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I am running a stand-alone Python v3.2.2/Tkinter program on Windows, not calling any external libraries. Idle has been very helpful in reporting exceptions, and the program has been debugged to the point where none are reported. However, the python interpreter does occasionally crash at non-deterministic times - operations will run fine for a while and then suddenly hang. The crash triggers the standard Windows non-responding process dialog asking if I want to send a crash dump to Microsoft:

"pythonw.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close.
 We are sorry for the inconvenience."

Crash reporting in Python says that the interpreter itself rarely crashes. My question is: no matter how many mistakes there are in a python script, is there any way it should in theory be able to crash the interpreter? Since there are no exceptions being reported and the crashes happen at random times, it's hard to narrow down. But if the interpreter is in theory supposed to be crash-proof, then something I'm doing is triggering a bug.

The code (a scrolling strip-chart demonstration) is posted at What is the best real time plotting widget for wxPython?. It has 3 buttons - Run, Stop, Reset. To cause a crash just press the buttons in random order for a minute or so. With no interaction, the demo will run forever without crashing.

Community
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Dave
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  • It depends on the script. Pure python should be safe and a crash is usually taken very seriously. But depending on the modules you are using (think ctypes) it becomes more and more difficult for Python to avoid any problem.. – Francesco Oct 02 '11 at 17:19
  • I don't think there is actually anything that runs on a computer system that is 100% guaranteed never to crash! Correct me if am wrong. – Andy Oct 02 '11 at 17:26
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    To paraphrase Douglas Adams: The major difference between software that might crash and software that cannot possibly crash is that when software that cannot possibly crash crashes it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair. – interjay Oct 02 '11 at 17:35

2 Answers2

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Of course, the goal is for something like Python to never crash. Alas, we live in an imperfect world. A more useful question to ask, I think, is "What should I do if Python crashes?". If you want to help make a more perfect world, first make a quick search at the Python issue tracker to see if a similar problem has already been reported and possibly fixed in a newer or as yet unreleased version of Python. If not, see if you can find a way to reproduce the problem with clear directions about steps involved, what OS platform and version, what versions of Python and 3rd-party libraries, as applicable. Then open a new issue with all the details. Keep in mind that Python, like many open source projects, is an all-volunteer project so there can be no guarantee when or if the problem will be more deeply investigated or solved (most issues are resolved eventually) but you can be happy that you have done your part and likely saved someone (maybe many people) time and trouble. If you want other opinions before opening an issue, you could ask about it on the python-list mailing list/news group.

Ned Deily
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Python isn't indeed 100% crash proof, especially when you using external libraries, which TkInter is.

There is even page dedicated to it: http://wiki.python.org/moin/CrashingPython

Ilia Novoselov
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    To be clear, `Tkinter` is *not* an external library: it is a part of the Python standard library. However, `Tkinter` does link to and use `Tcl` and `Tk` which *are* external 3rd-party components. – Ned Deily Oct 02 '11 at 18:04