Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!unmvax!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!think!barmar From: barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin) Newsgroups: comp.emacs Subject: Re: Keyboard macros Turing-equivalent (was Re: Copy From Above?) Message-ID: <36474@think.UUCP> Date: 17 Feb 89 00:41:15 GMT References: <36460@think.UUCP> <9275@megaron.arizona.edu> Sender: news@think.UUCP Reply-To: barmar@kulla.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin) Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge, MA Lines: 17 In article <9275@megaron.arizona.edu> mike@arizona.edu (Mike Coffin) writes: >Ah, but you can resort to lisp exactly once: after you decide exactly >what form the "decent conditional" will take. Then you bind it >to a key and you're on your way. But that's one time too many. The issue is whether keyboard macros themselves are Turing-equivalent. If you are allowed to define new commands then you are stepping outside the keyboard macro world. We already know that Lisp is Turing-equivalent, so even one foray into Lisp makes the question uninteresting. Barry Margolin Thinking Machines Corp. barmar@think.com {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar