The whole shebang

What this operating-systems compatibility question tests

This is a medium-difficulty systems-level question that probes how well you understand the interaction between scripting languages, shell environments, and OS-level file permissions. It's the kind of practical problem that appears in infrastructure and backend engineering interviews, where candidates need to reason about portability across Windows and Unix-like environments.

Working through this requires you to think about how executables are invoked, how the shebang line works, and what differences exist between Windows and POSIX-compliant systems. The question rewards knowing both the low-level mechanism (how the OS locates and runs an interpreter) and the pragmatic fix that makes a script portable across platforms.

• Shebang lines and script interpreter resolution
• File permissions and the executable bit on Unix systems
• Differences in how Windows and Git Bash handle script execution
• Cross-platform Python script portability