The shebang line is not interpreted by the shell. It's used by the operating system kernel to figure out how to execute a file that has the executable bit on and is not a "real" binary executable. I believe it goes more or less like this:

You (maybe via a shell)
Hey, OS! Please execute ./test.pl
OS
Hm, this doesn't look like a binary, but it starts with #!. Let's see... Oh, I should tell /usr/bin/perl to handle it. (executes /usr/bin/perl)
OS
Hey, perl, there you are! Run with ./test.pl as your first argument (some systems might include all arguments from the shebang line at this stage).
perl
(Opens ./test.pl). Hey, this looks like a Perl program with a shebang line! Let's see if there are any options in the shebang line that I didn't get already when I was exec'ed... (figures out the options; compiles and runs the program).

Since tilde, alias, and other expansions are done by the shell, they don't work on the shebang line.

In reply to Re: #! -- why doth thou exist? by itub
in thread #! -- why doth thou exist? by punkish

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.