Answer: the example seems to be incomplete. The following changes make things work: from twisted.internet import reactor, threads def doLongCalculation(y): #time.sleep(3) print "returning from doLongCalc" return 3 def printResult(x): print "deferred returned "+str(x) reactor.stop() d = threads.deferToThread(doLongCalculation, 4) d.addCallback(printResult) print "just waiting for deferred..." reactor.run() It isn't clear from the docs that deferToThread relies on reactor.run() -- the howto states "The utility methods are not part of the twisted.internet.reactor APIs, but are implemented in twisted.internet.threads". But now, it seems perfectly clear to me now that, "of course you need the reactor." Maybe the examples in the howto should be updated to make this more clear? It wasn't until I found a snippet of code at http://pig.slug.org.au/talks/Twisted2/slides.html that I was able to sort this out. -- Lenny G --- Lenny G Arbage <alengarbage@yahoo.com> wrote:

Can someone explain why the following example (lifted straight out of

http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/current/howto/threading)

doesn't work?

from twisted.internet import threads

def doLongCalculation(): #time.sleep(3) return 3

def printResult(x): print "deferred returned "+str(x)

d = threads.deferToThread(doLongCalculation) d.addCallback(printResult) print "just waiting for deferred..."

Running the above, with or without time.sleep(), results in a hanging process. When run "just waiting for deferred..." prints but the callback is never invoked and the process hangs.

I'm using twisted 1.3, python 2.3.4 under Linux (FC3).

Lenny G

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