▪
Thread:
▪ Threads sometimes called light-weight processes and they do not require much memory
overhead; they are cheaper than processes.
▪ Multiple threads within a process share the same data space with the main thread.
▪ Starting a New Thread
▪ you need to call following method available in thread module:
▪ thread.start_new_thread ( function, args)
▪ calls function with the passed list of args.
▪ args is a tuple of arguments.
▪ Multithreaded Programming:
▪ Thread Module:
▪ The threading module exposes all the methods of the thread module and provides some
additional methods:
• threading.activeCount(): Returns the number of thread objects that are active.
• threading.currentThread(): Returns the number of thread objects in the caller's thread control.
• threading.enumerate(): Returns a list of all the thread objects that are currently active.
▪ In addition to the methods, the threading module has the Thread class that implements
threading.
▪ The methods provided by the Thread class are as follows:
• run():
The run() method is the entry point for a thread.
• start():
The start() method starts a thread by calling the run method.
• join([time]):
The join() waits for threads to terminate.
• isAlive():
The isAlive() method checks whether a thread is still executing.
• getName():
The getName() method returns the name of a thread.
• setName():
The setName() method sets the name of a thread.
(2) Creating a thread:
▪ To implement a new thread using the threading module, you have to do the following− ▪
Define a new subclass of the Thread class.
▪ Override the init (self [,args]) method to add additional arguments.
▪ Then, override the run(self [,args]) method to implement what the thread should do when
started.
▪ you can create an instance of it and then start a new thread by invoking the start(), ▪ which
in turn calls the run()method.
(3) Synchronizing threads:
▪ A new lock is created by calling the Lock() method, which returns the new lock.
▪ The acquire(blocking) method of the new lock object is used to force the threads to run
synchronously.
▪ The optional blocking parameter enables you to control whether the thread waits to acquire the
lock.
▪ If blocking is set to 0, the thread returns immediately with a 0 value if the lock cannot be
acquired and with a 1 if the lock was acquired.
▪ If blocking is set to 1, the thread blocks and wait for the lock to be released.
▪ The release() method of the new lock object is used to release the lock when it is no longer
required.
(4)multithreaded priority queue:
▪ The Queue module allows you to create a new queue object that can hold a specific number of
items.
There are following methods to control the Queue −
• get(): The get() removes and returns an item from the queue.
• put(): The put adds item to a queue.
• qsize() : The qsize() returns the number of items that are currently in the queue.
• empty(): The empty( ) returns True if queue is empty; otherwise, False.
• full(): the full() returns True if queue is full; otherwise, False.
