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Talk:Tapeworm

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Infinite loop

The infinite loop program does not appear to run infinitely as-written. The toggle inside of the loop will set the condition back to 1 on the second iteration of the loop, causing it to exit. I think it might need to be written as:

*(!)

In general, in reversible programming languages, infinite loops require infinite memory (unless the program is in an implicit loop), so you should expect that even the simplest infinite loops will involve incrementing a counter or moving a tapehead, or some other unbounded memory operation.

I also was a little confused initially, as, in existing reversible computational systems, like the Pendulum Instruction Set Architecture, the term "direction bit" refers to a register that, in addition to inverting the behavior of instructions, also inverts the direction that the instruction pointer moves. However, in this language, it acts more like a mini-Turning tarpit element that switches between an inverted and non-inverted shift instruction. This isn't to say that the behavior in the language needs to change, but it might be worth clarifying since the terminology overlaps. --ImOnlyHereForReversibleComputing (talk) 01:11, 20 October 2026 (UTC)