threading question

[gja]

Charles G Waldman wrote:

> When I run the trivial example attached below, which simply
> starts a daemon thread that does nothing, and then type "ps",
> I see *three* python processes.  I can understand two, but
> why three?

> Platform is Linux 2.2.10 with the most recent glibc (2.1.1),
> if that matters.

What you're seeing is a quirk of the Linux threading
implementation.  The extra process slot is used by the
threading library itself, to keep tabs on all your "real"
threads.

For a more details, see
<URL:http://pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/linuxthreads/faq.html>