Python: Pass or Sleep for long running processes?

Question

I am writing an queue processing application which uses threads for waiting on and responding to queue messages to be delivered to the app. For the main part of the applica

Answer 1

I would imagine time.sleep() will have less overhead on the system. Using pass will cause the loop to immediately re-evaluate and peg the CPU, whereas using time.sleep will allow the execution to be temporarily suspended.

EDIT: just to prove the point, if you launch the python interpreter and run this:

>>> while True:
...     pass
... 

You can watch Python start eating up 90-100% CPU instantly, versus:

>>> import time 
>>> while True:
...     time.sleep(1)
... 

Which barely even registers on the Activity Monitor (using OS X here but it should be the same for every platform).