PyOS_InputHook: ready for the enterprise

Reading Jeff's humorous post got me digging into exactly why Python would be running in a select loop when otherwise idle.

It basically comes down to some code in the module that wraps GNU readline. The code is:

		while (!has_input)
		{	struct timeval timeout = {0, 100000}; /* 0.1 seconds */
			FD_SET(fileno(rl_instream), &selectset);
			/* select resets selectset if no input was available */
			has_input = select(fileno(rl_instream) + 1, &selectset,
					   NULL, NULL, &timeout);
			if(PyOS_InputHook) PyOS_InputHook();
		}

So what this is basically doing, is trying to read data but 10 times a second calling out to PyOS_InputHook(), which is a hook that can be used by C extension (in particular Tk) to process something when python is otherwise idle.

Now the slightly silly thing is that it will wake up every 100 ms, even if PyOS_InputHook is not actually set. So a slight change:

		while (!has_input)
		{	struct timeval timeout = {0, 100000}; /* 0.1 seconds */
			FD_SET(fileno(rl_instream), &selectset);
			/* select resets selectset if no input was available */
			if (PyOS_InputHook) {
				has_input = select(fileno(rl_instream) + 1, &selectset,
						   NULL, NULL, &timeout);
			} else {
				has_input = select(fileno(rl_instream) + 1, &selectset,
						   NULL, NULL, NULL);
			}
			if(PyOS_InputHook) PyOS_InputHook();
		}

With this change Python is definitely ready for the enterprise!