Stopping threads from the outside

[Boudewijn Rempt]

Peter Hansen wrote:
> 
> I'm curious what the agent actually does if it doesn't share
> anything.  Does it not take input?  And produce output?
> No opening files, accessing Queues and such?  If it does
> any of those things, wouldn't that make it potentially a
> problem if you killed it?
> 


Sending and receiving messages -- messages which are, very
carefully, _not_ shared objects.

> I realize it may be only a theoretical problem in some specific
> applications, since one might be able to guarantee that one will
> not attempt to kill a thread when it is in a particular subroutine
> and therefore unsafe.  It might be nice to have the option, if
> one really wanted, especially if there are simple conditions
> under which one could guarantee a thread is safe to kill (not
> blocking and without shared resources locked).
> 

It would be _very_ nice.


-- 
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org