Dr Quine

An intro to Quines, Self-replication & Virus

Challenge

The following 3 programs in C, ASM, and Python:

• Colleen - Print my source code

• Grace - Clone myself, spawning my kid

• Sully - Self-replicate 5 times

See the subject for more details.

Final Score 125/100

Getting Started

Clone this repo.
git clone https://github.com/dfinnis/Dr_Quine.git

For ASM/ you may need to install nasm.
brew install nasm

In C/ and ASM/ first make the binaries.
make

Then run the binaries.
./Colleen, ./Grace & ./Sully

In Python/ run files directly.
python Colleen.py, python Grace.py & python Sully.py

Examples

Let's demo the python examples:

Colleen

Print my source code.

Run Colleen and compare the output with the source code. This diff should output nothing, showing output and source code are identical.

python Colleen.py > tmp_Colleen ; diff tmp_Colleen Colleen.py

Grace

Clone myself, spawning my kid.

Run Grace and compare Grace with Grace_kid. This diff should output nothing, showing Grace and Grace_kid are identical.

python Grace.py; diff Grace.py Grace_kid.py

Sully

Self-replicate 5 times.

Run Sully and compare Sully with clones. The following command should show the only difference is number.

python Sully.py; diff Sully.py Sully_5.py; diff Sully.py Sully_4.py; diff Sully.py Sully_3.py; diff Sully.py Sully_2.py; diff Sully.py Sully_1.py; diff Sully.py Sully_0.py

Tests

The test scripts run the steps shown above for each language, ensuring output/clones are identical to source code.

./test_all.sh

Dependencies

• Python 3.9.1 (no requirements.txt necessary)
• NASM 2.14.02