The End

"This is the end.... my only friend" -- JimMorrison (The Doors)

This is the last page on Wiki. That's it. It's the end of the line. Now turn around and go back where you came from. You can, however, go to the end of the internet at http://home.att.net/~cecw/lastpage.htm But that's it. There is nothing more. See also http://www.explodingdog.com/january2/theendoftheinternet.html There's an Earthlink (or somesuch) DSL commercial running about the end of the internet. It would be great to get a DIVX/MPEG of that.

This page is actually a complaint about moded interfaces and the proliferation of escapes that they encourage. Read on for that rant.

"Tha tha that's all folks." -- Porky Pig

An early stumbling block for me in programming was learning the difference between "stop" and "end". In the FortranLanguage, for example, the former halted the execution of the program while the latter halted the compilation. In the '70s, I supported the campaign against modes. This was as much about having a uniform and OutOfBand mechanism to escape one context for another as anything. The campaign failed. This came home to me this morning when I wrote the statement ...

  print "<a href=/cgi/wiki?$&>$&</a><br>\n";

Never mind the cryptic variable name ($&), this statement sucks because it requires eight terminators (almost) in a row. These are ...

/a -- ends the anchor
> -- ends the /a tag

There's an < here, which opens the <BR> tag

br -- ends the line when formatted
> -- ends the br tag
\n -- ends the line when transmitted
" -- ends the line when compiled
; -- ends the statement when compiled
enter -- ends the statement when entered

It sucks because I must remember that I am nested that deep in context and must pop my way out of it before I get on to the next thing I want the computer to do. This gets me wondering, just how many ways are there in use today to say the end?

Windowing GUI's:

[x] or Command+W or Alt+F4 -- closes a window
File -> Quit
Command-Q -- quits (exits) a MacOs program
BlueScreenOfDeath -- end of current MS Windows session. Reboot to continue. ;->

Terminals/shells:

<enter> -- Send command
exit -- exits
logout -- exits shell if it is a "login shell"
ctrl-d -- Unix terminal "End of File" (same as "exit" on many shells. It is popular to trap this for login shells)
ctrl-c -- Unix terminal send SIGINT (means different things for different programs)
ctrl-\ -- Unix terminal send SIGQUIT (core dumps, exits)
ctrl-z -- DOS "End of File", Unix terminal "send current process to background"

Unix tools:

-oo- -- write (conventional abbreviation for "over and out")
q -- man, more, less

Protocols:

0x0a (newline) -- end a line (some protocols, most Unix (and Mac OSX) text files)
0x0d 0x0a (carriage return, newline) -- end a line (other protocols, most MS-DOS and Windows text files)
0x0d (carriage return) -- end a line (other protocols, and most pre-OSX Macintosh text files)
bye -- ends an ftp session
. -- ends a mail message in SMTP
newline, newline -- end SMTP header; end HTTP header

Programming Language Texts:

; -- end a statement
} -- ends a block in C-like languages
] -- closes an array lookup in many languages
) -- ends an expression in most computer languages, a parenthetical remark in many natural languages, and just about everything in Lisp and Scheme
" -- end a string (in the source code)
' -- end a (non-interpolated) string (in Perl)
/ -- end a quote-like operator (in Perl)
0x00 (null) -- end a null-terminated "C string" (in the binary executable and while running)
whitespace -- end a token (but not in Fortran :-)
newline -- in addition to being whitespace than ends tokens, ends statements in some languages
*/ -- ends a comment in C or C++
fi, endif, end, done, endwhile, wend, (etc, etc, etc) -- ways of terminating control structures in sundry languages that use keywords in preference to punctuation
outdent -- ends a basic block in indentation-based languages like Python and Occam
#endif -- ends a conditional section in the C preprocessor
PLEASE GIVE UP -- stops a InterCal program
~Type() -- C++ destructor
delete -- C++ keyword to essentially call destructor, then free()
return inside main() -- ends a C/C++ program
</tag> -- close open SGML "<tag>"
> -- end SGML tag
<br> -- HTML end-of-line
/> -- close empty ExtensibleMarkupLanguage elements
__END__ -- tells Perl that this is the end of the source code in this file
. -- ends a program text (Pascal)
GoTo <highnumber> -- in numbered BASIC, ends the program if the number is past the highest line number of the program (some implementations had END)
?> -- end PhpLanguage parsed block. Optional for the last block.

