Files
Landon Curt Noll 4ee4c731f7 convert markdown copyright TAB chars into SPACE chars
While not strictly necessary, replacing the two ASCII tab characters
in the markdown copyright comment makes it easier to detect problematic
TAB indentation within markdown files.

After this commit, only 90 markdown files have leading ASCII TAB
characters.  And again, while not strictly necessary, we can consider
running expand on those 90 markdown files to see what effect that
might have on the HTML files they produce.

Replace leading ASCII TAB characters with multiples of 8 ASCII SPACE
characters (the default action of the `expand(1)` tool) might have
an negative effect on some HTML formatting where **hack-a-round**
formatting was attempted to fix broken indentation caused by
problematic ASCII TAB characters.

Think of this as a baseline for evaluating leading
TAB characters within markdown files.

TODO: Consider either using `expand(1)` to replace leading ASCII
TAB characters with multiples of 8 ASCII SPACE characters AND/OR
modifying the appropriate `bin` tool to convert leading ASCII TAB
characters into multiples of 8 ASCII SPACE characters.
2024-06-22 22:15:25 -07:00

3.2 KiB

To build:

    make

To use:

    make -B [MACHINE=your_machine.h] [TAPE=your_tape.h] [X=[0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9]] [V=[0|1|2]] run

Try:

    ./try.sh

Judges' remarks:

This is something we were fearing all along: that the C preprocessor is Turing-complete even without conditionals and recursive file inclusion as some kind of a rewriting system. Now we have the proof!

Author's remarks:

Preprocessor Turing Engine

Features

  • Turing machine runs in preprocessor
  • universal (unlimited configurable states, symbols, and tape)
  • no #ifs or other conditional directives, only #defines
  • no recursive #include
  • single compiler run (no repeated preprocessing)
  • no variadic macros
  • verbosity levels:
    • V=0 (default) only prints the final tape
    • V=1 additionally prints one tilde character per machine step (slow)
    • V=2 additionally prints details on each machine step (slow; generates large files)
  • make target run runs ./prog and filters a little statistics out of the verbose output
  • X (defaults to 3) sets the maximum number of steps: M(X) ~ 8X

Limitations

If the machine does not halt after M(X) steps, you will see unexpanded macros in the output.

Compiler warnings

If V=1 or V=2 is used, you may see "warning: string length is greater than the length '4095' ISO C99 compilers are required to support".

Programming

Implementing your own Turing machine is easy. Take a look at the supplied header files for examples.

Tape Symbols

Every symbol used (except _) must be explicitly declared using

    #define sym_SYMBOL(sym, _SYMBOL) sym

Example:

    #define sym_1(sym, _1) sym

Tape

The initial content of the tape must be defined in the tape header using a triple like:

    #define tape ((((,),...l2), l1), c, (r1, (r2..., (,))))
  • l1, l2, ... are the symbols to the left
  • c is the symbol at the current position
  • r1, r2, ... are the symbols to the right

The empty pairs (,) represent the continuations of the tape, filled with underscore symbols (_). They are expanded on demand.

State Machine

All transitions are defined in the machine header using the syntax

    #define CURRENT_SCANNED (WRITE, MOVEMENT, NEXT)

where

  • CURRENT is the current state.
  • SCANNED is the symbol at the current position.
  • The whitespace before the parentheses is significant.
  • WRITE is the symbol to be written to the tape.
  • MOVEMENT is L for left, R for right; don't specify anything if you want no movement.
  • NEXT is the next state.

There must be a state A defined, which becomes the initial state of the machine.

To halt the machine, use the keyword break as in

    #define A_1 (2, break)