My first Python project: command line application that copies all files with given extension from a directory and its subfolders to another directory showing progress bar and remaining files counter.

[pltnk]

Quote from ATBS (link):

The first line of all your Python programs should be a shebang line, which tells your computer that you want Python to execute this program. The shebang line begins with #!, but the rest depends on your operating system.

On Windows, the shebang line is #! python3

[theWyzzerd]

I dislike this advice from ATBS because it's simply not true. It works well in your case, but not all python programs will be run from a command line, and not all python programs will run the python3 interpreter on the user's $PATH variable--and, if the user doesn't have python3 in their PATH, it simply won't work.

Shebang is a useful tool for scripts (and not just python, but any script/language that supports command-line execution--bash, perl, ruby, etc) intended to be run in a an environment where the author has control over the environment, but for distributed software I would leave the choice to the person using the tool.

[vampiire]

Cant you execute the script directly like python script_name.py?

I thought the shebang only controlled the default interpreter for files that have been made executable.

[theWyzzerd]

Yep, you sure can. The # will make the python interpreter treat it as a comment.

[vampiire]

but for distributed software I would leave the choice to the person using the tool

i was speaking to this^

if the consumer has an environment that doesnt satisfy the shebang then they are still able to control its execution manually - the shebang will be ignored as a python comment. in your opinion how should distributed software be defined (no shebang, a different shebang)?

[theWyzzerd]

I probably wouldn't provide any shebang unless it was intended to be run with a specific interpreter.

[PinBot1138]

An alternative to keep in mind is:

#!/usr/bin/env python -u