Prining a pound sign from Python AND running from the command line at the same time

In order to make a python program executable on a Linix or Unix (e.g. OSX) system, you should:
  a) change the file permissions using chmod (e.g. chmod +x poundland )
  b) Add as the very first line of the file #!/usr/bin/env python so the operating system knows it's a python program
  c) Optionally add the current folder to the path ( export PATH=$PATH:. ) if you don't want to have to run with "./"

In order to display a pound sign from your Python program, common advise is to add
  # -*- coding: utf-8 -*- as the first line of your script.

Problem is .. you can't have both the #! line and the -*- coding lines as the first in your file.

Solution - reading the manually very carefully, I learned that the -*- coding line can be the first or second line in the file .. thus it works if my code starts:

  #!/usr/bin/env python

  # -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

Practical tests confirm that this works, but that even a blank line between the two causes it to fail.

Full source code example at [here]

(written 2016-03-03, updated 2016-03-04)

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