./k
make: ./k: No such file or directory
This is a problem with the POSIX spec for the execve system call and its obligatory return codes.
"No such file or directory" is arguably the correct message to show when the kernel returns the ENOENT error code. And normally it's appropriate to attach that to the filename that was passed to the kernel; however in this case the combination may be confusing.
I would argue that a more appropriate error code would be ENOEXEC ("exec format error", which is what you get when the kernel lacks an "interpreter" for ELF or a.out or JAR files) or perhaps a new code such as ENOINTERP. However, this should be addressed to the POSIX committee, and to the Kernel developers for Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, and others.
Bash's message is intentionally more vague precisely because this is a known issue.
-Martin