killing thread ?

[Erik Max Francis]

Uwe Schmitt wrote:

> AFAIK there is no method in the threading module to kill a thread.
> Each thread has to terminate itself by watching status variables.
> But: what happens if I start a thread, and when I want to kill
> this thread, I delete all references to the according Thread object,
> and call the garbage collector.
> Will this work ??

No.  A thread needs to suicide cooperatively; have it, say, periodically
check a flag that, when set, will cause the thread to stop itself.  When
you want to kill the thread, set the flag.

> And another question: how fast is the garbage collector ?

If you're asking how quickly __del__ methods get called, it's an
implementation detail.  You're not even really guaranteed that the
__del__ method will ever get called under some circumstances.  (Either
way it's a side issue here, even removing the last reference to a thread
will not kill it.)

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