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From: alexc@dartvax.UUCP (Alex Colvin)
Newsgroups: net.sources
Subject: re: Thompson's self-reproducing program
Message-ID: <2357@dartvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 28-Aug-84 09:10:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: dartvax.2357
Posted: Tue Aug 28 09:10:31 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 30-Aug-84 10:34:42 EDT
Organization: Dartmouth College
Lines: 15

"What is the point of a self-duplicating program?"

Well ... For one thing, you never have to keep the source code around.

Seriously, it's mildly interesting as a bit-banging (character-banging)
challenge to those who don't worry about the fixed-point combinator.
For those who do, here's a different version in SCHEME (or, with slight
syntax changes, in LISP).

(labels (f (lambda () f)) f)

This one simply returns itself -- not necessarily its source code.  It gets
printed by the read-eval-print loop.  A C analogue is 

f() { return f; };