Is it possible to kill the parent thread from within a child thread in python?

You can use _thread.interrupt_main (this module is called thread in Python 2.7):

import time, threading, _threaddef long_running():    while True:        print('Hello')def stopper(sec):    time.sleep(sec)    print('Exiting...')    _thread.interrupt_main()threading.Thread(target = stopper, args = (2, )).start()long_running()

If the parent thread is the root thread, you may want to try os._exit(0).

import osimport threadingimport timedef may_take_a_long_time(name, wait_time):    print("{} started...".format(name))    time.sleep(wait_time)    print("{} finished!.".format(name))def kill():    time.sleep(3)    os._exit(0)kill_thread = threading.Thread(target=kill)kill_thread.start()may_take_a_long_time("A", 2)may_take_a_long_time("B", 2)may_take_a_long_time("C", 2)may_take_a_long_time("D", 2)

The cleanest way to do this is to have a queue that the parent thread checks on a regular basis. If the child wants to kill the parent, it sends a message (e.g. "DIE") to the queue. The parent checks the queue and if it sees the message it dies.

    q = queue.Queue()    bc = queue.Queue()          # backchannel    def worker():    while True:            key = q.get()            try:                process_key(key)            except ValueError as e:                bc.put('DIE')            q.task_done()    # Start the threads    for i in range(args.threads):        threading.Thread(target=worker, daemon=True).start()    for obj in object_farm():        q.put(obj)        try:            back = bc.get(block=False)        except queue.Empty:            pass        else:            print("Data received on backchannel:",back)            if back=='DIE':                raise RuntimeError("time to die")