exit

exit status

• Exits the current Perl process immediately with that value given by status. This could be the entire Perl script you are running, or only a child process created by fork. Here's a fragment that lets a user exit the program by typing x or X:
  
  

  $ans = <STDIN>; exit 0 if $ans =~ /^[Xx]/;
  

  
  
  If status is omitted, the function exits with 0. You shouldn't use exit to abort a subroutine if there's any chance that someone might want to trap whatever error happened. Use die instead, which can be trapped by an eval.