asynchronous programming in python

Question

Is there a generic notion of asynchronous programming in python? Could I assign a callback to a function, execute it and return to the main program flow immediately, no matt

Answer 1

The other respondents are pointing you to Twisted, which is a great and very comprehensive framework but in my opinion it has a very un-pythonic design. Also, AFAICT, you have to use the Twisted main loop, which may be a problem for you if you're already using something else that provides its own loop.

Here is a contrived example that would demonstrate using the threading module:

from threading import Thread

def background_stuff():
  while True:
    print "I am doing some stuff"

t = Thread(target=background_stuff)
t.start()

# Continue doing some other stuff now

However, in pretty much every useful case, you will want to communicate between threads. You should look into synchronization primitives, and become familiar with the concept of concurrency and the related issues.

The threading module provides many such primitives for you to use, if you know how to use them.