Re-opening this because I think the discussion is not done and I don't see any reason why this was rejected.

> Related 2005 python-dev discussion: https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/thread/VNGY2DLML4QJUXE73JLVBIH5WFBZNIKG/

@Mark Thanks for digging these up! From what I can tell, that discussion ended up with a combination of there not being quite enough enthusiasm for the idea to drive it forward and no one coming up with a good way to localize the effect to just the case where we know the person was trying to type "exit" in a REPL.

I think Pablo's patch shows that a very limited addition to the "REPL layer" is actually plausible, and we *could* implement this without taking on an enormous amount of additional complexity or affecting non-interactive use cases.

Fernando's point about it being dangerous to generalize this additional layer of "interactive-use only" keywords is a good one (see: https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/message/L37RD7SG26IOBETPI7TETKFGHPAPC75Q/), though it seems that it was this thread that prompted him to add exit/quit as auto-call magic keywords to IPython, and I think that has worked out in the intervening 16 years. I don't think there's much danger of us wanting to generalize this concept, since the only really compelling argument for doing it this way for exit/quit is that almost everyone seems to think it *should* work this way (despite it never having worked this way, and there not being any equivalents), and gets tripped up when it doesn't.

> and the related issue: https://bugs.python.org/issue1446372

Looks to me like that is an issue for adding the message when you type "exit". There's no additional discussion disqualifying the use of "exit" as an interactive-only keyword.