[Xapian-discuss] Terminating a Xapian query

[Jean-Francois Dockes]

Richard Boulton writes:
 > I suppose an alternative approach is to forcibly kill the thread performing
 > the search (though this isn't possible on all platforms, IIRC).

As far I as know, the Xapian library has no provisions for thread
cancellation, and any state held when a cancel request comes in would
remain uncleaned ? This could cause any number of problems including and
beyond resource leaks, and doesn't appear acceptable, but I may be missing
something here.

Using a separate process would probably be better on this point but has its
own problems.

 > Alternatively, it might be better to work on making sure queries don't go on
 > so long that the user gets bored!  There are various improvements to the
 > performance of phrase search in the 1.1 branch, which might help if that's
 > your main bottleneck.

I think that there will always be worst case scenarios where the user will
wish he had a Cancel button, and I have little idea how to offer one right
now...

jf