Halting Problem

Introduction to Computing
Science and Programming I

Alan Turing
Alan Turing 1912-1954
Father of modern computing science
1936
Turing Machine
Church-Turing thesis
Halting Problem

1950: Turing Test
Turing Machine
A Turing machine is a very simple
theoretical computer with a couple basic
elements.
An infinitely long tape broken up into cells
that can each store a single symbol from a
finite set of symbols
A head that can read or write one symbol at a
time from the tape
A state diagram that tells the head what to
do, move left/right, print a symbol
Church-Turing Thesis
This thesis proves has to do with
comparing what problems can be solved
by different types of computer.

It proves that a Turing Machine could
theoretically be created that can do
anything any digital computer can do.
Halting Problem
An important question of computing
science is Are there problems that cannot
be solved?
There are, and probably the most famous
of these is the halting problem described
by Turing.
He was thinking in terms of Turing
machines (there were no computers), but
it is easy to extend the idea.
Halting Problem
Halting problem
Can we write a program that will look at any
computer program and its input and decide if the
program will halt (not run infinitely)?

A practical solution might be to run the program and
if it halts you have your answer. If after a given
amount of time it doesnt halt, guess that it wont
halt. However, you wouldnt know if the program
would eventually halt.
Halting Problem
As it turns out the problem is undecidable.
For a problem to be undecidable you just
have to prove that there is one case it
cant produce an answer for.
The case that Turing came up with that
can never be solved involves giving a
program itself as input.
Halting Problem
Lets assume were given a function
halts(prog,input) that is supposed to tell
us if the program prog will halt if given
the input. The function will return True if
it halts, False otherwise.
Halting Problem
Using the halts function the following program can be written that
reads in a program, given as a filename) from the user. It then
calls the halts function to decide if the program will halt given itself
as input.

prog = raw_input("Program file name: ")

if halts(prog, prog):
while True:
print "looping

else:
print "done"
Halting Problem
It may not make sense to give a program itself
as input, but that isnt important here.
What could happen?
If halts(prog,prog) returns True, that means the
program will halt when given itself as input.
However, in this case the program would go into an
infinite loop. Therefore the program doesnt halt.
If halts(prog,prog) returns False, that means that it
wouldnt halt, but in that case the program does halt.
This contradiction is unavoidable thus proving that
the halting problem is undecidable. No function can
always correctly decide if a program will halt.

Turing Test
The Turing test was formulated as a way to answer the
question, Can machines think?
The basic idea is that there is a sort of judge who
converses with a computer and a person. However, this
is indirect. The judge writes down questions and the
computer and the person, who are hidden from the
judge, return typewritten answers. If the judge couldnt
consistently identify which set of answers were from the
person, than the computer could think.

Turing predicted that computers could pass this test with 30% of
humans as the judge by the year 2000.