quine (thing)

This first example, while a valid quine, is considered "cheating" by those in the know , since it opens itself and simply scans its own source code:

#! /usr/bin/perl -w

# This is not really a quine:

open (Q, $0);
while (<Q>) {
    print;
}

This next example is considered a quine amongst the Perl community, but it still seems like cheating to me, using a syntactic trick of Perl to do it's job. It takes advantage of the fact that Perl will scan the __DATA__ structure before it is even declared:

#! /usr/bin/perl

undef $/;
$_ = <DATA>;
print;
print;

__DATA__
#! /usr/bin/perl

undef $/;
$_ = <DATA>;
print;
print;
__DATA__

Here is another example that is a little more fun, courtesy of Blake Mills (Blakem on perlmonks):

#!/usr/bin/perl

printme(q{
sub printme {
  print "#!/usr/bin/perl\n\n";
  print "printme(q{$_[0]});\n";
  print "$_[0]";
}
});

sub printme {
  print "#!/usr/bin/perl\n\n";
  print "printme(q{$_[0]});\n";
  print "$_[0]";
}

Now is where it starts getting really interesting. Try and GOLF your own in any language!