You can exit PowerShell by typing exit. So far so good. But what exactly is this?
PS Home:\> gcm exit
Get-Command : The term 'exit' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Ch
eck the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.
At line:1 char:4
+ gcm <<<< exit
+ CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (exit:String) [Get-Command], CommandNotFoundException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GetCommandCommand
So it's neither a cmdlet, function, script or program. It leaves the question what exactly it is.
This unfortunately also means that one can't create aliases to exit:
PS Home:\> New-Alias ^D exit
PS Home:\> ^D
Cannot resolve alias '?' because it refers to term 'exit', which is not recognized as a cmdlet, function, operable prog
ram, or script file. Verify the term and try again.
At line:1 char:2
+ ? <<<<
+ CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (?:String) [], CommandNotFoundException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : AliasNotResolvedException
Are there any more such commands which are no commands?
ETA: Just for reference: I know I can simply wrap it into a function. My profile has the lines
# exit with Ctrl+D
iex "function $([char]4) { exit }"
in them. My question was just to know what exactly this command is.
This question is related to
powershell
It's a reserved keyword (like return, filter, function, break).
Also, as per Section 7.6.4 of Bruce Payette's Powershell in Action:
But what happens when you want a script to exit from within a function defined in that script? ... To make this easier, Powershell has the exit keyword.
Of course, as other have pointed out, it's not hard to do what you want by wrapping exit in a function:
PS C:\> function ex{exit}
PS C:\> new-alias ^D ex
Source: Stackoverflow.com