From: Ross Bamford <rossrt@...>
Date: 2006-05-14T22:20:37+09:00
Subject: Re: shebang woes / syntax check weirdness?

On Sun, 2006-05-14 at 21:19 +0900, Benjamin Andresen wrote:
> Hello everyone, I just noticed that even though I call ruby form the
> command line with a file as an argument it will execute the shebang
> line.
> Is this intentional behaviour? Because for me it doesn't hold to the
> POLS.
> 
> I had a discussion with somebody about what should happen when you run
> ruby with a file as an argument. We disagreed, so I didn't want to file
> a bug right away, but hear some comments on the issue before. (I don't
> know where to file bugs either. ;-)
> 
> From my perspective it should work the following way:
> 
> $ ruby myrubyfile.rb
> It will run ruby and it ignores the shebang line (it starts with a #, so
> it's clearly an comment.)
> 
> This doesn't work though, so if my shebang line is the following:
> "#!/usr/bin/perl", it will run perl.
> The same if you use "#!/bin/rm /etc/fstab" as your shebang line.
> If would basically run the shebang line.
> 
> Obviously if you run your script the following way: ./myrubyfile.rb
> this is fine and intended. Because it has to check the shebang line
> to see how it has to be interpreted / executed.
> 
> Python on the other hand does it right... If I run:
> $ python myrubyfile.rb
> it will ignore the shebang line and try to interpret it.
> 
> perl shows the same behaviour as ruby... This also got me thinking if I
> may be completely off.
> [...]
> In the end, who is right? Perl/Ruby or Python.

IMHO, Ruby and Perl have it right - recognising the shebang line means
any options there will be used - often you want options like -W or -K to
stay with the script in my experience (not to mention stuff like little
one-liner scripts using -n and so on).

-- 
Ross Bamford - rosco@roscopeco.REMOVE.co.uk