Compiling a simple C program using gcc gives the error "could not read symbols" in RHEL6

Issue

• Compiling a simple C code using gcc throughs the following error:

# cat hw.c
main(){
printf("Hello World");
}
# gcc hw.c
hw.c: In function main:
hw.c:2: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function printf
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-redhat-linux/4.4.7/../../../crt1.o: could not read symbols: File in wrong format
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status