[linux] Why do you need to put #!/bin/bash at the beginning of a script file?

I have made Bash scripts before and they all ran fine without #!/bin/bash at the beginning.

What's the point of putting it in? Would things be any different?

Also, how do you pronounce #? I know that ! is pronounced as "bang."

How is #! pronounced?

This question is related to linux bash scripting shebang

The answer is


It is called a shebang. It consists of a number sign and an exclamation point character (#!), followed by the full path to the interpreter such as /bin/bash. All scripts under UNIX and Linux execute using the interpreter specified on a first line.


The shebang is a directive to the loader to use the program which is specified after the #! as the interpreter for the file in question when you try to execute it. So, if you try to run a file called foo.sh which has #!/bin/bash at the top, the actual command that runs is /bin/bash foo.sh. This is a flexible way of using different interpreters for different programs. This is something implemented at the system level and the user level API is the shebang convention.

It's also worth knowing that the shebang is a magic number - a human readable one that identifies the file as a script for the given interpreter.

Your point about it "working" even without the shebang is only because the program in question is a shell script written for the same shell as the one you are using. For example, you could very well write a javascript file and then put a #! /usr/bin/js (or something similar) to have a javascript "Shell script".


It's called a shebang. In unix-speak, # is called sharp (like in music) or hash (like hashtags on twitter), and ! is called bang. (You can actually reference your previous shell command with !!, called bang-bang). So when put together, you get haSH-BANG, or shebang.

The part after the #! tells Unix what program to use to run it. If it isn't specified, it will try with bash (or sh, or zsh, or whatever your $SHELL variable is) but if it's there it will use that program. Plus, # is a comment in most languages, so the line gets ignored in the subsequent execution.


The operating system takes default shell to run your shell script. so mentioning shell path at the beginning of script, you are asking the OS to use that particular shell. It is also useful for portability.


It can be useful to someone that uses a different system that does not have that library readily available. If that is not declared and you have some functions in your script that are not supported by that system, you should declare #/bin/bash. I've ran into this problem before at work and now I just include it as a practice.


Every distribution has a default shell. Bash is the default on the majority of the systems. If you happen to work on a system that has a different default shell, then the scripts might not work as intended if they are written specific for Bash.

Bash has evolved over the years taking code from ksh and sh.

Adding #!/bin/bash as the first line of your script, tells the OS to invoke the specified shell to execute the commands that follow in the script.

#! is often referred to as a "hash-bang", "she-bang" or "sha-bang".


To be more precise the shebang #!, when it is the first two bytes of an executable (x mode) file, is interpreted by the execve(2) system call (which execute programs). But POSIX specification for execve don't mention the shebang.

It must be followed by a file path of an interpreter executable (which BTW could even be relative, but most often is absolute).

A nice trick (or perhaps not so nice one) to find an interpreter (e.g. python) in the user's $PATH is to use the env program (always at /usr/bin/env on all Linux) like e.g.

 #!/usr/bin/env python

Any ELF executable can be an interpreter. You could even use #!/bin/cat or #!/bin/true if you wanted to! (but that would be often useless)


Also you will see some other parameters after #!/bin/bash, for example
#!/bin/bash -v -x
read this to get more idea.
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/124272/what-do-the-arguments-v-and-x-mean-to-bash .


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