Question

Is it a bad coding practice to call the exit() function in Python repeatedly?

I’m working on a command-line tool, so there are multiple function definitions… Basically:

def usage()
def error(arg1)
def find(arg1, arg2)

In the end of usage() I call exit(), which I assume it’s OK, but it’s also called in the success of find(), and in error() (which is called in the failure of find().

As you can see, exit() is being called many times in my code, and I wasn’t sure if this is actually a bad coding practice.

Answer 1

Not really bad practice IMO – just make sure you return an exit code reflecting the different exit points whenever that might be useful to the calling process…