Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!STONY-BROOK.SCRC.SYMBOLICS.COM!KMP
From: KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.SYMBOLICS.COM (Kent M Pitman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Re: self reproducing code
Message-ID: <881008225128.4.KMP@BOBOLINK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: 9 Oct 88 02:51:00 GMT
References: <8810081615.AA14951@diku.dk>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 11

() by itself is certainly cute, but I don't think it counts.
It's not -constructing- a program, it's just -returning- one.
All self-evaluating forms have the same property, after all.
{{1, 2, 3, ...}, {#t, #f}, ...}

Another borderline case, that comes up in Common Lisp, is:
 #1='#1#
But depending on your model of what QUOTE does, that's just
self-evaluating, too, and doesn't count either. Btw, don't
try to look at the result without setting *print-circle* or
*print-level* appropriately.