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smallblacksun on April 2, 2011 | parent | context | favorite | on: What if P = NP?

"// "Polynomial-time" means it returns "yes" in polynomial time when // the answer should be "yes", and runs forever when it is "no"."

That's an odd definition of polynomial time.

bdhe on April 2, 2011 [–]

It is just a technicality. If you know an upper bound on the running time you can simply run it for that many time steps and then return "no" if it doesn't halt by then (because it could never thereon answer "yes"). This only works with concrete upper bounds on running time (and not for general decidability).

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