Is the copyright notice supposed to apply to the empty program?
Not sure about the copyright, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone patented it in the US.
The world's smallest self-replicating program
11–20 of 65 posts
Re: The world's smallest self-replicating program
#12The Makefile is the most interesting part: http://www.ioccc.org/1994/Makefile smr: smr.c @${RM} -rf smr ${CP} smr.c smr ${CHMOD} +x smr Apparently, an empty file marked as executable will execute!
Because it's being interpreted as a shell script, I assume.
Re: The world's smallest self-replicating program
#13Isn't this a quine, rather than a self-replicating program? A quine produces the source, and a self-replicating program should produce an executable - no? This seems to be a fallacy of equivocation.
Re: The world's smallest self-replicating program
#14The Makefile is the most interesting part: http://www.ioccc.org/1994/Makefile smr: smr.c @${RM} -rf smr ${CP} smr.c smr ${CHMOD} +x smr Apparently, an empty file marked as executable will execute!
Because it's being interpreted as a shell script, I assume.
Without a hashbang it's actually interpreted as machine code, it just doesn't have any machine instructions.
Re: The world's smallest self-replicating program
#15There is PDP-11 command (one word, 16 bits) which makes a copy of itself into a previous word (with address, in bytes, less by two) and passes the control to the new copy. Octal 103737... or something like that.
Doesn't require make :) or cp and is pretty active - fills up all the memory space below the starting point in no time.
Re: The world's smallest self-replicating program
#16smr: smr.c @${RM} -rf smr ${CP} smr.c smr ${CHMOD} +x smr this is bullshit if you ask me..
Agreed, WTF.
Re: The world's smallest self-replicating program
#17Thanks, I was pretty messed up just now after watching the movie Pi, now I'm even worse....
Re: The world's smallest self-replicating program
#18phiX174 virus - one of the world's smallest self-replicating programs :-)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/NC_001422.1
Enterobacteria phage phiX174 sensu lato, complete genome
5386 bp ss-DNA
Re: The world's smallest self-replicating program
#19Re: The world's smallest self-replicating program
#20Isn't this a quine, rather than a self-replicating program? A quine produces the source, and a self-replicating program should produce an executable - no? This seems to be a fallacy of equivocation.
quines are a subset of self-replicating programs.