--- title: Self-Printing Machine Code | daily.dev description: A self-printing machine code program that writes itself to standard output when executed in a DOS environment. It can be tested in a Unix/Linux system with... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/self-printing-machine-code-ouf1usrqi twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Self-Printing Machine Code | daily.dev og:description: A self-printing machine code program that writes itself to standard output when executed in a DOS environment. It can be tested in a Unix/Linux system with... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/self-printing-machine-code-ouf1usrqi og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/OUf1uSRQI.png og:image:alt: Self-Printing Machine Code og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- [Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn) [Read post](https://api.daily.dev/r/OUf1uSRQI) # [Self-Printing Machine Code](https://api.daily.dev/r/OUf1uSRQI "Go to post") A self-printing machine code program that writes itself to standard output when executed in a DOS environment. It can be tested in a Unix/Linux system with DOSBox or in an actual MS-DOS 6.22 system or Windows 98 system. The program uses x86 machine code and DOS services to write its own bytes. There is a discussion on the definition of a quine and the differences between machine code quines and other quines. The program can also be modified to avoid reading its own bytes and still print itself. [#assembly](/tags/assembly "Check all #assembly posts") Mar 16, 2024•19m read time•From [susam.net](https://api.daily.dev/r/OUf1uSRQI "susam.net") [](https://api.daily.dev/r/OUf1uSRQI "Go to post") Table of contents [Contents](https://api.daily.dev/r/OUf1uSRQI?a=contents "Contents")[Demo](https://api.daily.dev/r/OUf1uSRQI?a=demo "Demo")[Quine Conundrums](https://api.daily.dev/r/OUf1uSRQI?a=quine-conundrums "Quine Conundrums")[Proper Quines](https://api.daily.dev/r/OUf1uSRQI?a=proper-quines "Proper Quines")[A Note on DOS Services](https://api.daily.dev/r/OUf1uSRQI?a=a-note-on-dos-services "A Note on DOS Services")[Writing to Video Memory Directly](https://api.daily.dev/r/OUf1uSRQI?a=writing-to-video-memory-directly "Writing to Video Memory Directly")[Boot Program](https://api.daily.dev/r/OUf1uSRQI?a=boot-program "Boot Program") 6 Impressions Comment Bookmark Copy Share your thoughtsPost [](https://daily.dev/sources/hn) [Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn "https://daily.dev/sources/hn") Hacker News is a community-driven platform for sharing and discussing technology news, startups, and... 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