[Pythonmac-SIG] Python crash!

[Marcus H. Mendenhall]

On Thursday, October 16, 2003, at 12:26  PM, Bob Ippolito wrote:

>
> On Thursday, Oct 16, 2003, at 13:15 America/New_York, Marcus H. 
> Mendenhall wrote:
>
>> This is the first one of these I have seen in a while.  I was running 
>> a program in the python IDE
>>
> --snip--
>> The only slightly unusual thing about the program is that I was using 
>> signal handlers, which I haven't done a lot of before.  Here is the 
>> program, for reference:
> --snip--
>> Anyone want to try to trace this down?
>
> Python is not very good at signal handlers.. try not to use them, 
> especially not in the IDE.  They're just asking for trouble because 
> signal handlers cause a condition that the interpreter isn't very 
> capable of coping with.  I would suggest attempting to do this in 
> another way (i.e. using network sockets to ask your program to open a 
> new file or quit).
>
> -bob
>
>

Thanks, Bob.

Do you think the problem is specific to the IDE?  Has trouble been 
actually seen outside of the IDE, or is it just a queasy feeling there 
that the Python interpreter is structured unsafely somewhere for 
signals?

This program normally runs as a daemon, and I was just testing it in 
the IDE.  Maybe that is why I have never seen the issue before?

I may think about switching this to a different mechanism if there 
really is a reliability issue, even without the IDE, since I am 
starting work on a block of code I want to be VERY reliable.

Marcus