threading module

[Aahz Maruch]

In article <3958265D.906DECF5 at yahoo.com>,
Al-Amerrho H. Amerin <al_amerin at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>I was using the threading module's activeCount() method when I noticed
>that when you import it, it spawns a thread, MainThread. And this
>becomes a problem when I call threading.activeCount(). It returns the
>number of threads I spawned + 1.

Nope, it doesn't spawn a thread.  That thread existed when you started
Python; what threading does is *register* that thread with itself.

>Python 1.6a2 (#9, Jun 22 2000, 00:09:08)  [GCC 2.95.2 19991024
>(release)] on linux2
>Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>Copyright 1995-2000 Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI)
>
>>>> import threading
>>>> threading.activeCount()
>1
>>>>
>
>I hope someone can enlighten me as to the reason why activeCount()
>includes the MainThread and why this shouldn't be fixed so
>activeCount() will only return the number of threads that a caller
>spawns.

Because the main thread is a thread just as much as any other thread.
For example, you could exit the main thread and your other threads would
continue running.
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