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I assume the other way, if integers aren't limited, assume they are unbounded. They are in the Python implementation. If you start worrying about implementatio

I assume the other way, if integers aren't limited, assume they are unbounded. They are in the Python implementation. If you start worrying about implementation bounds, C gets iffy -- pointers have to have a known size, and be convertable to and from integers, so you cant have unbounded memory in any given implementation (you can get closer with files, but files still have offsets which imply limited maximum size, and there is a limited space of possible strings to name files).

giomasce 6y ago
That's true for any language. Computers are finite state machines, though with a lot of states, therefore no actual computer can really run a Turing complete language. As many mathematical things, Turing completeness is an abstraction that doesn't really map on reality without caveats.
lifthrasiir 6y ago
You are correct. For this reason esolang community actually has defined a related concept called bounded-storage machine (BSM) [1]. C has a bounded memory but it can simulate an arbitrary large BSM by increasing memory and thus pointer size, so it is very close to (but not exactly) TC. By comparison SSL has two axes of bounds (stack length bounds and number bounds), only one of which is useful for simulating an arbitrary large BSM. I would say it is also close to TC but less so than C, because you need number bounds proportional to the max memory of simulated BSM and it is much easier to hit number bounds than stack length bounds. [1] https://esolangs.org/wiki/Bounded-storage_machine https://esolangs.org/wiki/Bounded-storage_machine