsg:
                ....
                break;
           ....
 }

I'm not sure if I got the exact syntax correct for Java...I'm more into C#