Proper use of mutexes in Python

Question

I am starting with multi-threads in python (or at least it is possible that my script creates multiple threads). would this algorithm be the right usage of a Mutex? I haven\

Answer 1

I would like to improve answer from chris-b a little bit more.

See below for my code:

from threading import Thread, Lock
import threading
mutex = Lock()


def processData(data, thread_safe):
    if thread_safe:
        mutex.acquire()
    try:
        thread_id = threading.get_ident()
        print('\nProcessing data:', data, "ThreadId:", thread_id)
    finally:
        if thread_safe:
            mutex.release()


counter = 0
max_run = 100
thread_safe = False
while True:
    some_data = counter        
    t = Thread(target=processData, args=(some_data, thread_safe))
    t.start()
    counter = counter + 1
    if counter >= max_run:
        break

In your first run if you set thread_safe = False in while loop, mutex will not be used, and threads will step over each others in print method as below;

but, if you set thread_safe = True and run it, you will see all the output comes perfectly fine;

hope this helps.