simple threads kill my IDLE

[Tim Peters]

[posted & mailed]

[Henning VON ROSEN]
> While playing around width threads executing either interactively
> or from the editmode by "f5", in many cases IDLE froze and forced
> me to restart it.
>
> Have anyone experienced such problems?

Just everyone who has tried it <wink>.  Guido believes it would take a major
rearchitecture to get IDLE playing nice with threads (Tk isn't really happy
with threads).  An entry from the "feature request" PEP at

    http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0042.html:

"""
- IDLE has deep problems running threaded programs.  Re-architect.

http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=121963&group_id=5470
"""

> ...
> 3) Just execute in DOS Windows (If there is a bug, these ugly
>    windows dies off, leaving me without feddback error messages!
>    How do I solve that?)

Are you starting your program by double-clicking on its icon?  Then don't do
that:  bring up a DOS box *first*, and type

    python path-to-your-program

at the command prompt.  When mucking with threads, I often keep an IDLE
window open for editing, and a DOS box open for running the program.  If you
enter

    doskey

upon opening your DOS box, you'll get command history (among other stuff --
do "doskey /?") so that reentering your last "python path-..." line is just
a matter of hitting the up-arrow key.

luckily-programmers-can-get-used-to-anything-ly y'rs  - tim