> Ideally, the error would say:

> FileNotFoundError: ./demo: /usr/bin/hugo: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

The kernel simply returns ENOENT on an attempt to execve() a file with non-existing hash-bang interpreter. The same occurs on an attempt to run a dynamically linked ELF executable with INTERP program header containing a non-existing path. And, of course, the same error is returned if the executable file itself doesn't exist, so there is no simple way to distinguish such cases.

Bash simply assumes[1] that if a file contains a hash-bang and the error from execve() is not recognized otherwise, it's a "bad interpreter".

Note that all of the above is completely unrelated to os.posix_spawn(): subprocess or os.execve() would produce the same message.

[1] https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/bash.git/tree/execute_cmd.c?h=bash-5.1#n5854