How to properly terminate the program from a subroutine

What is the command I would use to do this? The first thing I tried calling ended up shutting down the OS. Since then I have tried a few other things the latest of which is shell.exit() which just seems to hang the program (not very helpful). I would like to return to a prompt without having to hold CTRL-T to stop the program.

I dont fully understand the situation… with 'subroutine' you mean a program right?
In that case you can try this:

return

Sorry if it doesnt answer your question

No I mean a local procedure… which may be called from another procedure which may be called from another procedure. For example

local function foo()
   bar()
end

local function bar()
   -- something happened and I need to terminate the program here... how do I do it?
end

foo()

The return statement is not going to work (only return from the top-most level will terminate the program).

grizzlebizzle, on 24 August 2012 - 09:43 PM said:

No I mean a local procedure… which may be called from another procedure which may be called from another procedure. For example

local function foo()
   bar()
end

local function bar()
   -- something happened and I need to terminate the program here... how do I do it?
end

foo()

The return statement is not going to work (only return from the top-most level will terminate the program).

Do you mean with 'something happened' that there went something wrong? Try this:

error("something went wrong")

This stops the program and shows the line-number and and the error-message in the shell

I think what he means is this, Ill use an example of how I need it.

For example a doorlock, its set as startup so if done right the right password opens the door then reset the program so its asking for the password again, now say I throw in an "Admin/Debug" password, how would you get it to close out of the program to be at the command prompt part again?

if input == password then
 print("Door Opened")
 rs.setOutput(side,true)
 sleep(2)
 rs.setOutput(side,false)
elseif input == debug then
 error("Command Prompt Accessed")

Where debug is the debugging password, because having to teminate my program to edit it is annoying, is there a way to do it like the error but without the prog name and line number?

You can use error() (yes, no params) it will terminate the program at this line and will print no line and program.

Cool thanks.