Question

I keep getting this question asked by my friends

Write a program to print “Hello,World” without using main() function in java

So my question is:

Is it really possible to write and compile a program without main() without exception.?

Answer 1

public class Test {
    static {
        System.out.println("Hello,World");
        System.exit(0);
    }
}

Will print Hello,World, with a pre-1.7 Java VM. Oracle JDK 1.7 checks for a main before initializing the class.

The JLS Execution part 12.1.4 seems to indicate that the JVM will attempt to run a main method, but only after initializers have run. This appears to be interpreted differently in Java 1.7.

Special thanks to Ted Hopp for the System.exit(0) line.