quine
A program that produces its own source code as output.
This has been bugging me recently. Any quines or pointers to relevant articles or web pages is appreciated. Thanks!
Where it comes from
From Quine, named after the American logician and philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000). Verb etymology 1, verb sense 1 (“to append (a text) to a quotation of itself”) was coined by the American cognitive and computer scientist Douglas Hofstadter (born 1945) in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1979; see the quotation), referring to Quine’s study of indirect self-reference and in particular Quine’s paradox, the following statement that produces a paradox: “‘Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation’ yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.” Hofstadter also referred to the concept of noun etymology 1, noun sense 1 (“program that produces its own source code as output”) in the book, but termed it a self-rep rather than a quine.
Adapted from the Wiktionary entry quine (CC BY-SA 4.0).