I was going to see what strace does with an empty /tmp/foo, and it fails: > write(2, "strace: exec: Exec format error\n", 32strace: exec: Exec format error So

I was going to see what strace does with an empty /tmp/foo, and it fails: > write(2, "strace: exec: Exec format error\n", 32strace: exec: Exec format error So the empty file is not exec()able. I think it can only be invoked from a shell. subprocess.call("/tmp/foo", shell=xxxx) demonstrates it. I wonder if that was the case for Unix v7 that had it zero length? (...mentioned in another thread.)