Many times I have experienced to start some kind of product or software and after a while I wanted to leave it again, but then I found out that leaving was a bit harder than expected. In such case it can come in handy to know some of the commands that seems to work for other products. One thing you can be sure of is, that no standardization board has yet acheived to come up with a standard termination command that works for all known programs, products or software.

If you want to terminate something you can start with the most simple commands, those using only one letter. Most common are X (for eXit), L (for Logoff) and Q (for Quit). A special case is Z which must be used to terminate RMFMON, an ancient but still functioning IBM supplied basic mainframe monitor. If none of these one letter commands seems to work, you can try the most common termination commands like EXIT or QUIT. If you still haven't terminated anything try the more exotic commands like BYE (known from SAS), CANCEL (ISPF), RETURN (ISPF), END (most TSO command processors (like DSN)), LOGOFF (TSO), STOP, LEAVE or GOBACK.

If you still haven't got anywhere near a termination, I will like to hear about it. If the screen is totally blank you might be logged on to a CICS system. Then CESF LOGOFF or CESF GOODBYE will help. A blank screen could also be an IMS system. Then you need to use /RCL. I haven't seen STOP, LEAVE or GOBACK used as termination commands, but as they are used in several programming languages there might be someone who has used them as well.

Finally I will like to thank Gerd Lundqvist for reminding me about /RCL in IMS.