Peteris Krumins personal blog
A proof that Unix utility sed is Turing complete
Many people are surprised to learn that `sed`, a seemingly simple text filtering program, is actually Turing complete. This realization prompts the question: how can a text processing utility achieve such computational power? The answer lies in sed's fundamental operations. Essentially, sed functions as a miniature...
- Points
- 202
- HN comments
- 106
- Submissions
- 1
- Cited by
- 5 commenters
Software EngineeringMath & Algorithms2019
On Hacker News
| Submitted | Title on HN | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 13, 2019 | A proof that Unix utility sed is Turing complete by CrankyBear | 202 | 106 |
Cited in comments
Linked from 5 Hacker News comments by 5 different people, from Feb 2019 to Mar 2026.
Most recent:
- marginalia_nu · Mar 27, 2026
- asicsp · Oct 17, 2023
- tooltower · Aug 13, 2022
- sargstuff · Apr 5, 2022
- slack3r · Feb 24, 2019
