In a recent note, Tom Marchant said: > Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 18:47:43 -0500 > > On Mon, 9 Oct 2006 19:11:07 -0300, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >>I'm confident also that a Turing machine > >>could be emulated in COBOL. > > > >Trivially, subject to storage constraints. > > Why single out COBOL to mention storage constraints? COBOL does have a > few KB of fixed overhead per program, but it's hardly the memory hog that > many assume that it is. > COBOL was singled out because a previous poster doubted that COBOL could implement a Turing machine emulator. The "subject to storage constraints" is obligatory because a Universal Turing Machine (I elided the "Universal" earlier) posits infinite storage. The statement is merely that COBOL shares with all other real languages the restriction of finite storage that means a Universal Turing Machine is always a mathematical abstraction, not a physical reality.
Even a Turing machine implemented in a putative 64-bit COBOL wouldn't be universal. -- gil -- StorageTek INFORMATION made POWERFUL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
