Call a function without waiting for it

Question

Hi I was wondering if there was a way of calling a function/method (preferably in Python or Java) and continue execution without waiting for it.

Example:

Answer 1

You'd better start with an ExecutorService instead of going directly with raw threads. It provides pooling, completion detection, and there are subclasses which also have some scheduling. For instance:

...
// Create a simple instance with a single thread in the pool
ExecutorService executor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(1); 
...
Future future = executor.submit(new Callable() {
    @Override
    public Integer call() {
        return YourFunction();
    }
});
...

// To wait for YourFunction() to finish, and get the result:
Integer result = future.get();

You can submit as many asynchronous tasks to the ExecutorService as you like; they will be executed in parallel, or sequentially, depending on the implementation you choose, on the number of threads in the backing thread pool, etc.