Kleene, Rogers and Rice Theorems Revisited in C and in Bash.pdf

a r X i v : 0 7 1 2 .1 2 7 9 v 1 [ c s .L O ] 8 D e c 2 0 0 7 Kleene, Rogers and Rice Theorems Revisited in C and in Bash Salvatore Caporaso (caporaso@di.uniba.it) Nicola Corriero (nicolacorriero@) Dipartimento d’Informatica dell’Universita? di Bari Abstract The recursion theorem in the weak form {e}(z) = x(e, z) (universal function not needed) and in Rogers form φφf(n)(z) = φn(z), and Rice theorem are proved a first time using programs in C, and a second time with scripts in Bash. 1 Introduction One of the cornerstones of recursion theory is the result known as S?m?n theorem (in honour of the original notation by Kleene, who called it Iteration Theorem) or as Parameter Theorem (after Schoenfield). Its proofs in Literature however are not fully satisfatory for a computer scientist. Some authors merely appeal to Church thesis (Rogers [6], Cutland [1], Enderton [2]). Some others arithmetize the metaprocessing, and this disguise the computation under a misleading plenty of numerical technicalities (Kleene [5], Smorynski[7]). The proof by Kechris and Moschovakis [3] use a universal function, which is not available when classes of total functions are discussed, like in the case, for example, of security or complexity classes. Among the consequences of the S?m?n we have the Kleene weak form of the Recursion Theorem (existence of a fixed-point value), the Rogers form (functional fixed-point), Rice theorem, the analysis by Thompson [8] in his Turing lecture of relationship between malware and Quine’s indirect self-referential paradox. We feel that simple idea need simple programs, and that, therefore, understanding these phenomena needs their revisitation in terms of real programming. In this paper we show that this is rather easy in C; and even easier in a language allowing quick writing of rough programs like Bash. To this purpose, we code, in both these languages, the procedures needed to prove the results mentioned above. A by-result of this work is that one can