Is there any way to kill a Thread in Python?

是否有可能终止正在运行的线程而不设置/检查任何标志/信号/等等?


It is generally a bad pattern to kill a thread abruptly, in Python and in any language. Think of the following cases:

  • the thread is holding a critical resource that must be closed properly
  • the thread has created several other threads that must be killed as well.
  • The nice way of handling this if you can afford it (if you are managing your own threads) is to have an exit_request flag that each threads checks on regular interval to see if it is time for it to exit.

    For example:

    import threading
    
    class StoppableThread(threading.Thread):
        """Thread class with a stop() method. The thread itself has to check
        regularly for the stopped() condition."""
    
        def __init__(self):
            super(StoppableThread, self).__init__()
            self._stop_event = threading.Event()
    
        def stop(self):
            self._stop_event.set()
    
        def stopped(self):
            return self._stop_event.is_set()
    

    In this code, you should call stop() on the thread when you want it to exit, and wait for the thread to exit properly using join(). The thread should check the stop flag at regular intervals.

    There are cases however when you really need to kill a thread. An example is when you are wrapping an external library that is busy for long calls and you want to interrupt it.

    The following code allows (with some restrictions) to raise an Exception in a Python thread:

    def _async_raise(tid, exctype):
        '''Raises an exception in the threads with id tid'''
        if not inspect.isclass(exctype):
            raise TypeError("Only types can be raised (not instances)")
        res = ctypes.pythonapi.PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(tid,
                                                      ctypes.py_object(exctype))
        if res == 0:
            raise ValueError("invalid thread id")
        elif res != 1:
            # "if it returns a number greater than one, you're in trouble,
            # and you should call it again with exc=NULL to revert the effect"
            ctypes.pythonapi.PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(tid, 0)
            raise SystemError("PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc failed")
    
    class ThreadWithExc(threading.Thread):
        '''A thread class that supports raising exception in the thread from
           another thread.
        '''
        def _get_my_tid(self):
            """determines this (self's) thread id
    
            CAREFUL : this function is executed in the context of the caller
            thread, to get the identity of the thread represented by this
            instance.
            """
            if not self.isAlive():
                raise threading.ThreadError("the thread is not active")
    
            # do we have it cached?
            if hasattr(self, "_thread_id"):
                return self._thread_id
    
            # no, look for it in the _active dict
            for tid, tobj in threading._active.items():
                if tobj is self:
                    self._thread_id = tid
                    return tid
    
            # TODO: in python 2.6, there's a simpler way to do : self.ident
    
            raise AssertionError("could not determine the thread's id")
    
        def raiseExc(self, exctype):
            """Raises the given exception type in the context of this thread.
    
            If the thread is busy in a system call (time.sleep(),
            socket.accept(), ...), the exception is simply ignored.
    
            If you are sure that your exception should terminate the thread,
            one way to ensure that it works is:
    
                t = ThreadWithExc( ... )
                ...
                t.raiseExc( SomeException )
                while t.isAlive():
                    time.sleep( 0.1 )
                    t.raiseExc( SomeException )
    
            If the exception is to be caught by the thread, you need a way to
            check that your thread has caught it.
    
            CAREFUL : this function is executed in the context of the
            caller thread, to raise an excpetion in the context of the
            thread represented by this instance.
            """
            _async_raise( self._get_my_tid(), exctype )
    

    As noted in the documentation, this is not a magic bullet because if the thread is busy outside the Python interpreter, it will not catch the interruption.

    A good usage pattern of this code is to have the thread catch a specific exception and perform the cleanup. That way, you can interrupt a task and still have proper cleanup.


    There is no official API to do that, no.

    You need to use platform API to kill the thread, eg pthread_kill, or TerminateThread. You can access such API eg through pythonwin, or through ctypes.

    Notice that this is inherently unsafe. It will likely lead to uncollectable garbage (from local variables of the stack frames that become garbage), and may lead to deadlocks, if the thread being killed has the GIL at the point when it is killed.


    A multiprocessing.Process can p.terminate()

    In the cases where I want to kill a thread, but do not want to use flags/locks/signals/semaphores/events/whatever, I promote the threads to full blown processes. For code that makes use of just a few threads the overhead is not that bad.

    Eg this comes in handy to easily terminate helper "threads" which execute blocking I/O

    The conversion is trivial: In related code replace all threading.Thread with multiprocessing.Process and all queue.Queue with multiprocessing.Queue and add the required calls of p.terminate() to your parent process which wants to kill its child p

    Python doc

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