Self-Modifying Finite Automata - Basic Definitions and Results

We formally de ne the Self-Modifying Finite Automaton (SMFA), a model of computation introduced in [RS93, RS94, RS95], as a subclass of a new more general model, the Self-Modifying Automaton (SMA). SMAs are similar to standard nite automata, but changes to the transition set are allowed during a computation. An SMFA is constrained in that it can have only nitely many di erent modi cation instructions, and the e ect of each instruction must be computable.