A Turing machine has an infinite tape with 1s and 0s that acts as a memory. Where does it get the instruction to perform a task? Are the instruction written on the tape? Because from what I understand, the machine reads what’s written on the tape and then perform some instruction on that same tape. So it replaces the input data with output date?
In: 4
In his 1936 paper Turing includes various tables that define (in the left column) a *Configuration* and (in the right column) a *Behaviour*.
It is by following these tables that a Turing machine gets its “instructions” on exactly how to process a “tape”.
At a very simple level these tables can be considered the Turing Machine programming language.
If you want some examples I would recommend “The Annotated Turing” book written by Charles Petzold, which takes you through the process of how this works in small steps.
Latest Answers