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pythonwindowswinapipywin32

In Windows using Python, how do I kill my process?

Edit: Looks like a duplicate, but I assure you, it's not. I'm looking to kill the current running process cleanly, not to kill a separate process.

The problem is the process I'm killing isn't spawned by subprocess or exec. It's basically trying to kill itself.

Here's the scenario: The program does cleanup on exit, but sometimes this takes too long. I am sure that I can terminate the program, because the first step in the quit saves the Database. How do I go about doing this?

  • cannot use taskkill, as it is not available in some Windows installs e.g. home editions of XP

  • tskill also doesn't work

  • win32api.TerminateProcess(handle, 0) works, but i'm concerned it may cause memory leaks because i won't have the opportunity to close the handle (program immediately stops after calling TerminateProcess). note: Yup, I am force quitting it so there are bound to be some unfreed resources, but I want to minimize this as much as possible (as I will only do it only if it is taking an unbearable amount of time, for better user experience) but i don't think python will handle gc if it's force-quit.

I'm currently doing the last one, as it just works. I'm concerned though about the unfreed handle. Any thoughts/suggestions would be very much appreciated!

Solution

  • win32api.TerminateProcess(handle, 0) works, but i'm concerned it may cause memory leaks because i won't have the opportunity to close the handle (program immediately stops after calling TerminateProcess). note: Yup, I am force quitting it so there are bound to be some unfreed resources, but I want to minimize this as much as possible (as I will only do it only if it is taking an unbearable amount of time, for better user experience) but i don't think python will handle gc if it's force-quit.

    If a process self-terminates, then you don't need to worry about garbage collection. The OS will automatically clean up all memory resources used by that process, so you don't have to worry about memory leaks. Memory leaks are when a process is running and using more and more memory as time goes by.

    So yes terminating your process this way isn't very "clean", but there wont be any ill side-effects.