3 ms·

You all may collapse the difference, but I agree with John that it is meaningful.

• repeatrepeater 3y ago
  It’s definitely meaningful in that we can talk about it! But what if I put the code in the data section, but left the data section executable and jumped there? The very idea of a data section in some sense presupposes a higher level understanding of the program. In any event quines are only interesting because of the rules we place around them so I agree in general with arguing the rules!
  • bmacho 3y ago
    > It’s definitely meaningful in that we can talk about it! No, it's much more meaningful. Different languages or computation models allow different levels of introspection. In some models quines are trivial: just ask for your source code and print it out. In some models it's non trivial that quines exist at all (but it turns out they exist).
  • tromp 3y ago
    > But what if I put the code in the data section, but left the data section executable and jumped there? Data sections are usually not executable. Even if it were, that still leaves some code (the jump) outside of the data section.