7.4 thread -- Multiple threads of control

This module provides low-level primitives for working with multiple threads (a.k.a. light-weight processes or tasks) -- multiple threads of control sharing their global data space. For synchronization, simple locks (a.k.a. mutexes or binary semaphores) are provided.  

The module is optional. It is supported on Windows NT and '95, SGI IRIX, Solaris 2.x, as well as on systems that have a POSIX thread (a.k.a. ``pthread'') implementation.  

It defines the following constant and functions:

exception error
Raised on thread-specific errors.

LockType
This is the type of lock objects.

start_new_thread(function, args[, kwargs])
Start a new thread and return its identifier. The thread executes the function function with the argument list args (which must be a tuple). The optional kwargs argument specifies a dictionary of keyword arguments. When the function returns, the thread silently exits. When the function terminates with an unhandled exception, a stack trace is printed and then the thread exits (but other threads continue to run).

exit()
Raise the SystemExit exception. When not caught, this will cause the thread to exit silently.

exit_thread()
Deprecated since release 1.5.2. Use exit().

This is an obsolete synonym for exit().

allocate_lock()
Return a new lock object. Methods of locks are described below. The lock is initially unlocked.

get_ident()
Return the `thread identifier' of the current thread. This is a nonzero integer. Its value has no direct meaning; it is intended as a magic cookie to be used e.g. to index a dictionary of thread-specific data. Thread identifiers may be recycled when a thread exits and another thread is created.

Lock objects have the following methods:

acquire([waitflag])
Without the optional argument, this method acquires the lock unconditionally, if necessary waiting until it is released by another thread (only one thread at a time can acquire a lock -- that's their reason for existence), and returns None. If the integer waitflag argument is present, the action depends on its value: if it is zero, the lock is only acquired if it can be acquired immediately without waiting, while if it is nonzero, the lock is acquired unconditionally as before. If an argument is present, the return value is 1 if the lock is acquired successfully, 0 if not.

release()
Releases the lock. The lock must have been acquired earlier, but not necessarily by the same thread.

locked()
Return the status of the lock: 1 if it has been acquired by some thread, 0 if not.

Caveats:

See About this document... for information on suggesting changes.