education | January 08, 2026

What is the correct shebang line for a bash script

What is the default shebang value for a bash shell?

/bin/sh/bin/sh is usually a link to the system’s default shell, which is often bash but on, e.g., Debian systems is the lighter weight dash .

What is a valid shebang line?

Rules for the shebang

The shebang command must be the first line of the file and can contain any valid path for the interpreter, followed by an argument that the command will receive. The shebang line is read by the system before the execution of the program, but that line will not be automatically deleted.

What does shebang do in bash?

characters and the path to the Bash interpreter. This sequence of characters ( #! ) is called shebang and is used to tell the operating system which interpreter to use to parse the rest of the file.

Do shell scripts need shebang?

3 Answers. The shebang is only mandatory for those scripts, which shall be executed by the operating system in the same way as binary executables. If you source in another script, then the shebang is ignored.

Does shebang have to be first line?

4 Answers. The shebang must be the first line because it is interpreted by the kernel, which looks at the two bytes at the start of an executable file.

Why is shebang needed?

shebang is used to tell the kernel which interpreter should be used to run the commands present in the file. When we run a file starting with #! , the kernel opens the file and takes the contents written right after the #! until the end of the line.

Is #!/ Bin bash necessary?

You must have the #!/bin/bash then so it will be executed in bash and not some other shell. Also so it will be executed at all if the program trying to execute it isn’t a shell itself. Then there are scripts in completely different languages, such as Perl or Python.

What is #! In shell?

A shell script is a text file containing shell commands. … If the first line of a script begins with the two characters ‘ #! ‘, the remainder of the line specifies an interpreter for the program and, depending on the operating system, one or more optional arguments for that interpreter.

What does #! Mean in Linux?

#! specifies the program with which the script should be executed if you not explicitly call it which any. in your case, if you call your script with: Linux will execute it as /bin/sh <scriptname.sh>

What does E mean in bash?

The -e option means “if any pipeline ever ends with a non-zero (‘error’) exit status, terminate the script immediately“. Since grep returns an exit status of 1 when it doesn’t find any match, it can cause -e to terminate the script even when there wasn’t a real “error”.

Is shebang a comment?

The shebang line is usually ignored by the interpreter, because the “#” character is a comment marker in many scripting languages; some language interpreters that do not use the hash mark to begin comments still may ignore the shebang line in recognition of its purpose.

How do I run a bash file in Terminal?

Steps to write and execute a script
  1. Open the terminal. Go to the directory where you want to create your script.
  2. Create a file with . sh extension.
  3. Write the script in the file using an editor.
  4. Make the script executable with command chmod +x <fileName>.
  5. Run the script using ./<fileName>.

What does C mean in Bash?

If the -c option is present, then commands are read from string. If there are arguments after the string, they are assigned to the positional parameters, starting with $0. … The -c flag tells Bash that the next argument is a string of commands to run instead of the filename of a script.

What does set mean in Bash?

set allows you to change the values of shell options and set the positional parameters, or to display the names and values of shell variables.

What is D in Bash?

-d is a operator to test if the given directory exists or not. … This condition is true only when the directory exists. In our example, the directory exists so this condition is true. I am changing the directory variable to “/home/a/b/”.

What is C flag in bash?

Using the -c flag allows me to provide the commands directly into command line without writing to a file. This is required for my usage. Example working: $ bash -c ‘free -m’ The problem is the actual shell fragment I want to run has single quotes in it.

What is curl FSSL?

-f, –fail (HTTP) Fail silently (no output at all) on server errors. … In normal cases when a HTTP server fails to deliver a document, it returns an HTML document stating so (which often also describes why and more). This flag will prevent curl from outputting that and return error 22.

What does $# mean in bash?

number of arguments $# is the number of arguments, but remember it will be different in a function. $# is the number of positional parameters passed to the script, shell, or shell function. This is because, while a shell function is running, the positional parameters are temporarily replaced with the arguments to the function.

What is colon in bash?

Bash and sh both use colons (“:”) in more than one context. You’ll see it used as a separator ($PATH, for example), as a modifier (${n:=”foo”}) and as a null operator (“while :”).

What does $@ mean in bash?

bash [filename] runs the commands saved in a file. $@ refers to all of a shell script’s command-line arguments. $1 , $2 , etc., refer to the first command-line argument, the second command-line argument, etc. Place variables in quotes if the values might have spaces in them.

What does ## mean in bash?

1 Answer. 1. 22. In bash , it removes a prefix pattern. Here, it’s basically giving you everything after the last path separator / , by greedily removing the prefix */ , any number of characters followed by / ): pax> fspec=/path/to/some/file.txt ; echo ${fspec##*/} file.txt.

How do I run a bash script?

Make a Bash Script Executable
  1. 1) Create a new text file with a . sh extension. …
  2. 2) Add #!/bin/bash to the top of it. This is necessary for the “make it executable” part.
  3. 3) Add lines that you’d normally type at the command line. …
  4. 4) At the command line, run chmod u+x YourScriptFileName.sh. …
  5. 5) Run it whenever you need!