Why is Groovy script trying to run as shell script?

Question

The following script:

#!/opt/groovy-1.8.6/bin/groovy

final env = []

outputs:

$ ./small.groovy 
./small.groovy: line 3: final: command not found

What needs to be done to get it to run as Groovy (without having to call Groovy explicitly)?

Answer 1

I'm not sure why you are seeing that error, but the usual way to run Groovy scripts directly — in a Unix-like environment — is to use:

#!/usr/bin/env groovy

println "Hello World"

This ensures that all environment variables are loaded correctly, such as JAVA_HOME .