[erlang-questions] The unfathomable beauty of quines

[Joe Armstrong]

I've been playing with the idea of a quine.

Here are three that are fun

Smalltalk
TiddlyWiki
Meta II

A quine is a self-reproducing program -  once the first version works it is used
to make the second version and so on ad infinitum. It's especially fun when it's
made as a single file.

WARNING - do not read the rest if you want to get any work done for
the next month.

Dan Ingalls (the guy who made Smalltalk) told me about Dewey Val Schorre's paper

http://www.ibm-1401.info/Meta-II-schorre.pdf

With strict instructions *not* to read it.

Well, of course, I immediately read it and implemented it in Erlang -
and poof - 3-6 weeks vanished in a blur (and don't get me started on
O'meta etc.)

Unfortunately, Erlang is not a quine - it actually was (or has been)
(or was for a short time)
but now it's very definitely not - all these BIFs and NIFS and dirty
this-and-that's
have destroyed any possibility for quine like behaviour.

Is there a subset of Erlang that can be made into a quine with a new
VM to support it?

Cheers

/Joe