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How to create a new thread in Python

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Threads in python are an entity within a process that can be scheduled for execution. In simpler words, a thread is a computation process that is to be performed by a computer. It is a sequence of such instructions within a program that can be executed independently of other codes.

In Python, there are two ways to create a new Thread. In this article, we will also be making use of the threading module in Python. Below is a detailed list of those processes:

1. Creating python threads using class

Below has a coding example followed by the code explanation for creating new threads using class in python.  

Python3




# import the threading module
import threading
 
class thread(threading.Thread):
    def __init__(self, thread_name, thread_ID):
        threading.Thread.__init__(self)
        self.thread_name = thread_name
        self.thread_ID = thread_ID
 
        # helper function to execute the threads
    def run(self):
        print(str(self.thread_name) +" "+ str(self.thread_ID));
 
thread1 = thread("GFG", 1000)
thread2 = thread("GeeksforGeeks", 2000);
 
thread1.start()
thread2.start()
 
print("Exit")


Output: 

GFG 1000
GeeksforGeeks 2000
Exit

Now let’s look into what we did up there in the code.  

  1. We created a sub-class of the thread class.
  2. Then we override the __init__ function of the thread class.
  3. Then we override the run method to define the behavior of the thread.
  4. The start() method starts a Python thread. 

2. Creating python threads using function

The below code shows the creation of new thread using a function:  

Python3




from threading import Thread
from time import sleep
 
# function to create threads
def threaded_function(arg):
    for i in range(arg):
        print("running")
         
        # wait 1 sec in between each thread
        sleep(1)
 
 
if __name__ == "__main__":
    thread = Thread(target = threaded_function, args = (10, ))
    thread.start()
    thread.join()
    print("thread finished...exiting")


Output: 

running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running
thread finished...exiting

So what we did in the above code, 

  1. We defined a function to create a thread.
  2. Then we used the threading module to create a thread that invoked the function as its target.
  3. Then we used start() method to start the Python thread. 
     

 



Last Updated : 30 Sep, 2021
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