How can I use threading in Python?

Question

I am trying to understand threading in Python. I\'ve looked at the documentation and examples, but quite frankly, many examples are overly sophisticated and I\'m having trou

Answer 1

Just a note: A queue is not required for threading.

This is the simplest example I could imagine that shows 10 processes running concurrently.

import threading
from random import randint
from time import sleep


def print_number(number):

    # Sleeps a random 1 to 10 seconds
    rand_int_var = randint(1, 10)
    sleep(rand_int_var)
    print "Thread " + str(number) + " slept for " + str(rand_int_var) + " seconds"

thread_list = []

for i in range(1, 10):

    # Instantiates the thread
    # (i) does not make a sequence, so (i,)
    t = threading.Thread(target=print_number, args=(i,))
    # Sticks the thread in a list so that it remains accessible
    thread_list.append(t)

# Starts threads
for thread in thread_list:
    thread.start()

# This blocks the calling thread until the thread whose join() method is called is terminated.
# From http://docs.python.org/2/library/threading.html#thread-objects
for thread in thread_list:
    thread.join()

# Demonstrates that the main process waited for threads to complete
print "Done"