Learn Linux Shell Scripting - Fundamentals of Bash 4.4

The shebang

You are probably wondering about that first line. The second (or third, if you count the empty line) should be clear, but that first one is new. It is called the shebang, but is sometimes also referred to as a sha-bang, hashbang, pound-bang, and/or hash-pling. Its function is pretty simple: it tells the system which binary to use to execute the script. It is always in the format of #!<binary path>. For our purposes, we will always use the #!/bin/bash shebang, but for Perl or Python scripts it would be #!/usr/bin/perl and #!/usr/bin/python3 respectively. It might seem unnecessary at first sight. We create the script named hello-world.sh, whereas a Perl or Python script would use hello-world.pl and hello-world.py. Why, then, do ...