Content deleted Content added
No edit summary |
→can an algorithm produce infinite output?: new section |
||
Line 212:
The change made by multipundit lengthened this section but added nothing that wasn't discussed in appropriate detail in appropriate sections further on. Multipundit made assertions without clarification, and added a bold assertion about a fringe topic, "inductive Turing machines", without much context or substantiation.
== can an algorithm produce infinite output? ==
The article [[recursively enumerable set]] says:
:* There is an algorithm that enumerates the members of S. That means that its output is simply a list of the members of S: s<sub>1</sub>, s<sub>2</sub>, s<sub>3</sub>, ... . If necessary, this algorithm may run forever.
Is that a legitimate use of the "algorithm"? I can't find support for it in [[algorithm characterizations]]. I would say the set is recursively enumerable if there is an algorithm (recursive function) that takes input i and computes s<sub>i</sub>. I think that a function that takes some finite or empty input and produces infinite output (a list of all the primes) but is computable for every initial segment of the output is called [[corecursive]]. I don't know if "algorithm" applies to that. [[Special:Contributions/66.127.52.47|66.127.52.47]] ([[User talk:66.127.52.47|talk]]) 21:19, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
| |||