Executing Python Scripts With a Shebang
When you read someone else’s Python code, you frequently see a mysterious line, which always appears at the top of the file, starting with the distinctive shebang (#!
) sequence. It looks like a not-so-useful comment, but other than that, it doesn’t resemble anything else you’ve learned about Python, making you wonder what that is and why it’s there. As if that wasn’t enough to confuse you, the shebang line only appears in some Python modules.
In this tutorial, you’ll:
- Learn what a shebang is
- Decide when to include the shebang in Python scripts
- Define the shebang in a portable way across systems
- Pass arguments to the command defined in a shebang
- Know the shebang’s limitations and some of its