os.system('exit') in python

Question

My friend is in a macOS environment and he wanted to call os.system('exit') at the end of his python script to make the terminal close. It doesn't. This doesn't surprise me but I would like to know what exactly is going on between the python script and the terminal when this call is made.

In my mental simulation the terminal should have to tell you that there are still running jobs, but that doesn't happen either.

As a side question : will some less common terminals close when a process calls this?

os._exit() might work if you don't care about normal exit processing. — chown
– chown, Commented Sep 9, 2011 at 23:44

Foo Bah · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-09 23:43:30Z

5

read the help:

Execute the command (a string) in a subshell.

A subshell is launched, and exit is run in that subshell.

To exit the enclosing terminal, you have to kill the parent. One way to do it is:

os.system("kill -9 %d"%(os.getppid())

answered Sep 9, 2011 at 23:43

Foo Bah

26.4k5 gold badges58 silver badges82 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

Oleg Vaskevich Over a year ago

Just add a parenthesis: os.system("kill -9 %d"%(os.getppid()))

user405725 · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-09 23:39:37Z

2

The system function starts another shell to execute a command. So in this case your Python scripts starts a shell and runs "exit" command in there, which makes that process exit. However, the Python script itself, including a terminal where it is running, continues to run. If the intent is to kill the terminal, you have to get the parent process ID and send a signal requesting it to stop. That will kill both Python script and a terminal.

answered Sep 9, 2011 at 23:39

user405725

Comments

Yann Ramin · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-09 23:38:12Z

1

Remember that system first spawns/forks a sub-shell to execute its commands. In effect, you are asking only the sub-shell to exit.

answered Sep 9, 2011 at 23:38

Yann Ramin

33.2k3 gold badges63 silver badges83 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

os.system('exit') in python

3 Answers 3

1 Comment

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

3 Answers 3

1 Comment

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related