The thread Module

(Optional) The thread module provides a low-level interface for threading, as shown in Example 3-6. It's only available if your interpreter is built with thread support. New code should use the higher-level interface in the threading module instead.

Example 3-6. Using the thread Module

File: thread-example-1.py import thread import time, random def worker(): for i in range(50): # pretend we're doing something that takes 10100 ms time.sleep(random.randint(10, 100) / 1000.0) print thread.get_ident(), "-- task", i, "finished" # # try it out! for i in range(2): thread.start_new_thread(worker, ()) time.sleep(1) print "goodbye!" 311 -- task 0 finished 265 -- task 0 finished 265 -- task 1 finished 311 -- task 1 finished ... 265 -- task 17 finished 311 -- task 13 finished 265 -- task 18 finished goodbye!

Note that when the main program exits, all threads are killed. The threading module doesn't have that problem.