Stopping the script execution

Stop the script execution: process.exit()

The process global module has the exit() method to stop the current execution and return to the shell, or in general to the environment where the script was launched. All the processes can return a status code to the shell. By convention, if the execution ends correctly a status code value equal to 0 is returned. In case of an error, the process can return a not 0 status code value. So if you want to stop the execution of the script and return a status code equal to 99 you can use process.exit(99) like the example:

console.log('Executing ...')
process.exit(99)
console.log('Never executed')

Executing this snippet, a 99 status code error will be returned to the shell. For example, once the script execution is terminated, you can test the shell environment variable $? that contains the status code of the last process executed. If you execute in a shell (bash or zsh or some other shell) the node script and then try to show the last status code via echo $?:

node examples/01-09_process-exit.mjs
echo $?

You will see the 99 value will be shown in the terminal (because the JS script returns with process.exit(99)).