exit, exit(), exit(0), die(), die(0) - How to exit script

Question

I believe that all of these (and even die() or die(0)) are identical. If they are not identical, which is preferred for exiting a script successfu

Answer 1

As several people have mentioned, die() and exit() are exactly the same.

If you look at the PHP documentation, there are two options for arguments:

• An numeric value. This is only useful if you are using PHP from the command line, as opposed to a web server. A value of zero indicates success. Nonzero indicates a failure condition occurred.

• A string value. This will be displayed to the browser when the exit occurs.

Instead of die() or exit(), I recommend using exceptions and a custom top-level exception handler to manage failure conditions.

You have more flexibility that way to do things like automatic error logging. Also, if you're using PHP to implement a JSON API, this exception handler can hand back a valid, error-indicating JSON snippet instead.