She Bang

"No matter how you slice it, it's baloney."

Origin uncertain, but see http://www.wordorigins.org/wordorw.htm#shebang http://www.takeourword.com/TOW193/page2.html#shebang and http://www.abc.net.au/classic/breakfast/stories/s968895.htm for some elements of consensus.

SheBangs, SheBangs; Oh baby, when SheMoves, SheMoves... -- Ricky Martin


Also a Unix MagicNumber. The first line of most perl scripts reads

#!/bin/perl

and likewise for scripts written for bash, Python, and so on.

The #! (pronounced SheBang which is short for sharp-bang) instructs the shell (command interpreter) to load the program specified after the bang, and pass the filename of the script to it. Since # begins a comment in many scripting languages (the Unix shells, tcl, Perl, Python, ...), the magic number line will be ignored by the interpreter.

Also pronounced HashBang. You must be from the Netherlands.

I learnt: Hash-Pling. (From UKian, I've used acorn computers for the longest time)

Well, I guess that is the whole shebang! :-)


My theory about the whole SheBang is that it tries to reference the WholeShillelagh; Google can find the word out there at http://www.google.com/search?q=shillelagh and can define the word in three ways: http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Ashillelagh.

I have enough trouble trying to spell it - there may be many variations, so I might have just written the Whole SheBang after having given up. -- ChrisGarrod HappyNewYear WikiZens


Dude, this is the most useless C2 wiki page EV4R.

I love it. ;-)

Hash-pling - I will need to remember this for when I need to give someone an interview. Although I should change it to "octo-pling", short for "octothorpe"-pling. "What does the octopling do at the start of a script?" The answer is irrelevant of course; only their reaction to an unfamiliar term would be. -- SamuelFalvo


Category FileTypingSystem

EditText of this page (last edited June 27, 2008)
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