Threading in python

[Peter Hansen]

Carl J. Van Arsdall wrote:
> Hi everyone, I'm trying to use the threading module with python 2.2 and 
> I have some questions regarding python's threading.

My answers are meant to supplement Aahz' from another reply.

> 3.  Is there a way to which thread is running? 

"A way to" what?  "See"?  There is the threading.currentThread() call, 
but by definition it will be showing you the current thread since you'll 
be calling it from Python code.  Not helpful if you want to see "from 
outside" which thread is active.  Generally this doesn't seem to be a 
necessary thing however.

> The reason for 
> this is I will have threads deadlocked waiting for I/O and I am 
> interested to see how often context switching occurs.

You probably mean "blocked waiting for I/O", since "deadlock" generally 
implies a bug (maybe involving multiple locks) whereby threads reach a 
state where they can never run again (each waiting on a resource held by 
the other).

By the way, some of us do a *lot* of thread-work with Python, and don't 
seem to have the same concerns as you do... maybe if you just try it 
you'll discover some of the things you think you will need aren't really 
that important, for whatever reason.  (For example, if you can limit 
your inter-thread communication to use Queues, you very often won't have 
to troubleshoot any thread-related issues like race conditions... they 
simply aren't possible in certain configurations.)

-Peter