Handling Signals in Python Threads

python multithreading signals interrupt
Eric Pruitt picture Eric Pruitt · Jan 6, 2011 · Viewed 19.3k times · Source

I have a threaded application written in Python, and whenever an interrupt is received via Ctrl+C or sometimes with kill, the application will hang. A stack trace is presented from one thread, but the application remains in the foreground, and I usually have to background it with Ctrl+Z then attempt to kill it.

What is the proper way of handling signals and keyboard interrupts inside of a threaded application?

Answer

Thomas K picture Thomas K · Jan 6, 2011

If you set newthread.daemon = True before starting each thread, the threads will automatically be killed when the main thread exits. That's not precisely what you were asking, but from what you've described, it sounds like it could be worth knowing.

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