Talk:Quine: Difference between revisions

:This is the same problem as "if you allow programs which print their source, won't 10 LIST be a quine in classic BASIC?". Or, isn't 42 a Lisp quine? Typing 42 into the REPL produces 42! The answer is that a quine must not depend on some trivial self-evaluating properties built into an object, or built in self-reference which pulls out the source code. A quine must be some kind of '''computation''' which produces its own image. Self-evaluating objects do not compute anything: they appeal to the axiom of self-evaluation which is built into the language. Self-regurgitating programs likewise do not compute anything, they appeal to built-in access to the program source. (Many of the programs put up here so far fail these criteria.) [[Special:Contributions/24.85.131.247|24.85.131.247]] 05:59, 2 October 2011 (UTC)