As a followup to what I wrote yesterday about prompt signal handlingin programs , it's worthwhile to pointout a little problem in Python with signal handling.

As I've noted before , Python normally turnsmany signals into exceptions. It turns out that this has an importantconsequence: it delays processing of signals , because Python onlyprocesses signal exceptions in the interpreter, ie when you're runningPython bytecodes.

(Contrary to the documentation, sys.setcheckinterval does not appearto control how often signal handlers are

There is a certain class of program that decides it knows better thanyou about when you should be able to stop its operation. The mostirritating way to do this is to catch ^C (and even ^\); such programswin a modest prize from me, usually awarded with 'kill -9'.

Yes, some operations are dangerous if interrupted half-way through andprograms need to protect themselves against them. Short operations. Itis very rare that a program needs to block signals for very long