5: Self-reproduction
Course week(s)
Week 5
Course subject(s)
5: Self-reproduction
Description: Turing machines that print their own code are an example of the principle of self-reproduction. A more advanced result, the recursion theorem, says that every programme is able to use its own code: precisely this property is used by computer viruses.
Book: Introduction to the Theory of Computation, Chapter 6, pp. 221-228.
Exercises: 6.2, 6.6, 6.7 and 6.9
Key concepts:
- Self-reproduction (Viruses)
- Recursion Theorem
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Based on a work at https://ocw.tudelft.nl/courses/theory-of-computation/.