[Chandler-dev] float('1.0') failing occasionally in French locale

[Andi Vajda]

On Wed, 13 Sep 2006, Jeffrey Harris wrote:

> Hmm.  Perhaps PyLucene is manipulating the locale?  Lucene indexers are
> certainly aware of locale.  Presumably it would be painful for
> performance if PyLucene never released the GIL.

I'm not aware of anyone manipulating the locale 'behind the scenes'. Have you 
verified that the locale was indeed being manipulated ? The only place that 
I'm aware of where the locale is manipulated is where the --locale command 
line option is used.

If PyLucene never released the GIL then the system would appear to hang 
temporarily when, for example, optimizing indexes which can take several 
seconds (or more).

Also, since one can write python extensions to PyLucene, it can call back into 
python. Because of this and because acquiring the GIL is not re-entrant - 
Phillip, correct me if I'm wrong - the GIL has to be acquired or released 
anytime the Python / C++ boundary is crossed.

Andi..