Octave scripts in Mac OSX

[Daryl Lee]

I'm plowing my way through the newly released "GNU Octave for Beginners" 
book, and I have run into a question that I think this group should be able 
to answer.  I got to Chapter 4 and the section telling "GNU/Linux and MacOS 
X users" how to add the shebang line to their script so it can be executed 
from the bash shell.

In Mac OSX, from the shell I type ($ is shell prompt)

$ /Applications/Octave.app/Contents/Resources/bin/octave

and get an Octave environment, as expected.  But when I write a script with 
this as the first line:

#! /Applications/Octave.app/Contents/Resources/bin/octave -qf

set the permissions, and execute the script, I get a bash syntax error on 
the first line of Octave script following the shebang line.  I've tried it 
with and without the -qf.  It works as advertised on Linux, so I'm sure it's 
a Mac OSX issue.

What would be an effective way to launch Octave scripts from the Mac OS X 
terminal command line?

--
Daryl Lee