My First Turing Machine™

So yesterday I got to design my first Turing machine. It was a lot of fun. The machine would start with a string of 1s and 0s such as █111111101111█. It is some number of 1s followed by a single 0 followed by another series of 1s. Then it would exit in one of two final states depending on which of the two sets of 1s is larger. On the ends are markers indicating the edge of meaningful data.

In case you're curious how such a machine would work, I'll be happy to list the states and transitions for you. The first value is the value read from the tape. The second is the value that is written back to the same place on the tape. The third value is the state that the machine transitions to, and the fourth value tells whether the read/write head should move right or left. The machine begins and ends with the r/w head on the first non-█ character in the tape, and final state f₁ means that the first set of 1s is greater than or equal to the second set. Conversely, final state f₂ means that the second set is greater. Why am I putting this up? Because I'm procrastinating from sleep and this makes me look like I'm doing important work or something. I'm really not. (-:

Good night, all!

• State a
• 1, X, b, R
• 0, 0, g, R
• X, X, a, R
• State b
• 1, 1, b, R
• 0, 0, c, R
• State c
• 1, X, d, R
• X, X, c, R
• State d
• 1, 1, f, L
• 0, 0, f, L
• █, █, e, L
• X, X, f, L
• State e
• 1, 1, e, L
• 0, 0, e, L
• X, 1, e, L
• █, █, f₁, R
• State f
• 1, 1, f, L
• 0, 0, f, L
• X, X, f, L
• █, █, a, R
• State g
• 1, 1, g, R
• 0, 0, g, R
• X, X, g, R
• █, █, h, L
• State h
• 1, 1, h, L
• 0, 0, h, L
• X, 1, h, L
• █, █, f₂, R
  

Okay, maybe it wasn't actually *that* hard....

I now have a program which algorithmically translates a very basic regular expression into an NFA with ε transitions, then converts that NFA into an equivalent NFA without ε transitions. Our next step will be to convert that NFA into a DFA and then it'll be translated into a minimized DFA. All things considered, this is probably one of the cooler assignments I've ever been given in Computer Science....even if I did procrastinate on it like you wouldn't believe (unless you were my mother in which case you'd have no problem believing how much procrastination I've done).