CHARACTERISTICS OF AN ALGORITHM -GUFFO.IN

While designing an algorithm as a solution to a given problem, we must take care of the following five important characteristics of an algorithm:(finite number)

1. Finiteness: An algorithm must terminate after a finite number of steps and further each step must be executable in finite amount of time. In order to establish a sequence of steps as an algorithm, it should be established that it terminates (in finite number of steps) on all allowed inputs.
2. Definiteness∗ (no ambiguity): Each step of an algorithm must be precisely defined; the action to be carried out must be rigorously and unambiguously specified for each case. Through the next example, we show how an instruction may not be definite.