Method to construct a finite state machine for a finite-size language L

Question

I need to define a method to construct a finite automata for a finite language L (part of my proof for something else). My idea:

1. Create $|L|$ accepting states.
2. For each input string $s$ from $L$, create appropriate transitions from a starting state to unique accepting state of s.

I don't know how to formally describe this, or if this idea is even good.

Answer 1

Let $S$ be the list of all prefixes of words in $L$. Create a DFA with a state $q_s$ for each $s \in S$, and an additional sink state $q_\bot$. The starting state is $q_\epsilon$, and a state is accepting if it corresponds to a word in $L$. When at a non-sink state $q_s$, upon reading $\sigma$, move to $q_{s\sigma}$ if $s\sigma \in S$, and to $q_\bot$ otherwise. When at $q_\bot$, always stay there.

To show that this works, prove inductively that when reading a word $w$, if $w \in S$ then the DFA is at state $q_w$, and otherwise it's at state $q_\bot$.