OK byte count it is (to save Steve from hell proving theoretical idea), a re-evaluation then of contenders :)
And I was just starting to test my idea, with this little program:
This gives us a single line with 39MB worth of data stored into a single string, and saves it as "test.bas". Running the little program here takes about half a minute to finish generating our string for us, and saving it to disk... Loading the file it creates into the IDE only takes about 2 seconds on my PC, and compilation into a working EXE only takes about 10 seconds or so.
Amazingly enough -- and I'm not certain how the hell this works -- but the EXE is *smaller* than the source code!!
Interestingly enough, neither QB64, nor the c-compiler we pack with QB64, had any issues whatsoever with the code. It loaded, compiled, and executed just as simple as could be!
3 lines for the program (though incredibly loooooong lines of pre-generated data), is the fewest lines I think I'd call possible with this type of program in QB64. (Of course, since we've decided to go by byte-count for "shortest program" and not "line-count", there's no reason for me to generate that data list and prove the concept valid any longer, so I'm not going to bother with any more testing than what I've did here.)
Regardless, it's always fun to try and think outside the box, to find a completely different solution than everyone else's. I think my concept definitely does that, even if it does require a 39MB, 3-line program... ;D