Turing Machine Simulator

A simple Turing machine without graphic interface.

Change Log

• 2020-05-17 Created this file.
• 2020-05-21 First working version of this program.

Introduction

This is an implementation of Turing machine via commandline input.
This implementation is c based.
The program receives instructions from input file.

Compile

compile all the .c files or use make:

$ make all

Run

Run the program called turingMachine followed by the configuration file:

$ ./turingMachine config.txt

Or you can pick one initial stage:

$ ./turingMachine config.txt initialStage

Then the program will ask you to write the initial sequence. The running stage and result will be send to stdout. When there is no transition from the current status, the machine will halt. As an example, with the file sample00.txt, we can run the program by

$ ./turingMachine sample00.txt

or

$ ./turingMachine sample00.txt s2

Clean the directory

$ make clean

Configuration File Syntax

There are 3 moves:

• Move left: L
• Move right: R
• Stay: S

The acceptable file should be constructed line by line in the form below:

<current_state> <read_character> <write_character> <move_direction> <next_state>

Below are two samples of such file:

s1 0 0 r s2
s2 1 0 l s2
s2 _ 1 s s1

s1 0 0 R s2
s2 1 0 L s2
s2 _ 1 S s1

Comments

• The blank tape is set to be represented as "_",
  so there is a fixed character you should use when writing the configuration file.
• The program accepts both lower and upper character representing the move direction.