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From: Malcolm McLean <malcolm.arthur.mclean@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Writing own source disk
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2024 00:09:15 +0100
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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.
> 
>> And I have achieved a
>> quine. But a serious quine. Not contrived special purpose code, but serious
>> codde which can be used to package up source for real.
> 
> You XML-producing program may be very useful, but it's not really a
> quine, serious or otherwise.
> 
>> And it's completely
>> portable ANSI C. So of course it can't write output to disk - that is
>> impossible to achive portably. Instead it writes its own source to standard
>> output using a simle XML format called FileSystem, which represents the
>> source tree.
> 
> That sounds as if the program reads input (but it's not explicitly
> stated) as well as not producing the program text but some XML
> representation of the program text.  That would make it not a quine for
> two reasons.
> 
> How do you process a source tree in completely portable ANSI C?
>The FileSystem XML fie is embedded with the program. It is a genuine 
quine. Compile it and see.

It's also a very superior quine, and it spits out images and binaries.

You can't generate a FileSystem XML file with portable ANSI C, and you 
can' write one out to a disk. But eveything else is done portably, and 
it is a portable quine.

-- 
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