title: Why do I get no output for very simple Hello World program?
body: <p>I am wondering why my C program does not print any information. I am 100% new to programming, and have been able to learn a few things in Ruby and Python these past few weeks, but I am getting nowhere with the C stuff. Here is the total baseline, simple program that everyone learns first:</p>
  
  <pre><code>#include &lt;stdio.h&gt;
  
  int main()
  
      {
          printf("Hello World\n");
          return 0;
      }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So I've got that written, and I save as hello.c. Now I cd to the directory where it is, and then I try</p>
  
  <pre><code>gcc hello.c
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and nothing happens - no errors, just nothing. If I write instead</p>
  
  <pre><code>gcc hello.c -o hello
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>a new executable file is written to my directory, and when I open it, it looks like the normal command line, and has "Hello World" written there, as I expected in my terminal the first time.</p>
  
  <p>I also tried make hello.c an executable itself, but when I do that I get</p>
  
  <pre><code>syntax error near unexpected token `('
  `int main()'
  </code></pre>