[Python-Dev] Builtin exit, good in interpreter, bad in code. (original) (raw)

Crutcher Dunnavant crutcher at gmail.com
Mon Apr 24 04:12:31 CEST 2006

On 4/23/06, Sean Reifschneider <jafo-python-dev at tummy.com> wrote:

A friend of mine is learning Python, and had a problem with the exit builtin. I like that in the interpreter it gives useful information, but he was writing a program in a file and tried "exit(0)", and was presented with the non-obvious error:

TypeError: 'str' object is not callable What about something like: >>> class ExitClass: ... def repr(self): ... return('Hey, press control-D') ... def call(self, value): ... raise SyntaxError, 'You want to use sys.exit' ... >>> exit = ExitClass() >>> exit Hey, press control-D >>> exit(1) Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 1, in ? File "", line 5, in call SyntaxError: You want to use sys.exit Jerub on #python thinks that maybe it needs to subclass the string object instead, but in general it seems like it might be an improvement.

Why don't we just not define 'exit' in non-interactive environments?

-- Crutcher Dunnavant <crutcher at gmail.com> littlelanguages.com monket.samedi-studios.com

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