Killing a thread
Tim Peters
tim_one at email.msn.com
Tue Jul 20 01:06:36 EDT 1999
[Donn Cave]
> Python's thread support is evolving. As a previous followup points out,
> you shouldn't kill threads, and I guess that's fair enough - in terms
> of normal program design, one should look for other ways to manage
> threads.
>
> But in default of any alternative, I suspect sometimes we have to violate
> this commandment, and I think one of these days Python will provide the
> tools to do what you have to do, not just what you want to do.
It's unlikely Python will ever allow thread A to kill thread B, or even
suspend it. Hygiene aside, not all native thread packages support this, and
Python's portable semantics can't be lower-level than the most restrictive
thread platform's.
Note too that Java-- which got to define every bit of its thread
semantics --eventually removed inter-thread carnage from the language. For
them, allowing it simply proved to be such a bad idea in practice that it
was retroactively declared a design error.
not-every-tool-is-applicable-as-is-to-every-problem-ly y'rs - tim
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