Meaning & use
quine
A computer program that takes no input and, when run, outputs its own complete source code.
See it in a sentence
The students were challenged to write a quine in as few lines of code as possible.
A true quine reproduces itself exactly, without reading any external file or reusing its own source.
A note on using this word
The term honors philosopher and logician Willard Van Orman Quine, and writing one is a classic exercise across several programming languages.
Words with a similar meaning
self-replicating program
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