Programming Language Libraries:

exit() -- C, exit program
abort() -- C, abort program (usually core dumps or similar)
free() -- C, signifies end of use of a malloc()'d buffer.
fclose() -- C, closes a FILE*
close() -- POSIX, closes a file
shutdown() -- POSIX, shut down a socket
die -- Perl, abort program

Text Editors:

vi
- :q -- quit
- :q! -- really quit (even if you haven't saved the buffer)
- :wq -- write and quit
- :x -- Same as :wq, but only write if changes have been made.
- ZZ -- Same as :wq (Mark Horton added this single feature to vi, and thought that entitled him to list himself as the primary author of vi above Bill Joy, and to delete the names of the half dozen contributors Joy had previously listed. I sure hope somebody out there likes it.)
- ZQ -- Same as :q!
emacs
- ctrl-x, ctrl-c -- quit
- Meta-x save-buffers-kill-emacs -- Same as ctrl-x, ctrl-c
- ctrl-g -- interrupt (for example to cancel a prompt)
- <esc> <esc> <esc> -- return to toplevel
- Ctrl-Meta-c -- exit a recursive editing level
- C-c C-c -- finish work in various contexts
- C-x # -- save and kill a buffer, send emacsclient a notification it's done
pico
- ctrl-x [, y|n] -- quit, saving or not saving buffer if changed

English:

"good bye" -- ends a telephone conversation
"$*&@! you" -- ends a normal conversation
"Shut up. Go away. I never want to see you again." -- ends a relationship. Sometimes.
Click! (hang-up) -- ends a telephone circuit [or a telephone conversation in an unfriendly manner]
"Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello?" -- what people in movies say when someone hangs up on them, unlike the rest of us who know that the dialtone means it's time to stop talking.
"YouAreTheWeakestLink?. Goodbye!" -- ends participation on a game show.
"I am not a crook." -- ends the dignity of the Presidency. (Also "That depends on what your definition of 'is' is.")
"You're Fired!" -- ends your stint on the American television show The Apprentice
"It's just not working out" -- those or some other WeaselWords from HR end your job in the real world.

Other languages:

German: das Ende
French: la fin
The Italian word for "end" is "fine". This means we Italians are not so frightened by the idea of an "ending"... and we should find it very elegant. Yes, because "fine" in Italian means also "fine", with the same meaning as in English. -- Yako

Events:

The checkered flag - ends the race (Technically, the car crossing the finish line ends the race; the flag is just an indicator. ;)

            The red flag ends the race

The buzzer - ends the basketball game
The fat lady sings and everyone dies - ends the opera
"pull the cord" -- stops the conveyor lines at some manufacturing facilities
"pull the cord" -- puts on the air brakes of the locomotive
smoke detector screeches -- time to pull the pizza out of the oven :-)

Radio:

"over" - ends current transmission, ready to listen
"out" - ending current conversation, turning off radio or otherwise going away
"clear" - end of transmission with no further traffic pending, relinquising channel but standing by
"over and out" - invalid

Movies:

"The End" -- ends an old movie
"The End?" -- ends a bad movie that threatens a sequel
"finis" -- ends an old, pretentious movie
credits -- ends a modern movie or television show.
"This is not the end. This is not the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." (At the end of the movie Millennium; original quote was by Winston Churchill)

Journalism:

-30- (end of story) http://www.saila.com/journalism/thirty.shtml
-00- (end of story)

Alt+F4 -- Ends the life of a Window or application in MS Windows, which results in a WM_CLOSE (I think) message to the Window's message loop, which eventually causes a 0 result to return from GetMessage(), which tells the message loop to terminate.

-- CraigPutnam

There's a WM_QUIT message in there somewhere as well. There are also Windows messages that indicate machine shutdown, session termination, and other such events.

As an electrical engineer, I am surprised no-one mentioned the "power switch". Isn't that the normal way to end a DOS session? Also the normal way to stop most other electronic devices. -- DavidCary.... and you can always try to "Pull the Plug" even ? what about pulling that damned phone line ...

Being able to juggle these multiple levels of context is IMHO a fundamental programming skill. One I make sure to spend time with my students on (it comes up when preparing dynamic SQL in VB or C++).

