Can a shell script delete or overwrite itself?

Question

#beginning of bashscript1.sh
source bashscript2.sh
echo $variable

and here is the source file:

#beginning of bashscript2.sh
rm -f b         


        

Answer 1

Is this a curiosity you have or what you actually want to obtain?

Anyway, I've tried myself this simple script (test_script.sh):

rm -f test_script.sh
echo "Still here!"

and it prints Still here!, so the file was loaded before execution. Execution is not possible the second time.

To answer your question, yes and no. The commands in the script are loaded and executed, and can delete the source file of the script. This will make impossible to execute the same file again, of course, but will not affect the first execution.