dsill@RELAY.NSWC.NAVY.MIL (02/17/89)
unsigned *Wayne_Mesard(); MESARD@BBN.COM writes: >[[Hypothesis of the day: It is possible to build an arbitrarily complex >Turing machine using Emacs keyboard macros :-) ]] > >[[Followups refuting the previous sentence ... to /dev/null.]] How about a weak proof? A year ago today, coincidentally, David Hitz (hitz@mips.com) posted a set of vi macros that simulate Turing machines to comp.unix.wizards. If one of the vi emulators for GNU emacs handles vi macros, then it would be possible to simulate a Universal Turing Machine under vi under emacs. Of course it would be easy to write a Turing machine simulator in elisp, but that'd be cheating. (We are assuming in this discussion that a simulated Turing machine is equivalent to a real Turing machine, which is not true. That's like saying simulated perpetual-motion machines really demonstrate perpetual motion.) :-) ================================================================ "No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the president of American Telephone and Telegraph Company." -- Alan Turing