Python threading.Thread can be stopped only with private method self.__Thread_stop()

Question

I have a function that accepts a large array of x,y pairs as an input which does some elaborate curve fitting using numpy and scipy and then returns a single value. To try and speed things up I am trying to have two threads that I feed the data to using Queue.Queue . Once the data is done. I am trying to have the threads terminate and then end the calling process and return control to the shell.

I am trying to understand why I have to resort to a private method in threading.Thread to stop my threads and return control to the commandline.

The self.join() does not end the program. The only way to get back control was to use the private stop method.

        def stop(self):
            print "STOP CALLED"
            self.finished.set()
            print "SET DONE"
            # self.join(timeout=None) does not work
            self._Thread__stop()

Here is an approximation of my code:

    class CalcThread(threading.Thread):
        def __init__(self,in_queue,out_queue,function):
            threading.Thread.__init__(self)
            self.in_queue = in_queue
            self.out_queue = out_queue
            self.function = function
            self.finished = threading.Event()

        def stop(self):
            print "STOP CALLED"
            self.finished.set()
            print "SET DONE"
            self._Thread__stop()

        def run(self):
            while not self.finished.isSet():
                params_for_function = self.in_queue.get()
                try:
                    tm = self.function(paramsforfunction)
                    self.in_queue.task_done()
                    self.out_queue.put(tm)
                except ValueError as v:
                    #modify params and reinsert into queue
                    window = params_for_function["window"]
                    params_for_function["window"] = window + 1
                    self.in_queue.put(params_for_function)

    def big_calculation(well_id,window,data_arrays):
            # do some analysis to calculate tm
            return tm

    if __name__ == "__main__":
        NUM_THREADS = 2
        workers = []
        in_queue = Queue()
        out_queue = Queue()

        for i in range(NUM_THREADS):
            w = CalcThread(in_queue,out_queue,big_calculation)
            w.start()
            workers.append(w)

        if options.analyze_all:
              for i in well_ids:
                  in_queue.put(dict(well_id=i,window=10,data_arrays=my_data_dict))

        in_queue.join()
        print "ALL THREADS SEEM TO BE DONE"
        # gather data and report it from out_queue
        for i in well_ids:
            p = out_queue.get()
            print p
            out_queue.task_done()
            # I had to do this to get the out_queue to proceed
            if out_queue.qsize() == 0:
                out_queue.join()
                break
# Calling this stop method does not seem to return control to the command line unless I use threading.Thread private method

        for aworker in workers:
            aworker.stop()

Answer 1

In general it is a bad idea to kill a thread that modifies shared resource.

CPU intensive tasks in multiple threads are worse than useless in Python unless you release GIL while performing computations. Many numpy functions do release GIL.

ThreadPoolExecutor example from the docs

import concurrent.futures # on Python 2.x: pip install futures 

calc_args = []
if options.analyze_all:
    calc_args.extend(dict(well_id=i,...) for i in well_ids)

with concurrent.futures.ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=NUM_THREADS) as executor:
    future_to_args = dict((executor.submit(big_calculation, args), args)
                           for args in calc_args)

    while future_to_args:
        for future in concurrent.futures.as_completed(dict(**future_to_args)):
            args = future_to_args.pop(future)
            if future.exception() is not None:
                print('%r generated an exception: %s' % (args,
                                                         future.exception()))
                if isinstance(future.exception(), ValueError):
                    #modify params and resubmit
                    args["window"] += 1
                    future_to_args[executor.submit(big_calculation, args)] = args

            else:
                print('f%r returned %r' % (args, future.result()))

print("ALL work SEEMs TO BE DONE")

You could replace ThreadPoolExecutor by ProcessPoolExecutor if there is no shared state. Put the code in your main() function.

Answer 2

To elaborate on my comment - if the sole purpose of your threads is to consume values from a Queue and perform a function on them you're decidedly better off to do something like this IMHO:

q = Queue()
results = []

def worker():
  while True:
    x, y = q.get()
    results.append(x ** y)
    q.task_done()

for _ in range(workerCount):
  t = Thread(target = worker)
  t.daemon = True
  t.start()

for tup in listOfXYs:
  q.put(tup)

q.join()

# Some more code here with the results list.

q.join() will block until it is empty again. The worker threads will continue to attempt to retrieve values, but won't find any, so they'll wait indefinitely once the queue is empty. When your script finishes its execution later the worker threads will die because they're marked as daemon threads.

Answer 3

I tried gddc's method and it produced an interesting result. I could get his exact x**y calculation to work just fine spread between the threads .

When I called my function inside the worker while True loop. I could perform the calculations among multiple threads only if I put a time.sleep(1) in the for loop that calls the threads start() method.

So In my code. Without the time.sleep(1) the program gave me either a clean exit with no output or in some cases

"Exception in thread Thread-2 (most likely raised during interpreter shutdown):Exception in thread Thread-1 (most likely raised during interpreter shutdown):"

Once I added the time.sleep() everything ran fine.

for aworker in range(5):
    t = Thread(target = worker)
    t.daemon = True
    t.start()
    # This sleep was essential or results for my specific function were None
    time.sleep(1)
    print "Started"