[issue44603] REPL: exit when the user types exit instead of asking them to explicitly type exit()

[Paul Ganssle]

Paul Ganssle <p.ganssle at gmail.com> added the comment:

If we want to confine the behavior to just the repl, we could possibly have the repl set an environment variable or something of that nature for interactive sessions, so that `__repr__` of `exit` can tell the difference between being invoked in a REPL and not — though I suppose it could cause some pretty frustrating and confusing behavior if some library function is doing something like this behind the scenes:

```
def get_all_reprs():
    return {
      v: repr(obj) for v, obj in globals()
    ]
```

You could invoke some function and suddenly your shell quits for no apparent reason. And if it only happens when triggered in a REPL, you'd be doubly confused because you can't reproduce it with a script.

I do think the "type exit() to exit" is a papercut. The ideal way to fix it would be in the REPL layer by special-casing `exit`, but I realize that that may introduce unnecessary complexity that isn't worth it for this one thing.

> Second, if absolutely necessary we could ask the user to confirm that they want to exit.

A thought occurs: we could simply re-word the message to make it seem like we're asking for confirmation:

```
>>> exit
Do you really want to exit? Press Ctrl+Z to confirm, or type exit() to exit without confirmation.
```

Then it won't seem as much like we know what you meant to do but aren't doing it, despite the fact that the behavior is exactly the same 😅.

----------
nosy: +p-ganssle

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue44603>
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