OT: Linux shell validate-all-command-before-executing-anything behavior?

[Nick Sabalausky]

I'm trying to make a trivial shell script (as portable as possible) to build 
an executable and then run it. Basically something like this:

-----------------------------
#!/bin/sh
# Assume that foo is a natively-compiled program,
# not a script or anything, and gets placed in './bin'
make foo
./bin/foo
-----------------------------

But, when I try to run that, it complains that './bin/foo' doesn't exist and 
exits *before* it ever actually invokes 'make foo' (just an example) which 
is exactly what *creates* './bin/foo' in the first place. Can anyone provide 
any insight/perspective/background-info to this apparent "validate all 
commands in the script against the filesystem before actually running the 
script" behavior?

I apologize for bringing something so enormously off-topic here, but the 
closest thing I'm getting to an intelligent answer over at the Ubuntu Forums 
is "It's 'make', not 'make foo', and if that doesn't work, what are you 
trying to build?" I'm a bit fearful for my sanity at the thought of bringing 
the same question to yet other forum that I don't already know for certain 
to be populated with people who actually know what they're talking about. So 
I just came straight here with it instead. I *know* that people here are 
intelligent.