os.path.abspath causes thread to freeze

[Austin Luminais]

I'm experiencing a strange problem with ActivePython 2.2.2, Windows
2000 SP3, in a wxPython application.  It seems that an executing
thread freezes when it gets to a call to os.path.abspath.

The strange thing is that the code was working perfectly before for a
long time, but now it consistently freezes.  The thread does resume
when I quit the main application thread.

My first thought was that it might be the most recent version of
wxPython (although I'm pretty sure it was working when I initially
installed 2.3.4.2 anyway), so I tried the previous two versions of
wxPython, but it didn't make a difference.

It seems someone else was having a very similar problem recently in
this message: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=bd993a2f.0212162226.356a3d5c%40posting.google.com&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain

It seems to work ok if I don't call abspath, but I'm worried what
other hidden problems may exist with the threading in my program.  Is
there some kind of thread locking issue with the os module?