As an example, consider the following variant of the halting problem: Take the property a partial function F has if F is defined for argument 1. It is obviously non-trivial, since there are partial functions that are defined for 1 and others that are undefined at 1. The 1-halting problem is the problem of deciding of any algorithm whether it defines a function with this property, i.e., whether the algorithm halts on input 1. By Rice's theorem, the 1-halting problem is undecidable.
Algorithms are presumed here to define partial functions over strings and are themselves represented by strings. The partial function computed by the algorithm represented by a string a is denoted Fa. This proof proceeds by reductio ad absurdum: we assume that there is a non-trivial property that is decided by an algorithm, and then show that it follows that we can decide the halting problem, which is not possible, and therefore a contradiction.
Let us now assume that P(a) is an algorithm that decides some non-trivial property of Fa. Without loss of generality we may assume that P(no-halt) = "no", with no-halt being the representation of an algorithm that never halts. If this is not true, then this will hold for the negation of the property. Since P decides a non-trivial property, it follows that there is a string b that represents an algorithm and P(b) = "yes". We can then define an algorithm H(a, i) as follows:
Sketch of Proof
We can now show that H decides the halting problem:
Since the halting problem is known to be undecidable, this is a contradiction and the assumption that there is an algorithm P(a) that decides a non-trivial property for the function represented by a must be false.