Print a Symbolic Negative of your Code

Question

(This is a variation on Print a Negative of your Code, which I enjoyed a lot! Thanks to Martin Büttner♦ - almost all of this text is his.)

Let's consider the symbols to be the following printable ASCII characters (note that space is included):

 !"#$%&'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\]^_`{|}~

And the alphanumerics to be these:

0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Consider a square of printable ASCII characters for side length N, like the following:

ONE, 
{two}
&3,+=
!four
f|ve.

We also require each row and each column to contain at least one symbol and one alphanumeric. (The above example satisfies this.)

We define the symbolic negative of such a square to be a square of the same size where each symbol is replaced with an alphanumeric and vice versa. For example, the following would be a valid symbolic negative of the above example:

[&]OK
a...b
1/100
i@#$%
(R) z

The choice of specific characters is irrelevant as long as they are in the categories above.

The Challenge

Your task is to write a program with square source code with side length N> 1, which prints a symbolic negative of its source code to STDOUT. Trailing spaces must be printed. You may or may not print a single trailing newline.

The usual quine rules also apply, so you must not read your own source code, directly or indirectly. Likewise, you must not assume a REPL environment which automatically prints the value of each entered expression.

The winner is the program with the lowest side length N. In the event of a tie, the submission with the fewest symbols in the source code wins. If there's still a tie, the earliest answer wins.

• Liam: Is this really a "quine" type challenge since the output doesn't need to be source code of any type?
• Luke: Good point, I don't think it actually is.
• Martin Ender: @LiamNoronha I'd consider it a generalised quine in that the output is a function of the source code, and the standard quine rules apply.
• Conor O'Brien: Define "reading your own source code"; if there is a command that, say, copies characters to the output, would this be an instance of said "reading"?

Answer 1

GolfScript, 3 × 3 (4 symbols)

4,m
`3/
n*o

Try it online on Web GolfScript.

Output

[0 
1 2
 3]

How it works

4, # Push the array [0 1 2 3].
 m # Undefined token. Does nothing.
` # Push the string representation of the array. Pushes "[0 1 2 3]".
 3/ # Split into chunks of length 3. Pushes ["[0 " " 1 " "2 3]"].
n* # Join the chunks, separated by linefeeds. Pushes the output.
 o # Undefined token. Does nothing.

Answer 2

CJam, 3 × 3 (5 symbols)

[5,
S*3
/N*

Try it online in the CJam interpreter.

How it works

[ e# Unmatched [. Does nothing.
 5, e# Push [0 1 2 3 4].
S* e# Join the integers, separating by spaces. Pushes "0 1 2 3 4".
 3 e#
/ e# Split into chunks of length 3. Pushes ["0 1" " 2 " "3 4"].
 N* e# Join the chunks, separated by linefeeds. Pushes the output.

Output

0 1
 2 
3 4

Answer 3

Pyth, 3x3, 4 Symbols

S]1
.5;
S]1

Output:

[1]
0.5
[1]

Explanation:

• S sorts the one element list ]1
• The numeric literal .5 gets printed as 0.5, ; terminates the statement (does nothing in this case)

• Dennis: I though long and hard about how I could get <alphanum><symbol><alphanum> in Pyth or CJam. It never occurred to me to use floats... Nice work!

Answer 4

C++, 18 x 18

"Always choose the worst tool for the job."

#include<cstdio> 
int main(){ for (
int line = 0lu; 
1lu*line < 18l; 
1lu*line++){pri\ 
ntf(line == 0lu * 
123*line? "\x41.\\
x2e\x02e...\x2e\\ 
x42\x02e...\x2e.\ 
CDE\x00a": 14l!= 
1lu*line?".\x2e.\\
x46\x02e...\x47""\
HIJ\x02e..""KLM" 
 /*O*/"\n": /*The
bad code:*/"NOP.\ 
QRS\x054." "UVW\ 
XYZ\x02e" "\x2e\\ 
x2e\x00a"); 0lu;}}

Output:

A.......B......CDE
...F....GHIJ...KLM
...F....GHIJ...KLM
...F....GHIJ...KLM
...F....GHIJ...KLM
...F....GHIJ...KLM
...F....GHIJ...KLM
...F....GHIJ...KLM
...F....GHIJ...KLM
...F....GHIJ...KLM
...F....GHIJ...KLM
...F....GHIJ...KLM
...F....GHIJ...KLM
...F....GHIJ...KLM
NOP.QRST.UVWXYZ...
...F....GHIJ...KLM
...F....GHIJ...KLM
...F....GHIJ...KLM