Question

I have the following lines in my .sh file

#! /usr/bin/env /Users/myuser/Development/tools/groovy

println "this is a test"

env: /Users/myuser/tools/groovy: Permission denied

when I run the command /usr/bin/env groovy I don’t get any errors. Any clues why it would be happening on an OS X ?

Answer 1

The purpose of the #!/usr/bin/env trick is to avoid having to specify the full path to the interpeter. See this question (and my answer) for more information. Since you’re specifying the full absolute path anyway, you might as well use:

#!/Users/myuser/Development/tools/groovy

As for why this isn’t working, most likely you have a groovy command somewhere else in your $PATH, and /usr/bin/env groovy is invoking that other copy.

This:

type -a groovy

will tell you which groovy executable is in your $PATH. And this:

ls -l /Users/myuser/Development/tools/groovy

should tell you why you’re getting the “Permission denied” error; most likely that file is not executable.

Another possibility: some systems limit the length of a #! line. I don’t know whether OSX does so. If it does, the path to your groovy command might be truncated. If this is the problem, you might consider moving or copying the groovy command to a directory with a shorter absolute path.