Re: Writing own source disk

bart <bc@freeuk.com> writes:

On 02/06/2024 23:17, Ben Bacarisse wrote:

Malcolm McLean <malcolm.arthur.mclean@gmail.com> writes:
 

Writing a prgram which writes its own source to standard output is a
standard programming problem. It's called a quine.

A quine must also not process any input.

>
No input at compile-time or runtime?

The program isn't running at compile time.

A compiler necessarily has to have the source code of the program as input,
so what are the limitations?

The compiler can do what it likes!

A C program can use #include; does that extend
to directives like #embed, or is that considered cheating?

There's nothing wrong with using either, but a C quine that uses #embed
relies on knowing the name of the file in which it is stored.  It is a
"fixed point of the execution environment", but it's probably the least
interesting C quine possible -- much like

  1

is a quine in languages that evaluate and print an expression.

--
Ben.