A few months ago I got this error with petsc-dev
"************************************************
UNABLE to EXECUTE BINARIES for ./configure
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cannot run executables created with C. If this machine uses a batch system
to submit jobs you will need to configure using ./configure with the
additional option --with-batch.
Otherwise there is problem with the compilers. Can you compile and
run code with your C/C++ (and maybe Fortran) compilers?"
If this is the error you got, then, to make along story short, this
went way when I removed the symbol "+" from my PETSC_ARCH.
-Nachiket
