How is the exit command properly executed in Ruby?

Question

I have been trying to create a Ruby gem that simply exits my terminal whenever "x" is entered. Here is my main project file:

module SwissKnife
  VERSION = '0.0.1'

  class ConsoleUtility
    def exit
      `exit`
    end
  end
end

and my executable:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'swissknife'

util = SwissKnife::ConsoleUtility.new
util.exit

For some reason whenever I run this nothing appears to happen. I debugged it by adding in a simple puts 'Hello World!' in there, and it would print "Hello World!" but not exit. What am I doing wrong? Any help is greatly appreciated!

Max · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-19 17:48:17Z

1

Backticks execute code in a new shell
exit isn't an executable that your shell runs, it's a special command understood by your shell - telling it to exit

So when you do

`exit`

it starts a shell which immediately exits. Not very useful. To exit the shell, you can instead kill Ruby's parent process.

Process.kill 'HUP', Process.ppid

edited Nov 19, 2014 at 17:48

answered Nov 19, 2014 at 17:42

Max

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1 Comment

Max Over a year ago

I don't think there is a way to send commands to the shell running Ruby, but you can kill the shell process. See my edit.

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