[tyingq]

From playing with it a bit, the differences I see...

Ragel compiles its source into a separate file in the target language (C, Ruby, ASM, etc). FSL instead has a library that parses and runs the FSL source at run time.

Ragel supports (or plans to support) C, C++, ASM, Objective C, D, Go, Ruby, and Java. FSL supports (or plans to support) Javascript, C and Erlang.

The live editor does seem to be somewhat unique to FSL. It's at https://stonecypher.github.io/jssm-viz-demo/graph_explorer.h... Try, for example, changing "flow: down" to "flow: right".

[Cloudef]

I think i still rely on ragel more. Its based on lots of research and the author knows the problem area very well.