From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2001-09-01T15:54:20+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:20656] Re: ruby quine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: John Tromp <tromp@daisy.uwaterloo.ca>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
To: ruby-talk ML <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>; <undisclosed-recipients: ;>
Sent: Friday, August 31, 2001 6:50 PM
Subject: [ruby-talk:20648] ruby quine


> The web page
> http://www.nyx.net/~gthompso/quine.htm
> 
> shows self-reproducing programs, aka "quine"s for many languages,
> but Ruby is conspicuously missing.
> What would be the shortest Ruby program to output itself?
> 
> I don't suppose it could be as short as in python? :
> l='l=%s;print l%%`l`';print l%`l`

Hi John...

The issue of quines has come up twice or thrice...
I believe mine were the first (on the English-speaking
list anyhow). See ruby-talk 04137 and also 12083.

As for length, I've never addressed that... someone
once suggested that the program of zero length is
the shortest possible Ruby quine... :)  Feel free to
contribute one of length n < 0 ...

Hal