About
An operating system has two forms of executable file:
- direct execution: a native image
- indirect execution: a script file. The operating system executes the native image (an interpreter) and passes the script a argument. The operating system associates the script to the interpreter via its file extension or shebang.
Linux
To be able to run, the file (native image or script) should have the permissions (on linux, it should have the executable file permission).