How does #! work and how can I make it work for CoffeeScript?

Question

Can I make a CoffeeScript file executable just like a Perl or shell script?

Something like adding

#!coffee

on top? (I tried that, and all I get is 'bad interpreter')

I'm on OS X if that makes a difference.

Answer 1

You can use:

#!/usr/bin/env coffee

console.log 'hello coffeescript!'

Just make sure you also make the file executable:

chmod +x myfile.coffee

Then you can run it with:

myfile.coffee

Answer 2

Have you tried the absolute path? "Bad interpreter" usually means there's a rogue newline at the end, e.g. you need to run dos2unix on it.

Answer 3

You need an absolute path (on linux at least, OSX may be different)

or you can cheat by using env

#!/usr/bin/env coffee
# **Your script here**

It looks like you've already made sure you've made the script executable if you are getting that error