Portable Self-Replicating C Contest

[3929]]

In article <12144 at haddock.ima.isc.com> karl at haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer) writes:
>Well, it happens that I was going to post this anyway...
>
>*** Portable Self-Replicating C Contest ***
>
>Rules:
>0.  The output of the program must be its own source code.

          [ More of the rules of the contest ]

>Followups to comp.std.c only.
>
>Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl at haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint
>(Why 72?  The last eight columns are reserved for possible addition of a card
>sequence number at some future date.)

This is a good opportunity for me to ask a question that's been bugging me for
quite a while:

It seems that it would be impossible to create a program which generates it's
source as output because you have a self-referential system and will end up
with an infinite recursion.  I guess this presumes that you can't go out to
the operating system to do things, since then it's not a strictly self-refer-
ential system.  I note that this contest doesn't prevent you from going to the
operating system, it simply prevents you from opening the source file and
printing it out (that rule was in part of the text I deleted...sorry). But:

Isn't it impossible for a C program to replicate itself if it doesn't access
the operating system (other than printing to stdout)?  The question of whether
it can be done while *using* the OS should come out of this contest so I'll
wait patiently...

By the way, please forgive me if this all seems trivially true/false...but
please enlighten me.


Brian R. Gilstrap                          Southwestern Bell Telephone
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#include <std_disclaimers.h>