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 i

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