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#!magic, details about the shebang/hash-bang mechanism on various Unix flavours

#!magic, details about the shebang/hash-bang mechanism on various Unix flavours

2 comments

·November 20, 2025
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rmunn

Also relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45970885 (article about how #! allows relative paths)

Ferret7446

The article actually mentions this in passing, but POSIX will default to running the file with the system shell if it's not an executable binary. So hashbang scripts can work even if the system doesn't support hashbangs (as long as the script is in shell).

See also https://www.felesatra.moe/blog/2021/07/03/portable-bash-sheb...