Bash – the preferred Bash shebang

bashshebang

Is there any Bash shebang objectively better than the others for most uses?

  • #!/usr/bin/env bash
  • #!/bin/bash
  • #!/bin/sh
  • #!/bin/sh -
  • etc

I vaguely recall a long time ago hearing that adding a dash to the end prevents someone passing a command to your script, but can’t find any details on that.

Best Answer

You should use #!/usr/bin/env bash for portability: different *nixes put bash in different places, and using /usr/bin/env is a workaround to run the first bash found on the PATH. And sh is not bash.