Transcript

A Turing machine transcript or transition history is the sequence of transitions that the TM executes when started on a blank tape. Halting TMs have finite transcripts, infinite TMs have infinite transcripts. A finite description of an infinite TM transcript is one way to specify the forward behavior of that TM precisely.

Shift rules lead to repeated segments of a TM transcript and vice-versa every repeated segment in a transcript corresponds to a shift rule. If we augment TM transcripts to detect the difference between initial and written blank symbols, then all Translated Cyclers can be detected by noticing a repeat in the transcript that contains at least one initial blank.