Python script header

Question

The typical header should be

#!/usr/bin/env python

But I found below also works when executing the script like $python ./my_script.p

Answer 1

From the manpage for env (GNU coreutils 6.10):

env - run a program in a modified environment

In theory you could use env to reset the environment (removing many of the existing environment variables) or add additional environment variables in the script header. Practically speaking, the two versions you mentioned are identical. (Though others have mentioned a good point: specifying python through env lets you abstractly specify python without knowing its path.)