thread vs GC

[Chris Lambacher]

You probably have one or more of several problems.


If a __del__ method exists, the object might be stuck in the
gc.garbage list.  In general you are better off explicitly stopping it
my adding a method that is called to set your threading.Event.

Likely you will still be stuck waiting on your queue and unable to
check the status of threading.Event.  Try setting a timeout on the
blocking Queue.put call and then checking the status of the event.  If
it is set break out, otherwise go try the put again.  Depending on how
makeprime works, you may have to cache the value so you can keep
trying to put the number in the queue.

class primegen:
   def __init__(self):
     self.q = Queue.Queue(5)    # cache up to 5 primes
     self.e = threading.Event()
     def background_generator():
        n = makeprime()
        while True:
          try:
             self.q.put(makeprime(),True, 1)  # sleeps if 5 primes are
already cached
          except Queue.Full:
             pass
          else:
              n = makeprime()
           if self.e.isSet():
              return
     threading.Thread(target=background_generator).start()

   def next(self):
     return self.q.read()
   def __iter__(self): return self

   def stop(self):
       self.e.set()

-Chris

On 02 Jun 2005 17:50:06 -0700, Paul Rubin
<"http://phr.cx"@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> Another of those "how can I kill a thread" questions.
> 
> Let's say I have an app that needs a random prime number for something
> every now and then, based on user interaction.  I have a function
> makeprime() which creates such a prime, but it's pretty slow, so I
> don't want to wait for it when the user clicks for a new prime.  I want
> to generate some primes in the background and cache a few of them.  Let's
> say I want to make an iterator object to wrap all this:
> 
>   class primegen:
>     def __init__(self):
>       self.q = Queue.Queue(5)    # cache up to 5 primes
>       def background_generator():
>          while True:
>            self.q.put(makeprime())  # sleeps if 5 primes are already cached
>       threading.Thread(target=background_generator).start()
> 
>     def next(self):
>       return self.q.read()
>     def __iter__(self): return self
> 
> Now I can make a caching prime stream with
> 
>   g = primegen()
> 
> and it's all rather elegant.  But maybe g will sit in some other
> object or for some other reason I end up making a bunch of these
> generators.  The generators get cleaned up by GC when they go out of
> scope, but the threads they spawn are left hanging around.
> 
> Adding a __del__ method that sets a flag (actually threading.Event)
> which the background_generator function checks doesn't seem to do
> the job.
> 
> Any suggestions for the cleanest way to get rid of the thread?  I can
> think of some awful kludges that I'd rather not resort to.
> 
> Extra points if it works in both Python and Jython, i.e. it isn't GIL
> dependent.
> 
> Thanks for any ideas.
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> 


-- 
Christopher Lambacher
lambacck at computer.org