Turing machine (Re: Help on disassembler/decompilers)

megatest!djones@decwrl.dec.com (Dave Jones)
18 Sep 90 22:03:15 GMT

          From comp.compilers

Related articles
Turing machine (Re: Help on disassembler/decompilers) megatest!djones@decwrl.dec.com (1990-09-18)
| List of all articles for this month |

Newsgroups: comp.compilers
From: megatest!djones@decwrl.dec.com (Dave Jones)
Keywords: Turing
Organization: Megatest Corporation, San Jose, Ca
References: <1990Sep14.181616.26890@dce.ie>
Date: 18 Sep 90 22:03:15 GMT

>From article <1990Sep14.181616.26890@dce.ie>, by ch@dce.ie (Charles Bryant):
> In article <3972@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> vu0310@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu.cc.binghamton.edu (R. Kym Horsell) writes:
>> ... You can't even
>>say that "assembly language is closer to the machine & you can do things in
>>it that you can't in HLLs" -- after all, assembly and HLL are both capable
>>of emulating Turning machines, right?
>
> Well how would you translate this C function into Pascal.
>
> [ code omited. ]


Obviously, you would run your C-to-Turing-machine translator over it,
producing some Pascal initialization statements for your Turing machine
emulator that you wrote in Pascal. What could be simpler? :-)


Truth is, not only is it not the case that all computer systems are
effectively Turing machines, none of them is! It's those damn finite
tapes, for one thing. And computers are always hooked up to input/output
devices. (A computer is something that controls and monitors machinery.)
But discounting all that, don't we care just a little bit about how long
it takes?
--


Post a followup to this message

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.