thread, threading; how to kill a thread?

[Ian Bicking]

I might reiterate this request, but knowing the standard answer (you 
can't) -- what if I *really* want to?  In situations when a thread 
becomes wedged, I don't know a way to get out of it.  I don't even know 
a way to end the process elegantly, instead I have to kill -9 the process.

Even if it messes things up and I have to restart the process at the 
soonest possible time to clean up the problems, it would be nice to be 
able to exit the process.  As it is, the only robust way to deal with 
the situation is to have a separate process that (at the original 
process's request) will kill it, an assisted-suicide style.  That's 
awkward to handle.

This is an issue with long-running threaded servers (like Webware or 
even Zope), where even in the face of bugs it's important to keep the 
service up.

-- 
Ian Bicking  /  ianb at colorstudy.com  /  http://blog.ianbicking.org