How do I abort the execution of a Python script?

You could put the body of your script into a function and then you could return from that function.

def main():
  done = True
  if done:
    return
    # quit/stop/exit
  else:
    # do other stuff

if __name__ == "__main__":
  #Run as main program
  main()

import sys
sys.exit()

To exit a script you can use,

import sys
sys.exit()

You can also provide an exit status value, usually an integer.

import sys
sys.exit(0)

Exits with zero, which is generally interpreted as success. Non-zero codes are usually treated as errors. The default is to exit with zero.

import sys
sys.exit("aa! errors!")

Prints "aa! errors!" and exits with a status code of 1.

There is also an _exit() function in the os module. The sys.exit() function raises a SystemExit exception to exit the program, so try statements and cleanup code can execute. The os._exit() version doesn't do this. It just ends the program without doing any cleanup or flushing output buffers, so it shouldn't normally be used.

The Python docs indicate that os._exit() is the normal way to end a child process created with a call to os.fork(), so it does have a use in certain circumstances.

You can either use:

import sys
sys.exit(...)

or:

raise SystemExit(...)

The optional parameter can be an exit code or an error message. Both methods are identical. I used to prefer sys.exit, but I've lately switched to raising SystemExit, because it seems to stand out better among the rest of the code (due to the raise keyword).