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Timeline for Does this Foo machine halt?

Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0

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Aug 10, 2019 at 12:34 comment added Arnauld Just an empirical result, but brute-forcing the longest cycle among halting machines on a tape of length \$n\$ suggests that a tighter upper bound is \$\lfloor2^n.log(n)/n\rceil\$.
Aug 10, 2019 at 10:05 history edited Jo King CC BY-SA 4.0
added explanation
Aug 9, 2019 at 17:54 comment added user41805 Sketch of a proof for a Foo machine with tape a_1 ... a_n 0 . Consider an n-cube of the signs of each cell with directed edges (= an iteration of Foo) between vertices (= states), visiting the same vertex via any loop of edges will result in the IP being in the same position it started with. Proof: In a loop, the IP travels in each dimension an even number of times, ie the IP changes by k×(a_j + (-a_j)) % n ≡ 0 for each dimension, hence it always returns to the same position, only ever seeing 1 state out of n states for each vertex, ie a total max of 2^n states (= number of vertices of cube).
Aug 9, 2019 at 15:30 history edited Jo King CC BY-SA 4.0
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Aug 9, 2019 at 15:29 comment added Magma The state of the Foo machine also includes the location of the pointer, not just the signs of each cell.
Aug 9, 2019 at 6:26 history edited Jo King CC BY-SA 4.0
-3 bytes
Aug 9, 2019 at 5:54 history edited Jo King CC BY-SA 4.0
-2 bytes + explanation
Aug 9, 2019 at 5:48 history answered Jo King CC BY-SA 4.0