What is Python's “built-in method acquire”? How can I speed it up?

Question

I'm writing a Python program with a lot of file access. It's running surprisingly slowly, so I used cProfile to find out what was taking the time.

It seems there's a lot of time spent in what Python is reporting as "{built-in method acquire}". I have no idea what this method is. What is it, and how can I speed up my program?

Answer 1

Without seeing your code, it is hard to guess. But to guess I would say that it is the threading.Lock.acquire method. Part of your code is trying to get a threading lock, and it is waiting until it has got it.

There may be simple ways of fixing it by

• restructuring your file access,
• not locking,
• using blocking=False,
• or even not using threads at all.

But again, without seeing your code, it is hard to guess.

Answer 2

you want to look for cpu used, not for "total time used" from within that method--that might help. Sorry I don't use python but that's how it is for me in ruby :) -r

Answer 3

Using threads for IO is a bad idea. Threading won't make your program wait faster. You can achieve better results by using asynchronous I/O and an event loop; Post more information about your program, and why you are using threads.