Eli5: How does a Turing machine work?

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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?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s not necessarily 1s and 0s. It can be any symbol of a specified alphabet.

It has an infinite 1D tape and keeps track of a state and location on the tape. It repeatedly reads from the tape at the current position, writes to the tape at the current position, changes state, and moves around the tape. The new state, symbol written, and direction of movement (magnitude is always 1) depend on the old state and symbol read. The interpretation of said symbols is completely external; the Turing machine has no idea what they mean.

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