--- Robin Gane-McCalla <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> NP-complete problems are just problems for which no
> polynomial time deterministic turing machine algorithm is known.

I believe that if P != NP then there could be problems "in between" that are
not in P and also not NP-complete.  However there is no proof of their
existence because there is no proof that P != NP.

> As for your problem involving SAT, it's not applicable to P-NP because
> they are classes of decisions problems
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_problem), which means problems
> that can be answered yes or no.

In my last post, I described SAT and other NP-complete problems as function
problems, where if the answer is yes it also outputs a witness, which would
allow the answer to be proven in polynomial time.  For example, SAT would
output a satisfying variable assignment if the answer is yes.  Verifiability
on a deterministic Turing machine is equivalent to solving the decision
problem on a nondeterministic machine, but I think a little easier to
understand.


-- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED]

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