4 definitions found

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

shebang

noun: an entire system; used in the phrase 'the whole shebang'

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:

Shebang \She*bang"\, noun [Cf. {Shebeen}.] A jocosely depreciative name for a dwelling or shop. [Slang,U.S.]

From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) [jargon]:

shebang /sh*-bang/ n. The character sequence "#!" that frequently begins executable shell scripts under Unix. Probably derived from "shell bang" under the influence of American slang "the whole shebang" (everything, the works).

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

shebang (Or "shebang line", "{bang path}") /sh*-bang'/ (From "{sharp}" and "{bang}") The {magic cookie} "#!" used in {Unix} to mark the start of a {script}, e.g. a {shell script} or {Perl script}. Under {Unix}, if the first two bytes of an {executable} file are "#!", the {kernel} treats the file as a script rather than a {machine code} program. The word following the "!" (i.e., everything up to the first {whitespace}) is used as the {pathname} of the {interpreter}. For example, if the first line of an executable is #!/usr/local/bin/perl the script will be treated as a {Perl} script and passed as an argument to /usr/local/bin/perl to be interpreted. Some variants of Unix also allow one or more parameters to be passed to the interpreter, for example, you can write #!/usr/bin/perl -w and the script will be started as if you typed /usr/bin/perl -w on the command line. Also, most modern kernels ignore any whitespace between the "!" and the interpreter pathname. Even some modern kernels have fairly small limits (e.g. 32) on the length of line they will accept, making long pathnames and arguments somewhat unportable. [Does anyone call this a "magic string"?] (1998-05-06)
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