`exit` man page

Question

MacOS 14, M3 Pro, default zsh shell

I am trying to find the man page for exit corresponding to this entry on SS64. Using man -a exit loads builtin(1) twice, exit(3) once, and Tcl built-in command exit(n) twice.

Can I access the entry on SS64 linked above locally through Terminal? whatis exit is hard to parse, but I couldn't find anything relevant there.

Answer 1

exit is usually provided by your shell, it is not a separate binary.

You will note that there is no exit binary in either of /bin or /usr/bin, and that the man page for exit pulls up builtin(1), which refers you to the man page for your shell.

For example, I use ksh, this is from the ksh man page:

exit [ n ]
              Causes the shell to exit with the exit status specified by n.  The value will be the least significant 8
              bits of n (if specified) or of the exit status of the last command executed.  An end-of-file will also
              cause the shell to exit, except for an interactive shell that has the ignoreeof option turned on (see
              set below).

The exit builtin in ksh also has its own man page (most builtins in ksh have integrated man pages):

NAME
  exit - exit the current shell

SYNOPSIS
  exit [ options ] [n]

DESCRIPTION
  exit is a shell special built-in that causes the shell that invokes it to exit. Before exiting the shell, if the EXIT
  trap is set it will be invoked.

  If n is given, it will be used to set the exit status.

EXIT STATUS
  The exit status is the least significant eight bits of the value of n (if specified) or of the exit status of the
  preceding command. If exit is invoked inside a trap, the preceding command means the command that invoked the trap.

SEE ALSO
  break(1), return(1)

IMPLEMENTATION
  version         exit (ksh 93u+m) 2021-12-08

You can display the integrated man pages forksh builtins with the --man argument.

Answer 2

For my particular case (using zsh), the documentation I was looking for was found using

man zshbuiltins

exit is detailed there. That snippet found on another post.

Answer 3

The man page on SS64 was written by the site admin, so will not be found on your system. My evidence for this is the page contains a link to a Q&A on Unix & Linux Stack Exchange including the user ID of https://unix.stackexchange.com/users/318114/ss64.

Answer 4

The man page reference on SS64 would not be for any version of bash released with macOS. The versions of bash released with macOS have never reached version 4. The variable BASHPID referenced in the exit entry on SS64 is only defined for version 4 and higher of bash.

From an unmodified installation of macOS, you can get information about the bash builtin exit from the following. The version is GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin19).

• Using the bash builtin help command. An example is given below.

  % bash -c 'help exit'
  exit: exit [n]
      Exit the shell with a status of N.  If N is omitted, the exit status
      is that of the last command executed.
  

• The man page for bash. Here you will have to page down until you reach exit. Below is an excerpt from man bash.

         exit [n]
                Cause the shell to exit with a status of n.  If  n  is  omitted,
                the exit status is that of the last command executed.  A trap on
                EXIT is executed before the shell terminates.
  

• Use info bash and navigate to the exit builtin. Below is an excerpt.

  Note: The info command was removed starting with macOS Ventura. See this answer for more information.

  `exit'
            exit [N]
       Exit the shell, returning a status of N to the shell's parent.  If
       N is omitted, the exit status is that of the last command executed.
       Any trap on `EXIT' is executed before the shell terminates.