New Contest (Possibly Too Easy for Experts)

[Reisswolf]

Seeing that this section currently has no active threads, I thought I'd start one. If you have already seen the question before, please don't give out the answer immediately.

*****

Problem: Write a programme that prints out its own source file.

[Rashakil Fol]

Mind if I do my entry in Perl?

Here it is:

[CornedBee]

I can do it in two statements of active code

[webmaster]

Scheme: ()

[Dave_Sinkula]

The Quine Page: C

[Reisswolf]

Ha ha ha! I should have stated the question as follows: "Write a non-trivial programme that prints out its source code."

*****

Anyway, the solution I have is:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main() {
  system("cat <insert_filename_here>");
  return 0;
}

I suppose you could say that I have cheated by using "cat" instead of writing my own "cat." But I'll live with that charge!

*****

By the way, is the Scheme function given above correct? I mean, the output of that empty list is nothing--right? The output is not a pair of matching parentheses with nothing in between, is it?

[CornedBee]

Well, outputting an empty list would output a formatted empty list - which is an empty pair of parentheses.

Reisswolf, point one, how isn't that trivial? Point two, have you tried running that on Windows?

[Reisswolf]

CornedBee, I am perfectly aware that my programme is specifically for *NIX systems.

Well, I only meant trivial in the sense that it contained a non-zero number of lines of code. Conceptually, it is pretty trivial. (Hence my caveat that the problem might be too easy for experts.)

[samGwilliam]

Originally Posted by Reisswolf

CornedBee, I am perfectly aware that my programme is specifically for *NIX systems.

Well, I only meant trivial in the sense that it contained a non-zero number of lines of code. Conceptually, it is pretty trivial. (Hence my caveat that the problem might be too easy for experts.)

Do you mean to say that a program with no lines of code is the most complex of all?

[Rashakil Fol]

Originally Posted by webmaster

Scheme: ()

That's not syntactically valid.

[valis]

how is that not valid scheme (or even lisp), it looks valid to me, a nil list in lisp and nothing in scheme.

[Rashakil Fol]

() may be accepted by some (or many) Scheme implementations, but it is not a valid Scheme expression at least as defined by R5RS.

Note: In many dialects of Lisp, the empty combination, (), is a legitimate expression. In Scheme, combinations must have at least one subexpression, so () is not a syntactically valid expression.

http://www.schemers.org/Documents/St...ml#%_sec_4.1.3