Shebang or Hashbang for modules or not?

[Steven W. Orr]

On Saturday, Apr 21st 2007 at 19:18 +0100, quoth Michael Hoffman:

=>Chris Lasher wrote:
=>> Should a Python module not intended to be executed have shebang/
=>> hashbang (e.g., "#!/usr/bin/env python") or not? I'm used to having a
=>> shebang in every .py file but I recently heard someone argue that
=>> shebangs were only appropriate for Python code intended to be
=>> executable (i.e., run from the command line).
=>
=>Personally I include it in all of them, as part of boilerplate in a 
=>template.

I'd recommend againt it. The shebang doesn't do you any good unless it's 
also in the presence  of a file that has its executable bit set. 

For example, let's leave python out for a second: I have a shell script. 
And I also have lots of files which are not intended to be executed which 
are also shell scripts, but which are sucked in by the shell "." or 
"source" command (which is *somewhat* analogous to python's import). Lots 
of these shell "library" scripts can't execute as standalone. The same 
thing is possible with pything scripts.

Of course, anything that has 
if __name__ == "__main__":
in it should always have a shebang and be executable.

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