World's worst Perl quine

[tye]

syntax error at =# line 2, at EOF
Execution of =# aborted due to compilation errors.

Save to a file named "=#". I vaguely recall a similar Perl quine but I was surprised at how long this took me to come up with. I even tested it on several versions of Perl on both Unix and Windows. (: To validate that it is a quine under Unix (or WinNT and later, if you have a "diff" that knows how to read from stdin), use: perl "=#" 2>&1 | diff "=#" - Update: In PerlMonk's tradition, I've done the search after creating the node and found that similar quine here. (:

        - tye (no, I don't want to stand too close to that)

[blakem]

Reminds me of one which I believe came from Dominus:

Illegal division by zero at /tmp/abc line 1.

Save in file '/tmp/abc' and run using 'perl /tmp/abc' ;-)

Update: Dominus' original code

-Blake

[Sweeper]

I think Douglas Hofstadter has said something about that in Metamagical Themas (not about Perl, but any programming language you would choose). This was, of course, in the chapter about self-references.

[cLive ;-)]

save as "self".

open(SELF,'self'); print while(<SELF>);

cLive ;-)

[VSarkiss]

I agree that depending on the name of the file is a cheat, so here's how another way to do it. (TIMTOWTC?) It's the same thing, but doesn't depend on the file name.

seek DATA, 0, 0; print while <DATA>;
__DATA__

[merlyn]

That's shortened to:

seek DATA,0,0;print<DATA>__END__

But I also like:

open 0;print<0>

which works for insanely bizarre reasons. Whoo.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

[scain]

I know writing quines isn't a serious subject (at least not to me), but is it fair practice to count on the name of the file to make the quine work? It seems like using metadata like that should be considered a cheat.

Scott

[tye]

No, not at all. Save the following script: print $0 to a file named 'print $0'.

BTW, that's part of why "worst" is in the title.

        - tye (Sarcasm? What sarcasm?)

[strfry()]

i had thought that quines had to print their code out without reading themselves in?

strfry()