There is one interesting conclusion to be derived from this exercise - in Python, '%r' is a fixed point of the function f(x)=x%x. And yes, this is the most bor

There is one interesting conclusion to be derived from this exercise - in Python, '%r' is a fixed point of the function f(x)=x%x. And yes, this is the most boring quine, you've punted the problem to the formatting mini-language and solved it in a manner equivalent of print(open(argv[0]).read()). I would say perhaps the ideal formulation for producing an interesting quine that doesn't leverage other languages would be "write a quine in C, using no preprocessor directives and no external functions except the POSIX write function, you may assume stdout is 1". So your program would look like: extern long write(int, const void *, unsigned long); int main(int, char**) { /* your code here, using write(1, buf, count) for output */ return 0; } You would of course end up writing a function equivalent to 'x%x' in Python, but getting there is a bit more exciting.