> % file t.sh > t.sh: ASCII text > % cat t.sh > max=10 > Oh and before someone says "but there's some standard that says you're supposed to put a shebang at the top" - afaik, it's not in POSIX anywhere: http://www.in-ulm.de/~mascheck/various/shebang/ So, magic dropped the ball - should've been identified as a shell script (due to the use of "echo"