Repeating Thread Error

On Fri, 06 Jul 2007 14:40:16 -0700, Jonathan Shan wrote:

I am trying to call a function every 5 seconds. My understanding of
time.sleep() is during the sleep time everything "stops".

Not "everything", just the thread in which `sleep()` is called.

However, in my application, there are background processes that must be
running continuously during the five second interval.

Then start them as threads and they will run all the time.

Thus, threading.Timer seems like a good function. Here is the relevant
code:

# background processes
t = threading.Timer(5.0, function_name, [arguments])
while True:
# Do background processes run inside while loop?
t.start()

The above code generates an error:
AssertionError: thread already started

Any hints on how to fix the error?

A thread can only be started once but you try to start the `Timer` over
and over. And you don't wait, so even if this would "work" you would
start many, many `Timer`\s as fast as the ``while`` loop runs. The
`Timer`\s would all run the function after five seconds. It's like::

while True:
function_name(*arguments)

just with a five second delay.

Also, do background processes run inside while loops?

This question doesn't make much sense to me. Do ``while`` loops block
other threads? No of course not.

Ciao,
Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch

hmm.. why use while True? After 5 secs, the function is going to run. so

t = threading.Thread(5.0, func)
t.start()

should just work. Put it in a infinite loop will start the thread and
then start a the stopped thread... forever.

Jim
On Jul 6, 2007, at 2:40 PM, Jonathan Shan wrote:

Hello,

I am trying to call a function every 5 seconds. My understanding of
time.sleep() is during the sleep time everything "stops". However, in
my application, there are background processes that must be running
continuously during the five second interval. Thus, threading.Timer
seems like a good function. Here is the relevant code:

# background processes
t = threading.Timer(5.0, function_name, [arguments])
while True:
# Do background processes run inside while loop?
t.start()

The above code generates an error:
AssertionError: thread already started

Any hints on how to fix the error? Also, do background processes run
inside while loops?

Thanks in advance,
Jonathan Shan

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Jonathan Shan wrote:

Hello,

I am trying to call a function every 5 seconds. My understanding of
time.sleep() is during the sleep time everything "stops". However, in
my application, there are background processes that must be running
continuously during the five second interval. Thus, threading.Timer
seems like a good function. Here is the relevant code:

# background processes
t = threading.Timer(5.0, function_name, [arguments])
while True:
# Do background processes run inside while loop?
t.start()

The above code generates an error:
AssertionError: thread already started

Any hints on how to fix the error? Also, do background processes run
inside while loops?

Thanks in advance,
Jonathan Shan

Here's a little thread-test program I wrote a few years ago. I hope it
will explain how threads and sleeps interact.

regards
Steve
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import time, threading, random

class MyThread(threading.Thread):
""" Each thread picks a 'random' integer between 0 and 19 and reports
in once per second for that many seconds.
"""

def run(self):
iterations = random.randint(0, 19)
print "Thread", self.getName(), "starting", iterations, "iterations"
for i in range(iterations):
print " ", self.getName(), "is reporting "
time.sleep(1)
print self.getName(), "is DONE"

def test():
threadList = []
iterCount = 0

# Create 5 MyThread() threads
for i in range(5) :
thread = MyThread()
threadList.append(thread)

# Start all threads
for thread in threadList:
thread.start()

# As long as we have more than just the 'main' thread running, print out
# a status message
while threading.activeCount() 1 :
print "-- after", iterCount, "sleeps", \
str(threading.activeCount()), "threads running including main"
iterCount += 1
time.sleep(1)
print "Only main thread remains"

if __name__ == '__main__':
test()