swcarpentry/bc — pull request #255 by wking (2014-01-26 02:39:10+00:00)
Title: Discuss shebang #! in novice Bash lesson?

The novice lessons currently don't discuss the [shebang][1]. I don't have solid numbers, but I have seen very few scripts without these leading comments, which are useful for typing reduction, and also to avoid accidentally running a Bash script from a POSIX shell (or other mix-ups). I think the mental overhead of this additional syntax is outweighed by the benefit of not having to remember which language the script is written in when you call it later.

This is more of a Unix-ism than a shell-specific feature, but the Bash scripting lesson seems like a good place to address it.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shebang_%28Unix%29