#!/bin/bash - No Such File Or Directory

Answer :

This kind of message is usually due to a bogus shebang line, either an extra carriage return at the end of the first line or a BOM at the beginning of it.

Run:

$ head -1 yourscript | od -c 

and see how it ends.

This is wrong:

0000000   #   !   /   b   i   n   /   b   a   s   h  \r  \n 

This is wrong too:

0000000 357 273 277   #   !   /   b   i   n   /   b   a   s   h  \n 

This is correct:

0000000   #   !   /   b   i   n   /   b   a   s   h  \n 

Use dos2unix (or sed, tr, awk, perl, python…) to fix your script if this is the issue.

Here is one that will remove both of a BOM and tailing CRs:

sed -i '1s/^.*#//;s/\r$//' brokenScript 

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Note that the shell you are using to run the script will slightly affect the error messages that are displayed.

Here are three scripts just showing their name (echo $0) and having the following respective shebang lines:

correctScript:

0000000   #   !   /   b   i   n   /   b   a   s   h  \n 

scriptWithBom:

0000000 357 273 277   #   !   /   b   i   n   /   b   a   s   h  \n 

scriptWithCRLF:

0000000   #   !   /   b   i   n   /   b   a   s   h  \r  \n 

Under bash, running them will show these messages:

$ ./correctScript ./correctScript $ ./scriptWithCRLF bash: ./scriptWithCRLF: /bin/bash^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory $ ./scriptWithBom ./scriptWithBom: line 1: #!/bin/bash: No such file or directory ./scriptWithBom 

Running the bogus ones by explicitely calling the interpreter allows the CRLF script to run without any issue:

$ bash ./scriptWithCRLF ./scriptWithCRLF $ bash ./scriptWithBom ./scriptWithBom: line 1: #!/bin/bash: No such file or directory ./scriptWithBom 

Here is the behavior observed under ksh:

$ ./scriptWithCRLF ksh: ./scriptWithCRLF: not found [No such file or directory] $ ./scriptWithBom ./scriptWithBom[1]: #!/bin/bash: not found [No such file or directory] ./scriptWithBom 

and under dash:

$ ./scriptWithCRLF dash: 2: ./scriptWithCRLF: not found $ ./scriptWithBom ./scriptWithBom: 1: ./scriptWithBom: #!/bin/bash: not found ./scriptWithBom 

This can also be caused by a BOM in a UTF-8 script. If you create the script in Windows sometimes you get some junk at the start of the file.

Actualy, the right shebang for bash script is this:

#!/usr/bin/env bash 

Because, in freeBSD, bash is located in /usr/local/bin/bash