[Python-Dev] Builtin exit, good in interpreter, bad in code.

Mon Apr 24 03:55:53 CEST 2006

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 "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
 File "<stdin>", 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.
Thoughts?
Thanks,
Sean
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Sean Reifschneider, Member of Technical Staff <jafo at tummy.com>
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