CompTIA Linux+ XK0-006 (V8) Practice Question

The correct answer is that the script is missing the #!/bin/bash interpreter directive. The #! sequence, known as a shebang, is a special directive on the first line of a script that tells the system which program should be used to interpret the script's contents. When a script is run directly (e.g., ./deploy.sh), the system's program loader looks for this shebang line. If the line is #!/bin/bash, the script is passed to the Bash interpreter. If the shebang is missing, the script is executed using the user's current or default shell. In this scenario, the colleague's default shell is likely not Bash (e.g., it could be sh), which does not understand Bash-specific syntax, leading to syntax errors. Explicitly running the script with bash deploy.sh bypasses the shebang mechanism and forces the use of the Bash interpreter, which is why it works for the administrator.