Narcissus is an open source JavaScript engine. It was written by Brendan Eich, who also wrote the first JavaScript engine, SpiderMonkey. Its name is based on the mythical figure of Narcissus, who fell in love with himself. This relates to the fact that this JavaScript engine is a metacircular interpreter, because the engine itself is also written in JavaScript, albeit using non-standard extensions that are specific to SpiderMonkey.
The Narcissus engine can be plugged into Firefox via Zaphod add-on to run scripts on web pages. Since Narcissus has a simpler code-base than "real" JavaScript engines, it can be used to prototype new language features with less effort.
Famous quotes containing the words narcissus and/or script:
“The narcissus has copied the arch
of your slight breast:
your feet are citron-flowers,
your knees, cut from white-ash,
your thighs are rock-cistus.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“Genghis Khan, in his usual jodhpurs accessorized with whip, straddled a canvas chair and gloated upon the fairyland he had built. Journalists, photographers, secretaries, sycophants, script girls, and set dressers milled and stirred around him, activity ... irresistibly reminiscent of the movement of maggots upon rotting meat.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)