Writing self-replicating code in C#

No, this post is not about viruses. The problem is to write a C# program that prints to the console an identical copy of its own source code.

If you ever went to this exercise in other languages, you already know that the a self-replicating program in C looks very different than the Pascal version is different than the Prolog version, and so on... And, surprisingly, C# has some new syntactical constructs that allows us to take a completely different approach!

I posted a solution in the “comments“ area for this post. Is probably not the shortest one but I found it pretty concise. And I'm sure you will find better solutions... :-)

Comments

• Anonymous
  July 07, 2004
  
  class C
  {
  const string s = @"
  class C
  {{
  const string s = @{1}{0}{1};
  static void Main()
  {{
  System.Console.WriteLine(s,s,'u0022');
  }}
  }}";
  static void Main()
  {
  System.Console.WriteLine(s,s,'u0022');
  }
  }
  
• Anonymous
  July 07, 2004
  The techincal term for this is a "quine."
• Anonymous
  July 07, 2004
  In my previous comment, the leading spaces got lost. I just replaced them with dots, hopefully this will enhance the clarity of the sample...
  
  ------------------------
  
  class C
  {
  ....const string s = @"
  class C
  {{
  ....const string s = @{1}{0}{1};
  ....static void Main()
  ....{{
  ........System.Console.WriteLine(s,s,'u0022');
  ....}}
  }}";
  ....static void Main()
  ....{
  ........System.Console.WriteLine(s,s,'u0022');
  ....}
  }
• Anonymous
  July 07, 2004
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  July 07, 2004
  I did this a while ago you can see my solution at <a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/whaggard/articles/3638.aspx">http://weblogs.asp.net/whaggard/articles/3638.aspx</a>
  
  Wes
  
• Anonymous
  July 07, 2004
  Sorry the link got busted try this:
  http://weblogs.asp.net/whaggard/articles/3638.aspx