command-line use on OS X

[Dar Scott]

I downloaded the Darwin engine and I can do this:

./mc helloworld.txt

In this form, the text file does not seem to need #!.

This engine seems bloated; it is well over 2MB.  X11?

I seem to have forgotten most of what I know of unix from a quarter 
century ago.

I don't need cgi (yet).  I just want to do some command-line work.  
Does this file (mc) go into /etc/bin or some other directory?  What 
permissions and ownership should it have.

I'm currently editing with TextEdit.  I am not able to type the text 
file name to the terminal just as I would a program.  I get a 
permissions error.  Do I need to make it executable?   TextEdit does 
not make files executable.  The "get info" does not have an execute 
option on permissions.  Do I need to go in and chmod each file?  Maybe 
I need to make an editor with Revolution.

I suspect I'm missing the obvious.

Even though I'm an old school lisp guy, I don't emacs and I had a 
hypnotist purge all knowledge of vi years ago.  I think I did; I don't 
remember vi, anyway.

Dar Scott