* * * * *
                                        
                     Hello world! Care to read your email?
                                        
> Yes, this really is the classic program that prints “Hello, world!” when
> you run it. Unlike the elementary version often presented in books like K&R
> (The C Programming Language), GNU (GNU's Not Unix) hello processes its
> argument list to modify its behavior, supports internationalization  [1],
> and includes a mail reader.
> 

“hello - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation [2]”

> Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs
> which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.
> 
> “Law of Software Envelopment”
> 

I didn't even realize GNU (GNU's Not Unix) [3] had a “Hello world” program
available for downloading, much less one that succumbed to the Law of
Software Envelopment. Granted, GNU then goes on to say:

> The primary purpose of this program is to demonstrate how to write other
> programs that do these things; it serves as a model for all of the GNU
> coding standards [4].
> 

It's quite amusing that GNU can turn this [5]:

-----[ C ]-----
#include <stdio.h>

main()
{
	printf("hello, world\n");
}
-----[ END OF LINE ]-----

into a 400k compressed download, complete with its own configuration script,
m4 macros (who uses m4 anymore?), man pages (and here I thought GNU was big
on info pages) along with documentation in TeX [6], plus the various language
files for Russian, Slovanian, Japanese and I even think English is included
in there somewhere.

Quite amusing.

Note: technically, the code should be written as:

-----[ C ]-----
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(void)
{
	printf("hello, world\n");
	return(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
-----[ END OF LINE ]-----

to be fully ANSI (American National Standards Institute) compliant, but hey,
who am I to argue with the authors of C?

Then again, if you really want to be anal retentive about it, then:

-----[ C ]-----
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(void)
{
	(void)printf("hello, world\n");
	return(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
-----[ END OF LINE ]-----

But that's just being silly … 

[1] http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_25.html#SEC25
[2] http://www.gnu.org/software/hello/hello.html
[3] http://www.gnu.org/
[4] http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html
[5] https://boston.conman.org/
[6] http://www.tug.org/

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

.