Another sed question.
P E Smee
exspes at gdr.bath.ac.uk
Tue Dec 5 22:21:01 AEST 1989
In article <4694 at pinas.cs.vu.nl> maart at cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath) writes:
>Probably:
>
> #!/bin/sed 1d
> <the rest of the script>
>
>When you try to execute this script, the kernel opens it to find out what kind
>of executable it is. The header of a *binary* includes the size of the text,
>data and bss segments etc.. This file, however, isn't a binary: it's an
>EXECUTABLE shell script. The kernel discovers the `#!' MAGIC NUMBER and takes
>the following word as the real executable to start. There may be 1 option
Question is, is this #! trick actually documented anywhere? I certainly can't
find it in any obvious place in my FM's (mostly sysV and 4.2bsd). If so,
where? Is it a 4.3bsd feature, or something? (I see a quick 'mention in
passing' in J.E.Lapin's 'Portable C and Unix System Programming', which
seems to imply that it isn't -- portable, that is.)
--
Paul Smee, Univ. of Bristol Comp. Centre, Bristol BS8 1TW (Tel +44 272 303132)
Smee at bristol.ac.uk :-) (..!uunet!ukc!gdr.bath.ac.uk!exspes if you HAVE to)
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