Rice's Theorem

From Notes
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Every nontrivial, functional property about programs is undecidable.


Functional property
a property that refers to the language accepted by the program and not the specific code of the program.
EX: Program terminates in 10 steps: (not functional); the program accepts 0 or more inputs (functional).
Nontrivial property
functional property about programs if some programs have the property and some do not.
Decidability
In reference to a decision problem, the question of the existence of an algorithm that can and will return a Boolean true or false value (instead of looping indefinitely)