Should I use threads here?

[Kragen Sitaker]

"Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> writes:
> readlines() doesn't terminate until it knows (by seeing and end of file on
> its input stream) that it has read all the input. If you built a loop using
> readline() you might find you got better results.

This is assuming that the program actually outputs stuff as it goes;
many programs buffer output in big blocks when they're talking down a
pipe instead of outputting line by line.