A quine is a computer program that produces its complete source code as its only output. It is often used for hackish amusement to try and develop the shortest possible quine in any given programming language.

Quines are named after W. V. Quine, who made an extensive study of indirect self-reference: he coined, among others, the paradox-producing expression, "yields falsehood when appended to its own quotation."

Table of contents 1 Sample quine in C 2 Sample quine in LISP 3 Sample quine in Python 4 Sample quine in Perl 5 Sample quine in BASIC

Sample quine in C

 char x[]="char x[]=%c%s%c;%cint main() {printf(x,34,x,34,10,10);return 0;}%c";
 int main() {printf(x,34,x,34,10,10);return 0;}

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

 a='a=%s;print a%%`a`';print a%`a`

 $_=q{$_=q{Q};s/Q/$_/;print};s/Q/$_/;print