Typing exit() exits from Python command line. Typing exit says:
Use exit() or Ctrl-Z plus Return to exit
When you type exit, you want to exit. Why does the interpreter give me the above error when it knows I am trying to exit? Why doesn't it just exit?
This works for me, best way to come out of python prompt.
exit()
exit() works, and they want to know why exit without parens does not work. So this answer just repeats part of the question and doesn't actually answer it.
In my python interpreter exit is actually a string and not a function -- 'Use Ctrl-D (i.e. EOF) to exit.'. You can check on your interpreter by entering type(exit)
In active python what is happening is that exit is a function. If you do not call the function it will print out the string representation of the object. This is the default behaviour for any object returned. It's just that the designers thought people might try to type exit to exit the interpreter, so they made the string representation of the exit function a helpful message. You can check this behaviour by typing str(exit) or even print exit.
exit is neither a function nor a string, regardless of how you run Python. It is the same thing either way: an instance of a custom class which implements __call__ and __repr__. (Although you can avoid bringing it into existence at all with the -S flag.)When you type exit in the command line, it finds the variable with that name and calls __repr__ (or __str__) on it. Usually, you'd get a result like:
<function exit at 0x00B97FB0>
But they decided to redefine that function for the exit object to display a helpful message instead. Whether or not that's a stupid behavior or not, is a subjective question, but one possible reason why it doesn't "just exit" is:
Suppose you're looking at some code in a debugger, for instance, and one of the objects references the exit function. When the debugger tries to call __repr__ on that object to display that function to you, the program suddenly stops! That would be really unexpected, and the measures to counter that might complicate things further (for instance, even if you limit that behavior to the command line, what if you try to print some object that have exit as an attribute?)
import sys, after which you would call sys.exit() to exit the interpreter.With Anaconda 4.5+ and Python 3.6+ on Windows use
Ctrl+Z
or
exit()
In some cases, you might have to use
Ctrl+Break
If your computer doesn't have Break key then see here.
I recommend you exit the Python interpreter with Ctrl-D. This is the old ASCII code for end-of-file or end-of-transmission.
Ctrl-Break works consistently in Windows. Ctrl-D or Ctrl-Z worked in Windows for Python 2.7, 3.4, 3.6. But in Python 3.7 these stopped working, and the shortest ASCII sequence that exits is Ctrl-Z Enter.
This message is the __str__ attribute of exit
look at these examples :
1
>>> print exit
Use exit() or Ctrl-D (i.e. EOF) to exit
2
>>> exit.__str__()
'Use exit() or Ctrl-D (i.e. EOF) to exit'
3
>>> getattr(exit, '__str__')()
'Use exit() or Ctrl-D (i.e. EOF) to exit'
Because the interpreter is not a shell where you provide commands, it's - well - an interpreter. The things that you give to it are Python code.
The syntax of Python is such that exit, by itself, cannot possibly be anything other than a name for an object. Simply referring to an object can't actually do anything (except what the read-eval-print loop normally does; i.e. display a string representation of the object).
__repr__ of the class that exit instantiates. However, this would cause surprising and inconsistent behaviour, especially when comparing what happens in a script vs. in the interpreter.You can fix that.
Link PYTHONSTARTUP to a python file with the following
# Make exit work as expected
type(exit).__repr__ = type(exit).__call__
How does this work?
The python command line is a read-evaluate-print-loop, that is when you type text it will read that text, evaluate it, and eventually print the result.
When you type exit() it evaluates to a callable object of type site.Quitter and calls its __call__ function which exits the system. When you type exit it evaluates to the same callable object, without calling it the object is printed which in turn calls __repr__ on the object.
We can take advantage of this by linking __repr__ to __call__ and thus get the expected behavior of exiting the system even when we type exit without parentheses.
exit print the "helpful" string, but they couldn't just bind it to do the natural thing and exit the interpreter. Being forced to type the parentheses every time is frustrating. This answer is perfect and should be the accepted one instead.
To exit from Python terminal, simply just do:
exit()
Please pay attention it's a function which called as most user mix it with exit without calling, but new Pyhton terminal show a message...
or as a shortcut, press:
Ctrl + D
on your keyboard...
Very old post, but maybe useful to update it, for python 3.12 console command:
import sys
sys.exit()
Alternative, still working:
CTRL+Z and Enter
Starting from Python 3.13(will be released on October 7, 2024), with the new interactive shell, You can exit the shell by typing exit or quit. Adding call parentheses after those commands is not required.
If you stuck in python command line and none of above solutions worked for you,
try exit(2)
"exit" is a valid variable name that can be used in your Python program. You wouldn't want to exit the interpreter when you're just trying to see the value of that variable.
exit, you override this symbol, and exit() will no longer work. Although this symbol is a valid variable name, using it in such a way doesn't seem to be a very good practice.
This UX in python:
$ python
Python 3.10.5 (tags/v3.10.5:f377153, Jun 6 2022, 16:14:13) [MSC v.1929 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32
>>> ^D
File "<stdin>", line 1
♦
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>> exit
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'exit' is not defined
>>> quit
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'quit' is not defined
>>> exit()
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'exit' is not defined
>>> quit()
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'quit' is not defined
()at the end... otherwise, it might (possibly) be a variable... or some sort of object...exitdoesn't work with all python versions (Ctrl-Zon windows,Ctrl-Don Linux andexit()work with all python versions