The real problem with the above is the number of levels. Encapsulating the tag-creation nastiness might make things easier. (Pardon any mistakes, but perl is not my lingua mater):

  $lnk = $&;
  print html_a_tag("/cgi/wiki?$lnk") . $lnk . html_a_tag_end() . "<b" . "r>" . $newline;

-- DavidBrantley

A possibly better way is to encapsulate the script-linking code. (I'm sure Ward would have done this if he was writing in Smalltalk rather than Perl.) For instance, in my wiki clone all links to the script are done through through a subroutine:

 sub ScriptLink {
my ($action, $text) = @_;# Gets the subroutine parameters
return "<a href=\"$ScriptName?$action\">$text</a>";
 }

...which is called in any place that needs a link back to the script. Since links to pages are common (used in 7 places so far), I wrapped them in a GetPageLink subroutine (which calls ScriptLink). My version of the above print statement would read:

 print GetPageLink($&) . "<br>\n";

-- CliffordAdams

Those of us who use Forth should also remember that

bye

will end your Forth session. This also will work in OpenFirmware (which is Forth in and of itself, I guess).

When I was at university, I encountered a package for doing statistical manipulation or something, called MINITAB. If you typed "quit" to its command prompt, it displayed the message Type "exit" to leave MINITAB, which has always struck me as a particularly impressive bit of sadism.

 web: {1} % python
 Python 1.5.2 (#11, Nov 17 1999, 22:58:09)  [GCC egcs-2.91.66 19990314 (egcs-1.1.2  on bsdos4)]
 Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
 >>> quit
 'Use Ctrl-D (i.e. EOF) to exit.'
 >>>

Note that "quit" is just a string in the default interpreter namespace. Having "quit" actually leave the application would require "quit" to become a somewhat special syntactic form. In Windows, you're told to type Ctrl-Z then press enter.

Not necessarily:

  class Quitter:
def __repr__(self):
import sys
sys.exit(0)
  quit = Quitter()

Of course, besides being JustWrong? because of side effects in __repr__, this violates UserExpectations? that typing an identifier will not perform an action. (Feel free to delete this if this Python tangent is inappropriate for this page.) -- KevinReid

... but would it have been so wrong to make

 >>> quit()

quit the python interpreter? Like so:

  class Quitter:
def __repr__(self): return "Use quit() to exit."
def __call__(self): raise SystemExit?
  quit = Quitter()

Also note that Matlab does the opposite: it lets you exit with "exit" or "quit" but not with CTRL-D, not even on Unix.

For people using nslookup from their shell accounts at Primenet, "quit.primenet.com" used to point to the alias "Use.exit.to.quit.moron.primenet.com", or something similar.

Using MIT Scheme interactively you cannot exit with the exit command because that is not a valid s-expression. You have to use (exit) instead. Then after a confirmation that you really wanted to exit, it closes with Happy Happy Joy Joy.

-- BenTilly

TheEnd is a classic Doors song ...

This is the endbeau - ti - ful friend This is the endmy on - lyfriend, the end ofour e-lab-orate plans, the end of ev-erything that stands, the end.

More at http://www.spfc.org/data/music/gtab/end-44.tab

... and a classic Beatles song from the Abbey Road album ...

Oh yeah, all right Are you going to be in my dreams Tonight? ...instrumental...

And in the end The love you take Is equal to the love you make.

Interestingly, The End was the last song listed on the LP cover of Abbey Road (their last record they recorded), but not the last song on the album. Paul's little ditty Her Majesty is the last song on the record. Later releases sadly had Her Majesty on the cover.

The first episode of RedDwarf

Sometimes you need to reach an end before something else can begin...

You guys do realize, of course, that since there are WikiNames on this page, it isn't really "the end"... ;-) (I think sumbudy 1 time removed all the WikiNames now it is back in. Maybe is the joke)

Pardon?

The end would be a page with no wikinames on it - a cul-de-reference.

The end starts in another part of the universe; supernovas, blackholes, etc., destroy it only to create another fresh universe.

And this, after the automatically-appended footer, is the end of this page.

...if there wouldn't have been a dork, who put his line under the last line before the footer.

;-)

THE END?

AMEN AMEN

Sing me to sleep, sing me to sleep, I'm tired and I ... I want to go to bed.

Like those old games where at the end it played crappy credits and elevator music and wouldn't let you do anything but trun off/reboot your computer. that was REALLY the end of the game... and sometimes they even told you to go to bed. :)

The end? You are kidding! It's only the beginning! Every day there is more to see, more to discover, more to learn, more to talk about and more to laugh about. Wiki just never gets old. -- A good friend of Wiki

Ok. It's THE END now. . . . I mean NOW. . ok. I really mean it this time. . . It's THE END NOW

"We Apologise For The Inconvenience"

-- God's final message to His Creation (Douglas Adams, So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish)

The end of the internet? See http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060213/chester.

. (final point)

[nothing here]

(Throw the TV out the window)