Quine Chameleon

A polymorphic program that transforms itself into different languages.

Why

I'd like to learn new programming languages and I'm bored with Hello World's.

Languages

#	Language	Size	Suffix
1	Ruby	5246	rb
2	Octave	5271	octave
3	CoffeeScript	5280	coffee
4	JavaScript	5287	js
5	Python	5288	py
6	Vala	5290	vala
7	R	5303	R
8	Perl	5310	pl
9	AWK	5322	awk
10	Clojure	5322	clj
11	Go	5334	go
12	OCaml	5338	ml
13	F#	5347	fs
14	D	5352	d
15	Haxe	5352	hx
16	Racket	5363	rkt
17	Emacs Lisp	5376	el
18	Scala	5378	scala
19	C#	5404	cs
20	Lua	5406	lua
21	Haskell	5420	hs
22	Java	5453	java
23	C++	5501	cpp
24	Objective C	5513	m
25	C	5516	c

How to Play

Dancing Chameleon

make dance - Press ctrl-c to stop

Crawling Chameleon

make crawl - Each step it outputs itself in a random language

Dependencies

Python3 is required. You will also need other compilers/interpreters to run various output.

Here's a quick install-all command for Ubuntu 15.04:

sudo apt-get install clojure1.6 coffeescript emacs24-nox fsharp g++ gawk gcc gdc ghc gobjc golang-go haxe libghc-random-dev libghc-regex-compat-dev lua5.2 mono-mcs nodejs ocaml octave openjdk-7-jdk perl6 python3 r-base racket ruby scala valac

Note: Scala 2.9.2 does not work with Java 8

Variants

make ouroboros: languages are went through in alphabetical order
make random-ouroboros: languages are went through in a random order
make multiquines: Multiquines. The target language is specified through command-line. E.g. python3 multiquines.py cpp (See rules below)

My Testing Environment

Ubuntu 15.04 with the following compilers/interpreters

CoffeeScript 1.4.0
fsharp 3.1.1.26
GCC 4.9.2
GHC 7.6.3
GNU Awk 4.1.1
GNU Emacs 24.4.1
GNU Octave 3.8.2
Go 1.3.3
Haxe 3.0.0
Lua 5.2.3
Mono 3.2.8
Node.js 0.10.25
OCaml 4.01.0
OpenJDK 7
Python 3.4.3
R 3.1.2
Racket 6.1
Rakudo 2014.07
Ruby 2.1.2
Scala 2.9.2
Vala 0.26.2

Rules (beta)

Source
- No undefined behaviors
- No compiler/interpreter warnings
- As short as possible
- The main class/module name must be QC, if required
Behavior
- Random sequence should not remain the same
  - Set random seed when necessary
- Use only standard libraries
- No file operations
  - #!/bin/cat - Bash
- No source inspections
  - .toSource() - JavaScript
- No definition as compiler flags
  - -D for gcc, g++, valac
- stdin is not closed
  - Use BEGIN instead of END in AWK
Language
- Use languages available to Ubuntu 15.04
  - Or easily obtainable
- Use latest standard if not compatible
  - Python3 vs Python2
  - Perl6 vs Perl5
Multiquines
- A valid language suffix must be specified as the only command-line argument
  - Otherwise the behavior is undefined

Naming Convention

For readability, here are some common variables names used, with exceptions:

A: command line arguments
I: index of specified language (in the language array)
L: data array by splitting S
S: compact data string

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

The chameleon image is by kukon@deviantART, which is distributed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.

coolwanglu/quine-chameleon