[Info-vax] puzzled by DCL symbol substitution

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article
<6ae68ad7-98f2-4935-9eaa-dd35266f7fd0 at n6g2000vbg.googlegroups.com>, AEF
<spamsink2001 at yahoo.com> writes: 

> > I once read about a contest to create the smallest self-reproducing
> > program.  Someone submitted an empty file.  They subsequently amended
> > the rules to disallow this.
> 
> Huh? I'm missing something here. Please explain.

Depending on whether an empty file is the same as no file, an empty file 
is a self-reproducing program since when run it produces nothing.