Tobiah wrote: > For years now, I've been exiting the shell by typing 'exit\n', > being chid by the shell, and then typing ^D. I can't > remember a time that I typed the ^D the first time. Call > me an idiot if you must, but since someone took the trouble > to catch the command 'exit' in a special way, would it have > been so awful to just let it be a way to exit when the shell? > > Thanks, > > Toby >
Yes, this would have required a ground-up approach to redesigning the python language, transmuting it to something like a cross between lisp and COBOL and would have rendered it impossible to author with C because of the way C implements pointers--hardcoding in assembly would likely be required. Beyond that, exiting an interpreter is not known in computer science and has been shown impossible by Goedel himself in a series of monographs on the topic. Thus, to exit python via a keyword would require also reformulating mathematics as we know it. Furthermore, such a change would propagate itself, via the observer effect, to the behavior of sub atomic particles via ill-defined quantum-mechanical affects and would likely result in the reversal of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, wherein your refrigerator would end up heating its contents and milk would spontaneously spoil, among other anomalies. For these reasons, you might propose a "quit" keyword. James -- James Stroud UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics Box 951570 Los Angeles, CA 90095 http://www.jamesstroud.com/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
