[Python-ideas] exit as a statement

[Calvin Spealman]

This has been discussed to death several times before. I remember the  
rationale against doing something different to have various reasons.  
No one likes adding statements, for one thing (we have a tendency to  
move things out of keyword-space, not into it). Another solution was  
to define an ExitType with __str__ defined to raise SystemExit, but  
then what happens if you just do something to dump a bunch of  
objects? In other words: a side effect exiting is dangerous.

As far as an actual statement, I'd definitely be -1 with a single  
exception. Would it be possible to define exit as an interpreter  
command, so long as the name 'exit' is not bound to anything but the  
exit str? In other words, it would only actually exit when you are in  
the interpreter, not when executing scripts or modules.

On Feb 20, 2008, at 10:22 AM, BJörn Lindqvist wrote:

> An idea I have thought about for a while and it makes sense to me...
>
> $ python
> Python 2.4.2 (#1, Oct 13 2006, 17:17:08)
> [GCC 4.1.0 (SUSE Linux)] on linux2
> Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>> exit
> 'Use Ctrl-D (i.e. EOF) to exit.'
>
> Argh! Do what I mean, stupid Python! And it is Ctrl+Z on Windows, not
> Ctrl-D. So exit could be a statement that does the same thing that
> sys.exit() does currently. Bare "exit" to terminate with return code
> 0, and "exit X" to terminate with return code X.
>
>
> -- 
> mvh Björn
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