Handling threads in Python

In this section of the chapter, we'll take a look at how you can effectively create and manage multiple threads in Python programs.

Starting loads of threads

The first example we'll look at is how we can start numerous threads all at once. We can create multiple thread objects by using a for loop and then starting them within the same for loop. In the following example, we define a function that takes in an integer and which sleeps for a random amount of time, printing both when it is starting and ending.

We then create a for loop which loops up to 10, and create 10 distinct thread objects that have their target set to our executeThread function. It then starts the thread object we've just created, and then we print out the current active threads.

Example

Let's now look at an example:

import threading
import time
import random
def executeThread(i):
print("Thread {} started".format(i))
sleepTime = random.randint(1,10)
time.sleep(sleepTime)
print("Thread {} finished executing...