What is the smallest self-hosting language?

Carl Cerecke <cdc@maxnet.co.nz>
25 Jan 2003 00:59:47 -0500

          From comp.compilers

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From: Carl Cerecke <cdc@maxnet.co.nz>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: 25 Jan 2003 00:59:47 -0500
Organization: TelstraClear
References: 03-01-013 03-01-106
Keywords: question
Posted-Date: 25 Jan 2003 00:59:47 EST

Ed Davis wrote:


> Tiny Pascal - basically, PL/0 with arrays and parameters, simple
> I/O, in about 600 lines of C. Note that the Tiny Pascal version of
> Tiny Pascal is self-compiling.


I found myself wondering what the smallest self-hosting language would
look like. In the same way that programmers find it fun to write the
smallest self-reproducing programs, it might be fun to try and write
the smallest self-hosting language.


Has anyone tried this?


Cheers,
Carl.
[Someone once did an amusing least-fixed-point exercise feeding the
output of a compiler back into the compiler until it converged. But I
suppose that's not quite the same thing. There are some rather small
Lisp-in-Lisp and Scheme-in-Scheme programs. -John]



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