patternMinor
Why do we care about termination analysis?
Viewed 0 times
whyanalysiscareterminationabout
Problem
Why is it important to know if a program terminates or not? In particular, what are some consequences of a non-terminating program?
Solution
First, the halting problem is the fundamental building block that enables us to prove that many, many problems we care about are undecidable. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_undecidable_problems.
Second, in some contexts, it is important to know that a program will terminate and in some bounded amount of time. For instance, in an airplane with fly-by-wire, it is important to know that when the pilot presses the left rudder pedal, then the rudder will turn left within a reasonable amount of time. This usually relies on worst-case execution time analysis, which is a bit different from the methods used for solving the halting problem, so I'm not sure whether it is what you are asking about or not. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worst-case_execution_time, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_analysis, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety-critical_system.
Second, in some contexts, it is important to know that a program will terminate and in some bounded amount of time. For instance, in an airplane with fly-by-wire, it is important to know that when the pilot presses the left rudder pedal, then the rudder will turn left within a reasonable amount of time. This usually relies on worst-case execution time analysis, which is a bit different from the methods used for solving the halting problem, so I'm not sure whether it is what you are asking about or not. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worst-case_execution_time, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_analysis, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety-critical_system.
Context
StackExchange Computer Science Q#156079, answer score: 3
Revisions (0)
No revisions yet.