Re: Coding securely, was Linux (in)security

[Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu]

On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 12:08:20 GMT, Ben Laurie said:

> Duh. That's a complete misunderstanding of the halting problem - which
> is, in essence, that you can't write a program which can predict, in
> general, whether another program will halt. Its perfectly possible to
> write programs that are guaranteed to halt.

Correct.  The point is that 'can you design a language that *guarantees* non
terminating programs' is isomorphic to the compiler solving the Halting Problem.

It's easy to design languages that make it *difficult* to make a programming whoops.
It's impossible to design one that *guarantees* it.

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