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From: mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Will this *thread* ever halt?
Message-ID: <JDkR323w164w@mantis.co.uk>
Date: 30 May 91 14:20:54 GMT
References: <1991May28.204434.16396@netcom.COM>
Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.
Lines: 22

doug@netcom.COM (Doug Merritt) writes:
> If you are aware of work that shows that the halting problem is soluble
> for functional languages, I would dearly love to see the reference. Or
> even that it *might* be soluble.

Sorry, this bit of the thread was talking not about solving the halting
problem in general, but about getting useful (but limited) information about
halting conditions for certain classes of program. I don't believe that
Victor Yodaiken thinks that *general* C programs are analyzable for halting
status.

My contention is that even this limited sort of halting information is
impractical to work out for ANSI C, but that I understand that some functional
languages might allow you to gain useful information about the likelihood of
some useful programs halting.

I'm not really an expert in functional programming, so I'll leave it at that.


mathew