VTechWorks staff will be away for the Thanksgiving holiday beginning at noon on Wednesday, November 27, through Friday, November 29. We will resume normal operations on Monday, December 2. Thank you for your patience.

Browsing by Author "Zoladz, Richard W."

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    A Markov Model of Certain Structured Programs
    Wesselkamper, Thomas C.; Zoladz, Richard W. (Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 1976)
    The paper is concerned with modeling the run time behavior of a certain class of programs. Each program, represented by its flowgraph, is built up from one-in/one-out constructs (after the manner of Dijkstra). The programs have neither transient states nor absorbing states. Each program has one state which possesses two cycles of relatively prime length. A program which possesses these properties is called regular. Such a program may he modeled by a finite Markov chain. It is shown that if a program is regular then its Markov model has a regular transition matrix, that is, the sequence of powers of the transition matrix converges to a matrix all of whose rows are identical. The experimental validity of the method is discussed, as are the implications of the method for program design.