Editing Quine (computing) (section)

==Multiquines==

David Madore, creator of [[Unlambda]], describes multiquines as follows:<ref>{{cite web
   |url = http://www.madore.org/~david/computers/quine.html
   |title = Quines (self-replicating programs)
   |author = David Madore
  }}</ref>

<blockquote>
"A multiquine is a set of r different programs (in r different languages – without this condition we could take them all equal to a single quine), each of which is able to print any of the r programs (including itself) according to the command line argument it is passed. (Cheating is not allowed: the command line arguments must not be too long – passing the full text of a program is considered cheating)."
</blockquote>

A multiquine consisting of 2 languages (or biquine) would be a program which:
* When run, is a quine in language X. 
* When supplied with a user-defined command line argument, would print a second program in language Y. 
* Given the second program in language Y, when run normally, would also be a quine in language Y.
* Given the second program in language Y, and supplied with a user-defined command line argument, would produce the original program in language X.

A biquine could then be seen as a set of two programs, both of which are able to print either of the two, depending on the command line argument supplied.

Theoretically, there is no limit on the number of languages in a multiquine.
A 5-part multiquine (or pentaquine) has been produced with [[Python (programming language)|Python]], [[Perl]], [[C (programming language)|C]], [[NewLISP]], and [[F Sharp (programming language)|F#]]<ref>{{cite web
   |url = https://github.com/rvantonder/pentaquine
   |title = Pentaquine - 5 part multiquine
   |author = Rijnard van Tonder
  |website = [[GitHub]]
 |date = 14 January 2020
 }}</ref>
and there is also a 25-language multiquine.<ref>{{cite web
   |url = https://github.com/coolwanglu/quine-chameleon#variants
   |title = Quine Chameleon#Variants
   |author = Lu Wang
  |website = [[GitHub]]
 |date = 21 May 2021
 }}</ref>