Quine

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A quine is a program which takes no input and produces a copy of its own source code as its only output.

In APL, a quine is listed in the FinnAPL idiom library as "an expression giving itself":

      1⌽22⍴11⍴'''1⌽22⍴11⍴'''

In 2019, Nick Nikolov proposed to shorten it using the commute operator:[1]

      1⌽,⍨9⍴'''1⌽,⍨9⍴'''

Explanation:[2]

  • '''1⌽,⍨9⍴''' the characters '1⌽,⍨9⍴'
  • 9⍴ reshape to shape 9, resulting in '1⌽,⍨9⍴''
  • ,⍨ concatenate with itself, resulting in '1⌽,⍨9⍴'''1⌽,⍨9⍴''
  • 1⌽ rotate one character to the left, getting the characters: 1⌽,⍨9⍴'''1⌽,⍨9⍴'''

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