Path: ...!news.nobody.at!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Malcolm McLean <malcolm.arthur.mclean@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Writing own source disk
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2024 00:41:28 +0100
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 52
Message-ID: <v3lkb8$3d35$2@dont-email.me>
References: <v3hmha$3banl$1@dont-email.me> <87sexvm1lr.fsf@bsb.me.uk>
 <v3iu2s$3i7bf$1@dont-email.me> <875xuqmdjn.fsf@bsb.me.uk>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2024 01:41:28 +0200 (CEST)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="afe06429c6ecaf11a4c578de8ecf1837";
	logging-data="111717"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18k7AQp1ztSZ54g6LSF2ZgycTTPVN16Tc8="
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird
Cancel-Lock: sha1:SJzVrVy+zWemsR+I9n5QIBmmPTA=
Content-Language: en-GB
In-Reply-To: <875xuqmdjn.fsf@bsb.me.uk>
Bytes: 3320

On 03/06/2024 13:11, Ben Bacarisse wrote:
> Malcolm McLean <malcolm.arthur.mclean@gmail.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.
>>>
>>>> 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.
> 
> No need; I'll take your word for it.
> 
>> It's also a very superior quine, and it spits out images and binaries.
> 
> If it's a quine (and I don't doubt you) then is spits out its own source
> code.  That can, of course, include source code encodings of images.
> I'm not sure why you consider that superior, but that is, after all, a
> rather subjective assessment.
> 
It's not therortically interesting from a computer science perspective.
You can encode images as source.

But from a practical point of view, yes my quine is  massively powerful. 
Most graphical programs do have images as source. And they just get 
zipped up into the FileSystem XML file. So any binary data can be 
included. Easily, Using exactly the same system.


-- 
Check out Basic Algorithms and my other books:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/bgy1mm