hello, world
interj. 1. The canonical minimal test message in the
C/UNIX universe. 2. Any of the minimal programs that emit this
message. Traditionally, the first program a C coder is supposed to
write in a new environment is one that just prints "hello, world"
to standard output (and indeed it is the first example program
in
K&R). Environments that generate an unreasonably large
executable for this trivial test or which require a
hairy
compiler-linker invocation to generate it are considered to
lose (see
X). 3. Greeting uttered by a hacker making an
entrance or requesting information from anyone present. "Hello,
world! Is the
VAX back up yet?"
