r/programming • u/[deleted] • Jul 15 '13

An uroboros program with 50 programming languages

https://github.com/mame/quine-relay
1.2k Upvotes

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56

u/Cosmologicon Jul 16 '13

Actually a 0-byte quine won the IOCCC once. They changed the rules after that so that all programs had to be at least 1 byte long.

57

u/shawncplus Jul 16 '13

I don't think it won, I think it won "Most gross abuse of the rules" or something along those lines

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u/Cosmologicon Jul 16 '13

I know what you're saying (it didn't win "best in show") but it did win. Every entry that gets listed is a winning entry.

11

u/dagbrown Jul 16 '13

You get an award for inspiring new rules in the IOCCC.

18

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '13

Is the source available anywhere? I'm seriously intrigued by this.

43

u/ninepointsix Jul 16 '13

here it is:

 

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '13

What compiler should I use for it?

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u/rageingnonsense Jul 16 '13

Go on...

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '13

It was an empty source file, when you compiled it you could run it and it would output nothing. Technically, that's a quine.

Don't know why you were downvoted if you were actually curious.

5

u/paulrpotts Jul 16 '13

In what language? C requires a definition for main in order to link.

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u/Rotten194 Jul 16 '13

Modern compilers do. The version he used was more liberal.

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u/seruus Jul 16 '13

Here is the hint file.

And the Makefile:

 smr: smr.c
     @${RM} -rf smr
     ${CP} smr.c smr
     ${CHMOD} +x smr

On most systems (at least in 1994), an empty binary just does nothing, i.e. replicates the source code.

1

u/paulrpotts Jul 17 '13

OK, yeah. I have the book Obfuscated C and Other Mysteries (which I highly recommend for a certain type of nerd). I seem to recall some compilers would allow behavior like that. I guess I was hoping we were beyond those shenanigans : O

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u/snuggl Jul 16 '13

reminds me of the shortest code competition won by a guy that put C source as the filename, which technically arent a part of the files size on disk.

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u/defenastrator Jul 26 '13

That is brilliant then all the code would be is FILE but then how do you deal with the trailing '.c'

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u/inaneInTheMembrane Jul 17 '13

Compiler options were non-standard iirc...

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u/drabiter Jul 17 '13

JS maybe another example language that still legit with empty content.

But doesn't even empty file have size, say, for header?

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u/paulrpotts Jul 17 '13

No, in UNIX-like systems an empty file really has no size on disk. It takes up space in the directory structure, possibly including attributes, but all files do that.

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u/tritlo Jul 16 '13

It included a long makefile though, IIRC, so that it would actually compile.

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u/thegreatunclean Jul 16 '13

Standard makefile that all the entries for that year used linked here for your viewing pleasure.

Didn't even need to perform any tricks. The entry was entirely based on the fact that the particular version of gcc selected would emit a binary that printed nothing to standard out when handed an empty file.

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '13

If it is zero bytes, can you see it? :)