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exit-in-golang

Article Outline

<a href="https://golang.org/">Go</a> is a popular programming language, that at first glance seems a bit like C/Java. The famous hello world program looks like this:

package main
import "fmt"

func main() {
    fmt.Println("Hello, World")
}

You may wonder, where is return or exit? How does exit work in Golang?

Exit program

If you want to quit your golang program, you can use os.Exit. This is part of the os module.

From the <a href="https://golang.org/pkg/os/#Exit">golang docs</a>:

*"Exit causes the current program to exit with the given status code. Conventionally, code zero indicates success, non-zero an error. The program terminates immediately; deferred functions are not run."*

Example

os.Exit exits the program immediately with a given status.

package main
import (
 "os"
)

func main() {
  os.Exit(4)
}

Shown below the output:

> go run test.go
exit status 4

The status is shown in the terminal like this. os.Exit() can be used to exit the program normally without an error like this:

package main
import (  
 "os"
)

func main() {
  os.Exit(0)
}

This returns to the terminal without showing anything.

Related links:

  • <a href="https://golang.org/">Go Programming Language</a>
  • <a href="https://golangr.com/">Golang tutorial</a>