TypeError: can't pickle _thread.lock objects

Question

Trying to run two different functions at the same time with shared queue and get an error...how can I run two functions at the same time with a shared queue? This is Python

Answer 1

I had the same problem with Pool() in Python 3.6.3.

Error received: TypeError: can't pickle _thread.RLock objects

Let's say we want to add some number num_to_add to each element of some list num_list in parallel. The code is schematically like this:

class DataGenerator:
    def __init__(self, num_list, num_to_add)
        self.num_list = num_list # e.g. [4,2,5,7]
        self.num_to_add = num_to_add # e.g. 1 

        self.run()

    def run(self):
        new_num_list = Manager().list()

        pool = Pool(processes=50)
        results = [pool.apply_async(run_parallel, (num, new_num_list)) 
                      for num in num_list]
        roots = [r.get() for r in results]
        pool.close()
        pool.terminate()
        pool.join()

    def run_parallel(self, num, shared_new_num_list):
        new_num = num + self.num_to_add # uses class parameter
        shared_new_num_list.append(new_num)

The problem here is that self in function run_parallel() can't be pickled as it is a class instance. Moving this parallelized function run_parallel() out of the class helped. But it's not the best solution as this function probably needs to use class parameters like self.num_to_add and then you have to pass it as an argument.

Solution:

def run_parallel(num, shared_new_num_list, to_add): # to_add is passed as an argument
    new_num = num + to_add
    shared_new_num_list.append(new_num)

class DataGenerator:
    def __init__(self, num_list, num_to_add)
        self.num_list = num_list # e.g. [4,2,5,7]
        self.num_to_add = num_to_add # e.g. 1

        self.run()

    def run(self):
        new_num_list = Manager().list()

        pool = Pool(processes=50)
        results = [pool.apply_async(run_parallel, (num, new_num_list, self.num_to_add)) # num_to_add is passed as an argument
                      for num in num_list]
        roots = [r.get() for r in results]
        pool.close()
        pool.terminate()
        pool.join()

Other suggestions above didn't help me.