storage, architecture, jargon, theory How something is; its
configuration, attributes, condition, or information content.
The state of a system is usually temporary (i.e. it changes
with time) and volatile (i.e. it will be lost or reset to some
initial state if the system is switched off).
A state may be considered to be a point in some
space of all
possible states. A simple example is a light, which is either
on or off. A complex example is the electrical activation in
a human brain while solving a problem.
In computing and related fields, states, as in the light
example, are often modelled as being
discrete (rather than
continuous) and the transition from one state to another is
considered to be instantaneous. Another (related) property of
a system is the number of possible states it may exhibit.
This may be finite or infinite. A common model for a system
(1996-10-13)