> Shbangs are not an issue under Windows: they are merely ignored! On Windows
> the executeble to be run is selected through registry and is linked to the
> file extension. So a .py is always "executable" (shbang or not). And of
> course you can't select a Python version for a given script: on a given
> system only one executable is triggered by a direct invocation of the script
> name from a command prompt or by double click.

If you're running python scripts from cygwin's bash under Windows, then
shbangs are definitely used.  I use "#!/usr/bin/env python" for all of
my .py files.  Actually I leave off the .py, since bash uses the shbang
it finds the python interpreter.  This won't work from cmd.exe, but I
never use that.

> Anyway shbangs are mangled the Unix way by distutils. Every shbang,
> including
>       #!/usr/bin/env python
> is "compiled" by distutils into something like:
>       #!C:\PROGRA~1\Python23\python.exe
>
> ....and then carefully ignored. The compiled form may be useful for CygWin,
> but i long got rid of it and i can't test for it anymore.

Not sure if cygwin would use the form with the backslashes.  I can't say
I've used a .py script that distutils has modified like this.

Eric.