FSA vs transducer

[Carol F]

Is the only difference between an FSA and a transducer is that the transducer has an output?

[Simon]

Yes, that’s correct. If we just want to detect whether a string matches a pattern (e.g., regular expression), we can use an automaton to “accept” it. No output is required: the fact that the automaton reaches the end state means the input string matched (i.e., was “accepted”).

If we want to convert the input to some output (e.g., convert “8.46” to “eight forty six”, then we’d use a transducer.

The theory of automata and transducers is beyond the scope of this course, but we do need to know what they can be used for.

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