How to exit program using the enter key

Question

Michael Dawson says in his book Python Programming (Third Edition, page 14) that if I enter input("\n\nPress the enter key to exit.") when the user presses the Enter key the program will end.

I have tried this several times and it doesn't happen. I have tried using Python 3.1 and 3.3. Help would be appreciated.

Welcome to Stackoverflow. Please show us the code of what you have tried. — user1251007, Feb 14 '14 at 09:58
The program ends when there are no more instructions left to execute, the `input()` only serves as a way of delaying that until the user allows it. This makes sense for example if you start a Python program via double-click under Windows - the Python window would disappear as soon as the program ends, making it impossible to read its output, for example. — Tim Pietzcker, Feb 14 '14 at 10:09

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 19 '22 at 12:59

This is a fairly straightforward concept, do take a look at this example

x = input("Hit Enter to Exit, or Input any other key to continue ")

if not x :
    print("Exiting the Program.")
    exit()

else:
    a = int(input("\nEnter a Number : "))
    b = int(input("Enter another Number : "))
    print("Sum of the two numbers : ", a+b)

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 13 '14 at 16:32

1

The input() function merely waits for you to enter a line of text (optional) till you press Enter. The sys.exit("some error message") is the correct way to terminate a program. This could be after the line with the input() function.

answered Feb 13 '14 at 16:32

arocks

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score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Oct 05 '17 at 20:17

1

I have found that with python3 the following will work for a simple press any key to exit:

\#!/usr/bin/env python3

x = input("Press Any key to exit")

edited Oct 05 '17 at 20:17

Michael

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answered Oct 05 '17 at 19:10

XOP

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c-shubh · Answer 4 · 2021-12-28T17:18:52.100

1

You can use the built-in msvcrt module.

from msvcrt import getch

print("Press any key to exit...")
junk = getch() # Assign to a variable just to suppress output. Blocks until key press.

Note: This only works on Windows. For cross platform usage see https://stackoverflow.com/a/510364/13460650

edited Dec 28 '21 at 17:18

answered May 19 '20 at 18:20

c-shubh

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 13 '14 at 16:33

This is programming not magic, you have to capture the enter keystroke somewhere to exit the application. What i mean is input() wait for the user input some data(text) and you get that data from keyboard where the enter key is pressed.

If you do this for example:

def main():
    input("Press enter and exit")

then when you press enter you will exit because under the input() function there is nothing else to execute. Hope you understand.

How to exit program using the enter key

5 Answers5