Mark Roth (scientist)

A quine is a computer program that produces a copy of its own source code as its output. It's a self-replicating program, a fascinating concept in computer science and a common programming puzzle. The creation of a quine often involves techniques of string manipulation and metaprogramming. The challenge lies not in simply printing the source code, but in doing so without hardcoding the text of the program itself. Instead, the program must construct its own source code dynamically at runtime. This typically involves representing the program's code as data and then manipulating that data to generate the output. The difficulty of creating a quine varies significantly depending on the programming language used, with some languages making it significantly easier than others. The brevity of a quine is often considered a measure of elegance and skill. Quinces have no practical application beyond demonstrating programming ingenuity and serving as a test of a programming language's capabilities in manipulating its own code.