Turing Machine

[ChrisGreaves]

(Admin: Forum?)
I have delved into building a Turing machine in VBA:
http://www.chrisgreaves.com//Turing/index.htm
There is a downloadable ZIP file if you want to play with it; a PDF file if you want to read.
This is my first draft, and I am now in deep-think mode about the next stage (grin!).

Corrections, praise, suggestions, praise, errors, praise, omissions here please (or PM)
Updated 26-Nov 2014: http://www.chrisgreaves.com/Turing/index.htm

[Rudi]

I'll have a look at this on the weekend...

[ChrisGreaves]

I'll have a look at this on the weekend...

You do that!
(Rudi: Is this the text from the cell phone?)

[Rudi]

Nope.

About the Turning Machine....
It is making my head Turn?!!!
I have not seen the movie yet so I am not even following your PDF instructions.

I can send some praise your way as you succeeded in hiding knowledge in a lot of letter characters... Though I can read it, I can make no sense of it. Congrats (if that was the aim)

[ChrisGreaves]

I have not seen the movie yet ...

This (Sunday) afternoon I wrote a program to increment a binary number.

[Rudi]

Boy, that would complicate things digitally!!

[ChrisGreaves]

Boy, that would complicate things digitally!!

For those of you who are so lazy that you’ll only watch movies⁽¹⁾ – and you know who you are – this 13MB download contains two movies showing a Turing Machine counting how many letters “Z” there are in a string.
The movie “Video_2014-11-23_210259_mpeg2video.mpg” is the regular run; execution of the program takes about three seconds.
The movie “Video_2014-11-23_211317_mpeg2video.mpg” is the same program executed (some of the time) in a single-step mode, slowed down so that you can see the machine shuttling back and forth, collecting “Z”s and storing “1”s at the right-end end of memory.
Turing013 is my thirteenth Turing machine.
Turing007 was able to increment a binary value.
Turing002 performed unary addition
I am now pondering implementing Turing Machines as a set of individual tables, providing a macro-like facility.
⁽¹⁾ When we were your age we had to pencil pictures on the top corner of 80-column punched cards and riffle them ...

More progress reported here, especially in the table at the foot of the poorly formatted web page:-
Initialising memory using a Turing Machine
Add 2+2 to get 4
Swap Two Symbols in Memory
Increment a binary number – no padding
Use the leftmost column of the table as a commentary
Increment a binary number – with padding
Count how many “Z” symbols we have in a string
Trivial Efficiency
Implement an <else> symbol
Form the binary count of symbols
Cleaning up
Macro Tables

[Rudi]

Seems like you are having fun Chris. I can recall studying up on Morse Code and then leaving myself all these "secret" notes and ciphers around which only I could understand until my brother decided to get in on the act too.

BTW: Thanks for the movies.

[ChrisGreaves]

I have delved into building a Turing machine in VBA: ...

The two templates (attached) are milestones in my development of a Turing machine interpreter.
The first template (Turng035.dot) impements Steven Pinkers machine that proves that Socrates is immortal.
The second template (Turng036.dot) impements Steven Pinkers machine that proves that Greaves is clever. (I couldn’t resist it).
If you would like to explore the Turing machine in its step-by-step development PM me and I’ll make available a ZIP file with all versions 001-036 (and beyond).
My next objective in the project is to develop a subroutine-processor for the Turing machine.
The WhatFAQ.doc is my method of logging bugs, suggestions etc; implemented items appear at the top of the document; pending items appear at the bottom.

[jstevens]

Chris,

Have you received an email from Ms. Donna Gwen yet?

Seems to me she may be interested.

Regards,
John

[ChrisGreaves]

Have you received an email from Ms. Donna Gwen yet?

Who she?
And does she sell memory, cheap?

[jstevens]

Chris,

Seems like your behind in your Lounge reading.

Start here.

Regards,
John

[ChrisGreaves]

Seems like your behind in your Lounge reading.

Thanks John; all joking side, I know I am behind in the Lounge; also in the software frequented by loungers. (Firefox and someone called Flash are ganging up on me again ...)
On the positive side I am gradually catching up on the backlog of "holds" from the library, and hope to lay the dragon to rest over the Christmas Break!
It doesn't help when I watch a movie for relaxation and then discover that I have the book of the movie ...