Editing Structured programming (section)

===State machines===
Some programs, particularly [[parsers]] and [[communications protocol]]s, have a number of [[state (computer science)|states]] that follow each other in a way that is not easily reduced to the basic structures, and some programmers implement the state-changes with a jump to the new state. This type of state-switching is often used in the Linux kernel.{{Citation needed|date=April 2017}}

However, it is possible to structure these systems by making each state-change a separate subprogram and using a variable to indicate the active state (see [[trampoline (computing)|trampoline]]). Alternatively, these can be implemented via coroutines, which dispense with the trampoline.