You could even compile a Perl that reads the #! and replaces itself with the interpreter specified there!

Indeed, perl does this out of the box. 

$ cat foo.sh
#!/bin/sh
echo 'Hello, World!'
$ perl foo.sh
Hello, World!

[download]

perlrun has the details, though I prefer Dominus' take in perliaq.

In reply to Re^2: #! -- why doth thou exist? by TilRMan
in thread #! -- why doth thou exist? by punkish

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