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Demystifying the (Shebang): Kernel Adventures


Clarifying the shebang (#!) mechanism: A step-by-step look using strace and kernel code shows how Linux handles script execution directly, revealing the shell isn't involved initially.

If we start digging into the kernel code, we can see that the entry point for the execve syscall is in the function do_execveat_common, found in fs/exec.c. It starts by creating a struct linux_binprm *bprm; which means “binary program”, then performing some checks, and eventually calling bprm_execve: It starts with retval = prepare_binprm(bprm) and following that function, we realize it’s actually copying part of the contents of the file into the bprm->buf:

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Shebang