Is my thread safe from premature garbage collection?

[NutJob at gmx.net]

Hello all,

I'm aware that in Python an object is cleared for garbage collection as
soon as the last reference to it disappears. Normally this is fine.
However, in my current project I'm creating a bunch of threads which
are supposed to run until they've completed their run() method, and I'm
worried that if I do not keep references to these thread objects
around, the GC might happily delete them (and thereby kill my thread
routines maybe?) while they're not done yet. Is this fear justified? Or
is the Python GC smart enough to leave thread objects alone until their
run() methods have finished?

If not, I do have a workaround, but it is a bit clumsy IMO. Basically I
would just keep a list into which each thread object enters a reference
to itself on creation. This way I'd ensure that I have a reference to
the thread to prevent the GC from killing it. Then, when a thread is
about to finish its run() method, the thread finds and removes that
reference to itself from my list of thread references.

Anyway, if anyone could make a definite statement on whether threads
are safe from unwanted garbage collection, that'd be really great.
Thanks in advance for any helpful replies!

Cheers,

antred