On Tue, 23 Apr 2019 at 10:36, Martin Ward <[email protected]> wrote:
> (Note that the thoretical problem of determining whether a particular > program is self-modifying or not is, like the Halting Problem, > non-computable. But in practice, all examples of self-modifying code > we have encountered can be detected and translated.) > Very interesting. The Halting Problem and its nifty proof of non-computability is something everyone learns in the first CompSci course, but I have never given computability of self-modification any thought. Is there a similar nifty proof for this one? Surely the problem is fundamentally architecture and/or language specific. Many languages and indeed some architectures simply do not allow self modification. I suppose at a high level one could consider generating code during execution to be self modification (of the program as a whole), and then it begins to sound familiar... Tony H.
