My Adventure Writing My First Quine in Java

Here's a PHP->C->Python->JavaScript->original PHP quine I wrote a few weeks ago: https://gist.github.com/749686

And here's a little write-up on how I approached the problem: https://nolancaudill.com/2011/01/01/how-to-build-a-quine/

In Lisp they're pretty easy:

((lambda (x) (list x (list 'quote x))) '(lambda (x) (list x (list 'quote x))))

returns itself (note: written in Clisp; I've had issues with Lispworks doing things properly). You can also stuff messages in there pretty easily:

((lambda (x y) (list x (list 'quote x) y)) '(lambda (x y) (list x (list 'quote x) y)) "Hello, world")

Python (triple quotes make this too easy):

  def q(s):
      print(s+'q(""' '"'+s+'"' '"")')
  q("""def q(s):
      print(s+'q(""' '"'+s+'"' '"")')
  """)

A friend wrote a neat C one a while back: http://dwcope.freeshell.org/projects/spinningquine/

I consider this totally cheating:

  $ python quine.py
  import sys
  print open(sys.argv[0]).read(),