Are lists thread-safe?

Question

I notice that it is often suggested to use queues with multiple threads, instead of lists and .pop(). Is this because lists are not thread-safe, or for some oth

Answer 1

I recently had this case where I needed to append to a list continuously in one thread, loop through the items and check if the item was ready, it was an AsyncResult in my case and remove it from the list only if it was ready. I could not find any examples that demonstrated my problem clearly Here is an example demonstrating adding to list in one thread continuously and removing from the same list in another thread continuously The flawed version runs easily on smaller numbers but keep the numbers big enough and run a few times and you will see the error

The FLAWED version

import threading
import time

# Change this number as you please, bigger numbers will get the error quickly
count = 1000
l = []

def add():
    for i in range(count):
        l.append(i)
        time.sleep(0.0001)

def remove():
    for i in range(count):
        l.remove(i)
        time.sleep(0.0001)


t1 = threading.Thread(target=add)
t2 = threading.Thread(target=remove)
t1.start()
t2.start()
t1.join()
t2.join()

print(l)

Output when ERROR

Exception in thread Thread-63:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/zup/.pyenv/versions/3.6.8/lib/python3.6/threading.py", line 916, in _bootstrap_inner
    self.run()
  File "/Users/zup/.pyenv/versions/3.6.8/lib/python3.6/threading.py", line 864, in run
    self._target(*self._args, **self._kwargs)
  File "", line 13, in remove
    l.remove(i)
ValueError: list.remove(x): x not in list

Version that uses locks

import threading
import time
count = 1000
l = []
lock = threading.RLock()
def add():
    with lock:
        for i in range(count):
            l.append(i)
            time.sleep(0.0001)

def remove():
    with lock:
        for i in range(count):
            l.remove(i)
            time.sleep(0.0001)


t1 = threading.Thread(target=add)
t2 = threading.Thread(target=remove)
t1.start()
t2.start()
t1.join()
t2.join()

print(l)

Output

[] # Empty list

Conclusion

As mentioned in the earlier answers while the act of appending or popping elements from the list itself is thread safe, what is not thread safe is when you append in one thread and pop in another