Python：如何等到 function 在不同的线程中被调用？

Question

I have a function in thread A which needs to wait until a function in thread B is called.

The function in thread B is called periodically, so it just needs to wait until the next time it is called. This allows me to sync up with it.

How would I do this?

(Sorry if this is trivial.)

Answer 1

It may be a principle of computer science that no multithreading question is trivial.

There are various ways to do this, but one of the simplest involves the use of a threading.Event object. Events are the simplest of the so-called synchronization primitives. See the manual section on the threading module for more ideas. Here is a working example:

#! python3.8

import threading
import time

t0 = time.time()

def elapsed_time():
    return time.time() - t0

class StopMe:
    def __init__(self):
        self.running = True

def main():
    ev1 = threading.Event()
    stop = StopMe()
    th1 = threading.Thread(target=thread1, args=(ev1, stop))
    th1.start()
    for _ in range(10):
        ev1.wait()
        print("The function was just called", elapsed_time())
        ev1.clear()
    stop.running = False
    th1.join()
    print("Exit", elapsed_time())

def thread1(event, stop):
    def a_function():
        event.set()
        print("I am the function", elapsed_time())

    while stop.running:
        time.sleep(1.0)
        a_function()

main()

Output:

I am the function 1.0116908550262451
The function was just called 1.0116908550262451
I am the function 2.0219264030456543
The function was just called 2.0219264030456543
I am the function 3.0322916507720947
The function was just called 3.0322916507720947
I am the function 4.033170938491821
The function was just called 4.033170938491821
I am the function 5.043376445770264
The function was just called 5.043376445770264
I am the function 6.043909788131714
The function was just called 6.043909788131714
I am the function 7.054021596908569
The function was just called 7.054021596908569
I am the function 8.06399941444397
The function was just called 8.06399941444397
I am the function 9.064924716949463
The function was just called 9.064924716949463
I am the function 10.066757678985596
The function was just called 10.066757678985596
I am the function 11.076870918273926
Exit 11.076870918273926

Some things to note here:

Once you put a synchronization primitive into your code, you need to give some thought about how to terminate the thread gracefully, and how to terminate the application as a whole. In this example, the threads communicate through the little "StopMe" object, and through the Event object. Note that the main thread may have to wait one second until the secondary thread finishes its sleep function. That occurs if thread1 begins its time delay before the main thread calls the join function. That didn't happen in my test run but it might, depending on how CPU time slices are given to the different threads. If that's not acceptable to you, you have to write more code to get around it.

Also note that the function call ev1.wait() will block the main thread until the event is set from the secondary thread. In a GUI application that is not what you want.

I ran this with Python3.8 but the program doesn't use any version-specific features, so it should work the same with any reasonably recent version of Python.