Tried it with GCC, and without any optimization it does print the message. With "-O2" however, we get this: Disassembly of section .text: 00000000

Tried it with GCC, and without any optimization it does print the message. With "-O2" however, we get this: Disassembly of section .text: 0000000000001040 <main>: 1040: 0f 05 syscall 1042: 31 c0 xor %eax,%eax 1044: c3 retq Everything except the syscall instruction has been optimized away!