Help for ITM

Basic Controls

The Turing Machine simulator allows you to enter an input tape and a set of rules, and run the rules on the tape. The original tape appears at the top left in the field labelled "Start Tape". The "Current Tape" appears in the field just below it. To define a new tape you can type directly into the field labelled "Input Tape" (in the upper-right corner of the applet window), or you can paste text into that field. Once the input tape field has the desired value, clicking on the "Set Tape" button copies the value into both the start and current tape fields.

Using the Turing Machine

The simulator has 5 modes of operation, indicated by the icons at the bottom left portion of the screen. These are, in order, Reset (double left arrow), Back (single left arrow), Stop (square button), Step (double right arrow), and Play (single right arrow). Play will run the whole simulation until it runs out of input tape (or there are no more rules to process), Step will step you through the simulation one stage at a time, Stop will stop the simulation in progress, and Reset will return you to the start of the original tape. Back can only step back once, all previous steps are lost.

It's recommended that you click Reset before you define a new tape, so you can run the turing machine from the first symbol. To return to the start tape at any time, click the Reset button.



© 2004 Thomson/Brooks Cole, All Rights Reserved.