Compile string of C code

Question

Really off the wall question here, but is there a way to compile a string of C code in GCC without any medium to hold that string (eg. a source file)?

Something along the lines of:

$ gcc "#include <stdio.h> int main( void ){ printf('hello world'); return 0;}" -o test

Feels really dirty, but it would be really nice if there was some simple way to do that type of thing.